About Diane Szulecki, editor

Editor, American Journal of Nursing

U.S. Life Expectancy Varies Depending on County of Birth

image via Wikimedia Commons / Wapcaplet

A new study that compared life expectancy by county from 1980 to 2014 has shed light on geographic disparities, which have been increasing over the past 35 years. One of the study’s major findings, as we report in an August news article, is that the difference in life expectancy between the U.S. county with the highest life expectancy and the one with the lowest is 20.1 years.

The counties with the lowest life expectancies include several in North Dakota and South Dakota (in particular, those with Native American communities), and counties along the lower half of the Mississippi River and in Kentucky and West Virginia. Meanwhile, counties in central Colorado have the highest life expectancies.

While national life expectancy increased from 73.8 years to 79.1 years during the study period, the researchers noted regional inequalities in this improvement: some counties in the South experienced little to no improvement in life expectancy, while others on both coasts and in Colorado and Alaska saw large increases. They also found that geographic differences in life expectancy decreased for children and adolescents but increased for adults—especially for those ages 65 to 85 years. […]

2017-08-11T09:04:39-04:00August 11th, 2017|Nursing|0 Comments
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August Issue Highlights: TB Screening, The Baby-Friendly Hospital Initiative, Antibiotic Stewardship, More

The August issue of AJN is now live. Here are some articles we’d like to bring to your attention.

CE Feature: Tuberculosis: A New Screening Recommendation and an Expanded Approach to Elimination in the United States

The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) recently issued a new recommendation statement on latent tuberculosis infection testing that expands nurses’ opportunities to identify at-risk populations for tuberculosis prevention. This article provides a general overview of tuberculosis transmission, pathogenesis, and epidemiology; presents pre­ventive care recommendations for targeted testing among high-risk groups; and discusses the USPSTF rec­ommendation’s applicability to public health and primary care practice in the United States.

CE Feature: Beyond Maternity Nursing: The Baby-Friendly Hospital Initiative

The Baby-Friendly Hospital Initiative (BFHI) is a program developed by the World Health Organization and the United Nations Children’s Fund to promote breastfeeding in hospitals and birthing facilities worldwide. Since the program was launched in 1991, breastfeeding initiation, duration, and exclusivity have increased globally, a trend largely attributed to changes in hospital policies and practices brought about by the BFHI. This article provides an overview of these practices and policies, the insti­tutional benefits of achieving BFHI certification, and the process through which health care facilities can do so.

Original Research:

2017-07-28T09:41:48-04:00July 28th, 2017|Nursing|0 Comments
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There from the Start: A Hospice Nurse Looks Back

A painting of Dianne Puzycki, RN, hangs in Connecticut Hospice in New Haven.

At age 82, Dianne Puzycki has yet to retire from nursing—she still works the night shift once a week at Connecticut Hospice in Branford, where she’s been employed since the organization’s inception in the 1970s. Founded by Florence Wald, it was the first hospice in the United States.

Puzycki started her career in 1955 at Memorial Hospital in New York City, caring for patients with cancer at a time when death and dying wasn’t openly discussed. “We weren’t allowed to talk about that. It really haunted me for years,” she told AJN in a July profile. Several years later, she encountered two influential women: Dame Cicely Saunders, who founded the first modern hospice, and Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, who introduced the concept of the five stages of grief in her groundbreaking 1969 book On Death and Dying. Seeing them speak piqued her interest in the hospice movement, and she began volunteering for Connecticut Hospice, which eventually led to a full-time job.

Throughout the decades, says Puzycki, she’s witnessed hospice care constantly change and improve. She recalls that in the past, more patients used to stay […]

2017-07-26T09:35:44-04:00July 26th, 2017|Nursing, nursing career|1 Comment
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AJN’s Recent Awards: As Always, It Depends on Strong Writers and Editors

Because AJN‘s reputation depends on the conscientious work of numerous authors and editors, we’d like to note here the awards AJN has been awarded in 2017 so far, both for content published in the journal and on this blog, AJN Off the Charts. We are grateful to be recognized by the following organizations:

Winning journal articles, entire issues, and covers:

2017-07-21T08:59:42-04:00July 21st, 2017|Nursing|0 Comments
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Nursing Protocol for Stroke Increases Survival, Reduces Disability

image via Flickr / Vormingplus Gent-Eeklo vzw

As we report in a July news article, a new study showed that a nursing care plan for stroke, implemented in the first 72 hours after admission, reduced deaths and disability compared with standard stroke care. The protocol—which was implemented on 19 acute stroke care units in New South Wales, Australia—treated fever, hyperglycemia, and dysphagia using the following interventions:

  • Fever: Temperature monitoring every four hours; administration of paracetamol to lower temperature when needed
  • Hyperglycemia management: Blood glucose monitoring and saline or insulin infusion if indicated
  • Dysphagia detection: Nurses were trained by speech pathologists and assessed to test competency in screening for swallowing problems.

The study included 1,076 patients and confirmed the protocol’s positive outcomes four years later. (The same research group had conducted an earlier study showing the benefits after 90 days.) The authors hypothesized that rigorous implementation of the protocol in an organized stroke services setting helped preserve key tissue. […]

2017-07-12T10:20:34-04:00July 12th, 2017|Nursing|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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