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Every Frontline has a Backline: What Nursing Can Learn from Rugby

Photo credit: KJ Feury

Have you ever had a day at work that could only be fixed by an ice cream from your favorite creamery or by a hug from your best friend? Every shift during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic felt like this.

Unfortunately, because I work as an RN in a pediatric ICU at a large hospital in northern New Jersey, social restrictions that coincide with COVID-19 forestalled my usual comfort measures. After the start of the COVID-19 pandemic and during my reassignment in the COVID-19 ICU, I could no longer truly “leave” work. Work came home and walked with me throughout my day.

Dozens of IV pumps lining hallways, countless boxes of gowns, gloves, masks, and rubber shoes scattering the unit; ventilator alarms sounding; coworkers with surgical caps and masks, only identifiable by their eyes. The once medical–surgical unit transformed into a critical care unit equipped to care for COVID-19 patients.

After donning and doffing personal protective equipment (PPE), giving medication, adjusting ventilators, and updating families, you leave your 12+ hour shift wondering if you did your best. In the chaos of an unfamiliar unit, caring for patients with an unfamiliar virus, did I do everything to create the best outcome for […]

2020-07-22T10:18:03-04:00July 22nd, 2020|COVID-19, infectious diseases, Nursing, nursing perspective, nursing stories, Public health|3 Comments
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The Baby with Tetralogy of Flow

It is a good day so far—none of the 16 critically ill babies in the neonatal intensive care unit has coded or died. So far, the shrill electronic alarms for dying babies have been silent.

As the neonatologist on call, this gives me the opportunity to talk to Anna and Jake, Baby Milo’s parents. Milo peers up at them with big brown eyes as Anna leans over his crib and whispers to him. A small transparent plastic mask covers Milo’s tiny nose to help him breathe, and a cluster of saliva bubbles percolate between his lips. Despite a sleeve of tape securing his right hand, his tiny fingers tug the orange orogastric tube taped to his cheek.

Milo’s father, a brawny man wearing scuffed brown shoes, ripped blue jeans, a T-shirt, and a tattered Green Bay Packers cap, sits in a chair and nervously taps his knee while he stares with bloodshot eyes at the vital signs on Milo’s bedside monitor.

“Milo is adorable,” I say from the doorway. His parents look over to me as I step into the room.

“We think so,” Anna says with a smile.

“How are you both doing?” I ask. “Being in the NICU can be pretty stressful.”

Milo’s parents glance at each other and nod. Anna takes a seat next to Jake, who touches her shoulder.

I pull up a chair. “Can you tell me Milo’s story? How did you end up in the NICU?” I say.

“We were celebrating my birthday at a steakhouse,” Jake says. “Right after they brought […]

2020-07-15T11:23:21-04:00July 15th, 2020|family, family experience, pediatrics|0 Comments
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Reframing the Question: A Millennial’s Take On Preparing Nurse Educators of Tomorrow

A millennial novice nurse educator navigates the transition from the clinical arena to the world of nursing academia.

It was happening. I was enthusiastic and ready to start. Obtaining a position at a well-known public university as a lecturer had not only been my dream since my undergraduate years, but was a personal victory.

So many self-defeating thoughts went through my head in the weeks leading up to the notification by the university that I was hired. A member of the millennial generation nearing the end of my twenties, I knew that the outcome of hiring decisions could either boost me up or set me back. I was afraid that more established academic professionals from a senior generation would view me as “not a good fit for the position” or “lacking experience and knowledge.”

It is taboo to discuss, but age and generational bias is a concern for many professionals of the millennial generation. I had experienced this in the past while in the clinical setting.

Time to get to work.

Once I was past the hiring phase, I was faced with a new challenge that left no room to focus on self-doubt. I found myself accepted into academia with open arms from a team of well-rounded, skilled, nurse educators. They never seemed […]

2020-06-23T14:31:19-04:00June 23rd, 2020|Nursing, nursing career|2 Comments
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Racism, Social Justice, and Nurses

By Karen Roush, PhD, RN, FNP-BC

The murder of George Floyd under the knee of a police officer, following so quickly on the murders of Ahmaud Arbery, shot down while jogging in February, and Breonna Tayler, an EMT with plans of becoming a nurse who was killed by police in her own home in March, coalesced years of anger, fear, and despair into an extraordinary outcry for racial justice that has not been seen since the civil rights movement.

Black Lives Matter.

Credit: National Nurses United

The chilling casualness with which Derek Chauvin ended George Floyd’s life over nearly nine agonizing minutes exposed more dramatically than anything else why we need to insist that black lives matter. The fact that it took four days for any charges to be brought against Chauvin, and over two months for the murderers of Mr. Arbery to be charged, only serves to reinforce what many have been saying for a long time, that all lives do not matter equally.

People have filled the streets of large cities and small to march in solidarity for racial justice and the end of police brutality. (Looters and rioters are not part of the protests and unwelcome by those marching for justice.) Not everyone may agree on how to […]

2020-06-12T13:22:12-04:00June 11th, 2020|Nursing, Public health|3 Comments
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Addressing Clinician Mental Health and Suicide Risk During the Pandemic

Pandemics are known to cause panic disorder, anxiety, depression, sleep disturbances, and posttraumatic stress. Depression can lead to suicide if not treated, yet is a treatable disease. We have seen nurses die by suicide during this pandemic in Italy.

Past experience suggests that health care workers exposed to the stress of the pandemic will need help long after the pandemic is under control.

I am serving as co-chair of the Strength Through Resilience task force of the American Nurses Association, whose focus was originally to collate resources to reduce suicide among nurses. We quickly shifted gears when the pandemic hit to collate resources to optimize resiliency and mental health among nurses in relation to the projected impact of the pandemic. Curiously, these resources are virtually identical. The ANA has posted initial resources as part of their Healthy Nurse, Healthy Nation campaign and is and building more resources as quickly as possible.

Nurses already at higher suicide risk.

The added stress of the pandemic is particularly problematic because of evidence that emerged before the pandemic that nurses were at higher risk of suicide than the general public. If leaders at health care organizations have not already started proactively screening […]

2020-05-12T16:27:31-04:00May 12th, 2020|COVID-19, mental illness, Nursing, Public health|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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