About Amy M. Collins, managing editor

Managing editor, American Journal of Nursing

National Pregnancy and Infant Loss Remembrance Day: Stories That Stay With You

by dave shafer/via flickr

October 15 is National Pregnancy and Infant Loss Remembrance Day, a day of remembrance for those who have suffered a miscarriage, stillbirth, or infant loss. Ronald Reagan proclaimed October a month for recognizing this kind of loss in 1998, and a resolution to declare October 15 a day of remembrance was passed by the United States House of Representatives on September 28, 2006, following an initiative by three mothers who had suffered losses.

The day serves to promote greater awareness, remembrance, and support of the estimated one in four individuals and families whose lives are altered by the death of their children during pregnancy, at birth, and in infancy.

‘A lonely grief.’

In a way, I wish I didn’t know this. I myself suffered an unexpected, second-trimester loss two years ago. The grief, excruciating in the days and months that followed, has subsided, but never fully disappears. It is a “lonely” grief. I found that miscarriage and infant loss is a topic a lot of people tend to shy away from—they don’t always know what to say or sometimes say something unintentionally hurtful (it was God’s will, you can go on to have more children).

This can be very isolating. Only through talking […]

2019-10-11T09:57:32-04:00October 11th, 2019|Nursing|1 Comment
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Seen and Understood: A Postpartum Scare and a Nurse’s Firm Reassurance

After an anxious pregnancy, short-lived relief.

When I got pregnant several months after an unexpected second trimester miscarriage, I was both elated and terrified. The loss taught me that aside from keeping myself healthy and getting prenatal care, I had no real control. I lived every day as if the pregnancy might not work out.

In the end, I gave birth to a healthy baby girl. It was such a relief to finally hold her, to know that I wouldn’t again be blindsided. But this relief was short-lived. I was nursing my daughter at home a week after the birth when I noticed that my pants felt wet. Looking down, I saw blood soaking through my clothes.

I tried to remain calm as I handed the baby to my husband and called the after-hours service at my OB-GYN. I was told to come to the ED right away. Panic-stricken, I realized that I had to take my 7-day-old baby with me. I was nursing, it was nighttime, and I had no formula in the house.

I called 911 and an ambulance came to take me to the hospital. My husband would meet me there with the baby once my mother arrived to watch our sleeping toddler. As the EMTs prepared to move me, I gave my […]

2019-02-20T11:06:52-05:00February 20th, 2019|Nursing|1 Comment
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ACA Opens Enrollment for 2019: What Patients Need to Know

Open enrollment in the Affordable Care Act (ACA) marketplace opened today, despite shortened deadlines, repeal of the individual mandate, stopping cost-sharing payments, and reduced outreach and marketing for the law. And with all the noise from political talking points adding to an already complicated process, your patients might be in need of a primer on what to do this year. Here are the basics:

Where to enroll

Some states have their own exchange, and some use the federal government’s. Patients can access www.healthcare.gov, www.cuidadodesalud.gov, find their state’s page here, or call (800) 318-2596 for more info.

When to enroll

Enrollment begins November 1 (except for in California, where it began in October). However, deadlines differ in some states. The deadline for most states this year is December 15. A handful (New York, California, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Colorado) have deadlines in January. Those who wait until January to enroll should be aware that their coverage will not start until February.

What about the individual mandate?

Included in the Republican-backed tax plan signed into law last year was a repeal of the individual mandate penalty for individuals who choose not to get insurance. For the coming year, this repeal will be in effect in almost all states (Massachusetts, New Jersey, and the District of Columbia will […]

2018-11-01T13:45:23-04:00November 1st, 2018|Patients, Public health|0 Comments
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Is It Time to Relax Food Restrictions on Women in Labor?

Three years ago, I went into labor in the middle of the night, 10 days before my expected due date. Things ramped up fast, and by the time I got to the hospital an hour later, I was almost ready to have the baby. However, when my son’s heart rate suddenly dropped and wouldn’t recover with medication, I was told I had to have an emergency C-section immediately.

As I hadn’t planned on surgery, or labor, that night, I had eaten a full three-course meal earlier in the evening. The nurses asked me if I had eaten, and I had to admit yes, and then some! I did feel nauseous as the procedure began, but luckily the wonderful anesthesiologist quickly helped, when I told him how I felt, with some miracle medication in my IV. The surgery proceeded without incident.

Nil by mouth? New research questions a tradition.

It was with interest, then, that I read AJN’s March original research CE feature, “An Investigation into the Safety of Oral Intake During Labor.” In this article, the authors compared maternal and neonatal outcomes among laboring women permitted ad lib oral intake with those permitted nothing by mouth except for ice chips. Restriction of oral intake in laboring women has traditionally been, as AJN’s editor-in-chief […]

2018-03-02T08:27:46-05:00March 2nd, 2018|nursing research, patient experience|1 Comment
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How to Identify and Avoid Predatory Journals

Photo by Alice Rosen, via Flickr.

I remember receiving my first “accept” letter for a novel I was working on many years ago. In my excitement, I didn’t stop to think that it was strange that, before the editor began working with me, I would have to pay a large sum of money to get the manuscript into shape. When my euphoria died down and my skepticism shot up, I decided to submit a fake query to the same publisher, highlighting a novel that could never possibly get published. Imagine my dismay when I received the exact same acceptance letter.

So in a way, predatory publishing is not an entirely new concept. And in fact, many more or less legitimate self-publishing options for books, fiction or otherwise, still exist. But with the increasing dominance of the Web and the rise of the open access movement—established to help spread publicly funded research—a more invidious and widely pervasive form of predatory publishing has taken hold in scholarly publishing. And the stakes are far higher. While my novel probably wasn’t going to affect anyone’s life, articles published by unscrupulous publishers—especially medical and nursing literature—have a lot more power to cause damage.

Flawed, unreliable content.

Since predatory journals often forego rigorous […]

2018-01-19T10:56:23-05:00January 19th, 2018|digital health, nursing research, writing|0 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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