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RN Resiliency: Humor, Hounds, and Holistic Medicine

‘Even my hair is tired.’

If you’ve been faced with death, trauma, significant stressors, and losses, you’ve had to be resilient. And boy, did I choose a career with all of the above. I started my nursing career during the AIDS epidemic, and later moved to active duty Air Force nursing, travel nursing, polytrauma, rehab, chronic pain, spinal cord injury, working with the homeless, mental health, and lastly COVID-19. After 27 years of this, even my hair is tired. But I’ve never been so proud to pick this career—it is a calling. As Nurses Month begins, I tear up thinking there aren’t enough words to express my gratitude.

During COVID, understaffing, hourly policy changes, increased workloads and responsibilities, an increase in mental health disorders, the political climate, and anti-science rhetoric only added to the stressors. I had to look hard to find the gold, because every day you could definitely find the rust. I often asked myself, “How can I keep a healthy attitude, a warm heart, continuous focus, and a genuine nurse smile?” The answer for me has been my humor, hounds, and holistic medicine approaches.

Humor as stress relief.

This realization started when I landed in the ED after a period of not taking care of myself after learning my patient died by suicide. […]

2022-05-04T09:28:13-04:00May 4th, 2022|Nursing, nursing career|1 Comment
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Do Unto Others: Caring for Patients with Traumatic Brain Injuries

When I was 12 years old, my dad had an “accident.” I remember the day it happened so very clearly. My sixth grade teacher told me I would be going home with one of my very best friends, Madison, to stay the night at her house. I was as excited as any preteen is when they learn they get to have a sleepover on a school night!

When we got home from school, I asked Madison’s mom why we got to have a sleepover. “Your parents are taking a little siesta,” she said. I simply thought this meant that they had gone on vacation without us. Instead, siesta was a code word. My dad was in a coma after suffering a traumatic brain injury (TBI).

The long road to rehabilitation after a TBI.

If you have any experience with TBIs, you know the recovery is often just as traumatic as the injury itself. I think of the accident often, especially when I start my shift. I sit in the parking lot remembering what it was like to be on the other side of TBI rehabilitation.

All of […]

2022-04-18T18:07:02-04:00April 18th, 2022|Nursing|0 Comments
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A Call for a More Balanced Approach to Family Presence During a Public Health Emergency

What would you want for your family?

Nine years ago, AJN published a Viewpoint article asserting the essential role of family caregivers. The article featured an elderly woman recuperating in a hospital, her daughter at her bedside planning for discharge with the care team. The authors argued that family engagement creates the foundation for safer care, better patient outcomes, and greater efficiency for nurses.

The same patient’s experience would likely have been very different during the Covid pandemic, especially during the intermittent surges over the past two years. The patient would be alone in the hospital, her daughter’s assurances communicated through a digital tablet. Overstretched nurses would provide updates to the family over the phone. Discharge education would occur through a car window moments before the patient’s daughter drove her home, feeling unprepared for what came next.

COVID-19’s highly transmissible properties have complicated the family engagement equation. Over the past two years, hospitals and nursing homes have enacted, eased up on, and then reinstated visitation bans, at times leaving questions as to whether restrictions implemented to reduce disease spread may be more detrimental than beneficial.

As we contended in recent months with the extremely contagious Omicron variant, family caregivers who had assumed an essential role as advocate, family […]

2022-03-02T10:21:04-05:00March 2nd, 2022|Nursing|2 Comments
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The Particular Pain and Challenge of Educating Patients During a Worldwide Pandemic

Working in a rural community access hospital during the pandemic has been a struggle. Here as in many areas of the U.S., many in the surrounding community have not accepted the the existence of a virus like Covid-19. Against the backdrop of this widespread disbelief in the reality of the virus, the “government-mandated” vaccine was a final straw for many.

Many of these patients wholeheartedly believe that the vaccine is the “mark of the beast” mentioned in the Book of Revelation and that this is the beginning of the end of the world, with getting the vaccine understood as an expression of loyalty to Satan.

This belief is shared by various religious groups in other areas of our country. Many patients in our community also believe the vaccine is made with stem cells and fetal tissue and includes microchips. There are widely circulated rumors of tracking devices in the vaccine itself.

How do we as nurses and advanced practice registered nurses (APRNs) educate patients on the science of vaccinations in the face of the anger and passion we experience daily from a suspicious community?

The many other strains on nurses.

It hasn’t helped that nurses and APRNs alike have had to deal with more than they bargained for on many levels in relation […]

2022-02-24T14:38:16-05:00February 24th, 2022|Nursing, patient engagement, Public health|0 Comments
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Thinking Outside the Room: An Innovation Saved Time and PPE During the Pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic forced us to adapt and change from care as usual to thinking outside the box—or in the case of Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx, New York, outside the room.

Our February CE feature, “Using Smart IV Infusion Pumps Outside of Patient Rooms,” describes an innovation that helped save three valuable commodities that were at risk early in the pandemic—staff’s health, time, and PPE.

Administering medication and IV fluids can be very time-consuming, especially when nurses are required to don and doff a mask and isolation gown every time they enter and exit the patient’s room. However, keeping the IV infusion pump outside of the room makes it accessible in the hallway and eliminates the need for isolation precautions.

Considerations with use of this approach.

The authors recognize that one major concern with having the IV pump outside of the room is the decreased frequency of IV patient assessment. They note, “Standards were modified to allow staff to assess IV sites for dressing integrity and infiltration during the repositioning of prone patients, whose heads needed to be turned every two hours.” And “[i]f a patient’s change in condition coincided with the use of additional extension sets and the relocation of the pump, staff were instructed […]

2022-02-21T10:46:43-05:00February 21st, 2022|Nursing|1 Comment
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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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