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Looking Beyond Nursing Education Offerings Can Open Doors

In a world where time efficiency is supreme, nurses often seek educational opportunities only within their area of nursing expertise. After all, further expertise in my specialty area will directly apply to work, right? It may seem counterintuitive to look for learning opportunities outside nursing, but the results may surprise you.

I am a nursing PhD student, and the PhD program contains only one “independent study” elective course. One chance for me to choose my own topic. Most students choose to research background literature for their dissertation, but I chose . . . to audit a law course. My future research project involves children with special needs, and I discovered a local special education law course. School education is vitally important for families with special needs children, but the rules surrounding education are poorly understood by parents—and nurses.

Since I don’t have a law degree, I wasn’t certain how much I would understand or use the material covered in the class, but auditing the class turned out to be the best decision I could have made, yielding immediate benefits and opening doors of future opportunity.

Outside the educational comfort zone.

Initially, I felt excitement tinged with trepidation and self-consciousness. To audit a course, I needed to obtain permission […]

2022-07-08T13:00:07-04:00July 8th, 2022|career, Nursing|1 Comment
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Keeping Current with Cardiac Device Technologies

“If nurses understand the purpose of cardiac devices and the care of patients receiving them, they will be better equipped to teach patients to be confident in their own self-care.”

When I was an RN in the cardiac electrophysiology lab, we frequently performed device implants or procedures for patients with heart failure. When giving report to the telemetry nurses, I often felt I didn’t have enough time to fully explain the background for the procedures we performed.

In my CE feature article in AJN‘s June issue, “Guideline-Directed Cardiac Devices for Patients with Heart Failure,” I share an exemplar of a patient who had one of these procedures—an implanted cardioverter/defibrillator with cardiac resynchronization therapy. If nurses understand the purpose of cardiac devices and the care of patients receiving them, they will be better equipped to teach patients to be confident in their own self-care.

It is challenging to keep up with the advances in health care devices. In the article, I also describe some other recent cardiac technologies. Patients with any these devices may be seen in a variety of inpatient and outpatient settings, and nurses may benefit from a general understanding of their purpose and patient care. […]

2022-07-05T09:28:04-04:00July 5th, 2022|Nursing|0 Comments
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Giving Back: The Heart of a Nurse

The Importance of Community Engagement, Volunteering, and Why Nurses Should Get Involved

Many of us became nurses because we wanted to heal and help others, and we believed that there is no greater honor and privilege than aiding another human being.

Nurses can offer so much to communities. People trust us, and we bring a health lens to everything we do. We know that people need safe places to exercise and play, a comfortable place to call home, clean air to breathe and water to drink, grocery stores with healthful food in our neighborhoods, and human connectedness. When we join boards or volunteer with organizations, we make our communities healthier.

During the pandemic, nurses volunteered at vaccine clinics and distributed food to people in need. Nurses served as a voice of reason when community members did not know who to turn to for health advice. Nurses are the backbone of disaster-relief efforts, and we teach our neighbors how to get and stay healthy.

A sense of empowerment and fulfillment.

My experiences serving as a disaster nurse with the Red Cross have been among the […]

2022-05-23T16:53:37-04:00May 23rd, 2022|Nursing, nursing roles|0 Comments
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Driving the Nursing Profession Forward with Continuous Professional Development

A challenging few years.

The last few years have been especially challenging for the nursing profession. We fought a virus that wreaked havoc on our patients, families, and on ourselves. We struggled with equity, diversity, and inclusion issues and we had to adjust how we educate nursing students, moving from in-person to hybrid and online models. Faced with inadequate numbers of competent staff, we developed innovative workforce and care models while focusing on fostering resiliency.

Through it all we recognized the need to acquire new knowledge and skills through continuing professional development to keep up with the demands of the evolving health care paradigm.

‘Every day we learned something new.’

Investment in professional development is essential so that we are prepared to care for our patients and ready to help shape and lead the future of health care. Every day during the pandemic we learned something new about caring for patients with COVID-19. Learning new skills, investing in new knowledge and education, challenging ourselves to think differently about situations, and being mindful can all help propel and focus our nursing journey. […]

2022-05-16T10:08:47-04:00May 16th, 2022|career, Nursing, nursing career|0 Comments
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School Nurses: A ‘Hidden Health Care System’ Finds a Voice

A blog is born.

Five years ago, I attended a blog writing workshop at the National Association of School Nurses (NASN) annual conference. It was led by Margaret Cellucci, the former director of communications for NASN. The hands-on workshop was a primer on blogging and included an assignment that the participants needed to submit a blog post about their conference experience before the end of the event. That is how The Relentless School Nurse blog was born. Five years, 818 blog posts, and almost 400,000 views later, I can say with confidence that school nursing is a vibrant and innovative specialty practice.

Amplifying the voice of school nursing.

My aim has been to amplify the voice of school nursing. At first, I focused on sharing stories from my health office. But soon I wanted to spotlight school nurses from around the country who were doing amazing things but did not have a national platform to share their experiences. As my readership grew, so did my reach and within a short time, I was highlighting school nurses from coast to coast.

To tell our own stories—not to boast but to educate.

Recognition in school nursing, like in most nursing, has been hard-fought, both within our own walls and outside as well. So many school nurses […]

2022-05-11T10:32:27-04:00May 11th, 2022|COVID-19, Nursing, school nurses|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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