About Amy M. Collins, managing editor

Managing editor, American Journal of Nursing

ECRI’s Top 10 Patient Safety Concerns for 2014

safety Photo © One Way Stock.

For the past few years, we’ve highlighted the ECRI Institute’s annual Top 10 Health Technology Hazards report, which provides an overview of new and old technology hazards for health care facilities to keep in mind (read this year’s post here).

Now ECRI has released a new report entitled “Top 10 Patient Safety Concerns for Healthcare Organizations.” The goal of the list, according to ECRI, is to “give healthcare organizations a gauge to check their track record in patient safety.” The list, which will be published on an annual basis, draws upon more than 300,000 patient safety events, custom research requests, and root-cause analyses submitted to the institute’s federally designated patient safety organization (PSO) for assessment. A selection from the top 10 can be found below.

Poor care coordination with a patient’s next level of care

The concern: Gaps in communication about patient care—for example, between hospital and provider, among providers, and between long-term care settings and hospitals—have been reported to ECRI’s PSO. And while it is best practice for hospitals to send a patient’s discharge information to all of a patient’s providers, this doesn’t always happen.

Some suggestions: On reason information doesn’t get passed on, according to the report, is that staff aren’t always […]

2016-11-21T13:04:28-05:00June 20th, 2014|Nursing|1 Comment
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AJN June Issue: Genomic Advances in CF, LGBT Care Disparities, Denying Smokers Jobs, More

AJN0614.Cover.OnlineAJN’s June issue is now available on our Web site. Here’s a selection of what not to miss.

The newborn featured on our cover this month is wrapped in a blanket decorated with a string of letters—better known as genetic code. Today, all newborns in the United States are screened for various inherited and congenital conditions, but the use of genomic sequencing at birth could provide information beyond what current screen­ing already provides—health information to go in their medical records for use in detecting and managing disease.

Cystic fibrosis (CF) is one disorder that has been affected by recent developments in the field of genetics. The discovery of the CF gene in 1989, along with advances in molecular genet­ics, made it possible to screen for CF through DNA testing. Early diagnosis and prompt treat­ment of CF has been shown to improve patients’ overall health and survival. Genetic advances have also led to the development of promising drugs to treat CF. For more on the impact of genomic advances on diagnosis and treatment, and implications for nursing practice, read, “Genomic Breakthroughs in the Diagnosis and Treatment of Cystic Fibrosis,” and  earn 2.3 CE credits by taking the test that follows the article.

LGBT health care disparities. The health care disparities that affect people who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender (LGBT) are closely tied to sexual and social […]

2016-11-21T13:04:38-05:00May 29th, 2014|nursing perspective|0 Comments
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To Be a Nurse Is a Powerful Thing: Thoughts on Graduation

By Karen Roush, PhD, RN, FNP, AJN clinical managing editor

Photo by Karen Roush. Photo by Karen Roush.

After years of work and sacrifice, last month I successfully defended my dissertation. In the weeks leading up to my defense I found myself overcome with emotion each time I imagined that moment when I would hear myself called “doctor” for the first time. And my breath did catch in my throat when the questioning was over and the chair of my dissertation committee turned to me and said those magic words, “Congratulations Dr. Roush.”

But then something funny happened. There was no incredible high. I wasn’t walking on air. For so many years I’ve been focused on the goal of achieving a doctor of philosophy in nursing. But now that I’ve accomplished that, I am faced with a new and no less difficult challenge—what I do from here and how I make those words, Dr. Roush, mean something.

Many of you graduating this month may have similar feelings. It is a powerful thing to be a nurse. What we’ve learned in the classrooms, in hospital halls, in the connections that pass between us and our patients in moments great and small, has given us tremendous knowledge. But it is what we choose to do with that knowledge and how we do it that gives […]

2016-11-21T13:04:47-05:00May 12th, 2014|career, nursing perspective|1 Comment
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AJN’s May Issue: Intimate Partner Violence, What Clinical Nursing Instructors Do, Containing Cholera, Noise in the ICU, More

AJN0514.Cover.OnlineAJN’s May issue is now available on our Web site. And in honor of Nurses Week, we are offering free access to the entire issue for the whole week (May 6-12). Here’s a selection of what not to miss.

Intimate partner violence. A major health care issue, intimate partner violence (IPV) affects almost 6% of U.S. women annually. And while prevalence rates of IPV are similar in rural and nonrural areas, rural survivors face distinct barriers in accessing care. “Intimate Partner Violence in Rural Areas: What Every Nurse Should Know” describes the unique aspects of IPV in rural populations and provides nurses with tools and information crucial to effective intervention. This CE feature offers 2.5 CE credits to those who take the test that follows the article. And don’t miss a podcast interview with one of the authors (this and other podcasts are accessible via the Behind the Article page on our Web site or, if you’re in our iPad app, by tapping the icon on the first page of the article).

Containing cholera. While still recovering from a magnitude-7 earthquake, Haiti confronted a second disaster: a rapidly growing cholera epidemic. The authors of “Responding to the Cholera Epidemic in Haiti,” part of a nongovernmental relief organization team sent to Haiti, describe how they managed more than 23,000 cases of cholera and […]

2016-11-21T13:04:55-05:00April 25th, 2014|Nursing|0 Comments
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Anxiety Apps: New Fad or Worth the Download?

photo3By Amy M. Collins, editor

Today there’s an app for everything. There are find-your-keys apps, map-the-stars apps, even an app to help you hone your stapling skills. And apps exist to help patients with every kind of health care need, from managing diabetes to prenatal care. Usually, in an attempt to keep my smartphone use to a minimum, I avoid jumping on the trendy app bandwagon. But recently I came across an article touting an app to reduce anxiety. As a long-term, mostly recovered sufferer of chronic anxiety and panic, this article piqued my interest (and my skepticism).

While certainly not the first app developed to reduce stress, this particular app—called Personal Zen—has been tested by researchers who found that participants with relatively high scores on an anxiety survey showed less nervous behavior after using the app than those in a placebo group, according to a study published in Clinical Psychological Science. Developed by psychologist Tracy Dennis, a professor at Hunter College in New York City (and, it should probably be noted, one of the study’s lead authors), the app incorporates the concept of cognitive bias modification to get the user to shift their focus from a threatening stimulus to a nonthreatening one. More studies are needed to see if such an app would have the same success in those with clinically diagnosed anxiety.

And there are […]

2016-11-21T13:05:01-05:00April 16th, 2014|Nursing|4 Comments
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Views expressed on the blog are solely those of the authors or persons quoted. They do not necessarily reflect AJN’s views or those of Wolters Kluwer Health/Lippincott Williams and Wilkins.
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