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Caring for Caregivers—We Need More Than Self-Care and Resilience

Mural painted by critical care unit staff to honor patients who contracted COVID-19. The stars represent those who succumbed to the illness and the flowers those who were discharged from the hospital. Mural by the MedStar Montgomery ICU Team; photo by Cherri Walrath.

Self-care is not a panacea.

Since the start of the pandemic, AJN has received many manuscripts and queries related to self-care and resilience to prevent burnout. It’s not surprising, given that this has been a harrowing year for nurses.

But while self-care and resilience are important, and such articles are needed, all the self-care in the world can’t fully address the root of the problem—the systemic issues that lead to burnout. At some point health care administration needs to step in and become part of the solution and offer staff the help they need.

A CE feature in our May issue, “Providing Care for Caregivers During COVID-19,” highlights one hospital system’s efforts to do just that. The Care for the Caregiver program, which existed prior to the pandemic, was created to support ‘second victims,’ defined by the Center for Patient Safety as “healthcare providers who are involved in an unanticipated adverse patient event, medical error and/or a patient related injury and become victimized in the sense that the provider is traumatized […]

2021-05-27T09:19:17-04:00May 27th, 2021|Nursing|0 Comments
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Making Sense of Loss, Finding Strength as a Nurse

Maria, day 6.

It was bright outside, the sun was shining, and as I looked at the window in Room 303, I saw the light peering through. Maria, a 78-year-old Hispanic woman, mother of three, could not move and did not see that spring had begun as she struggled to breath. She looked at me with her helpless teary eyes trying to communicate, but I could not hear the words.

I’d d been Maria’s primary nurse for five of the six days that she has been hospitalized. During that time, I had witnessed the tension and anxiety that existed within her family around her admission with Covid-19. I hoped silently that a DNR order would be initiated if her breathing worsened instead of her being placed on a ventilator. But I tried not to express my feelings to her family about this when I helped them to communicate with and see their mother using FaceTime.

Maria’s family watched as she slowly declined, and saw how she didn’t respond to treatments. Feeling hopeless and overwhelmed, I tried to schedule a time to speak to my nursing manager about how I was feeling, but she was always too busy scheduling and assisting on the floor after other staff called in sick.

Hard decisions take […]

2021-05-13T10:24:41-04:00May 13th, 2021|COVID-19, Nursing|0 Comments
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But Where Are You Really From?

Anne Lano will graduate from a family nurse practitioner program next month.

As a five-year-old adoptee from Korea who grew up in the primarily white world of central Nebraska, I often wished, as a child, that I could look like everyone else. Early on, I was often confused or hurt by the unthinking remarks I received. Neighborhood boys teased me about my eyes. When I was in my teens, a woman in the locker room turned  in my direction and said, slowly and loudly, “Welcome to America!” When I was sure she was talking to me, I said, “Uh, thanks! You too?!”

While I was chasing my kids around the playground, another little girl climbed up a ladder close to me. When she was eye level with me, she brightly said, “Hola!” It took me a second to realize she thought I was Hispanic, but I chuckled and, with a smile said, “Hola!” back to her. Likewise, at a friend’s relative’s house, a woman claimed that I look just like someone she knew. She searched all her photo albums to show me a picture of an Asian man who, in my opinion, looked like […]

2021-04-28T09:30:57-04:00April 28th, 2021|Nursing, nursing stories|1 Comment
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Celebrating Earth Day: Connecting Health and the Environment

Photo by Fateme Alaie via Unsplash

Earth Day, celebrated on April 22, is an annual event to demonstrate support for environmental protections. First held in 1970, it now includes a wide range of events coordinated in more than 192 countries across the globe. The Earth Day celebration that stands out most for me was the 20th anniversary held in Central Park in New York. The event was estimated to have drawn more than 750,000 people—a big incentive being the free concert, which included a performance by the B-52s (who doesn’t love “Love Shack”?).

This year marks the 41st Earth Day, and amidst a global pandemic, activities will look a lot different. (Click here for more information on the virtual events taking place this year.)

Free articles from our environments and health column.

In honor of Earth Day, AJN would like to offer free access to the below selection of articles from our Environments and Health column until May 15. There’s a lot to unpack in these articles—from steps to reduce waste at the hospital level, to how nurses can get involved in fighting climate change, to how patients’ health can be affected by our environment, particularly the mental health conditions that may arise amid extreme changes […]

2021-04-22T14:42:23-04:00April 22nd, 2021|climate change, environmental health, environmental health, Nursing|0 Comments
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Nurse Volunteers on the Front Lines of the Vaccination Effort

Joanne Disch, PhD, RN, FAAN, is professor ad honorem at the University of Minnesota School of Nursing, Minneapolis, and Ellen Elpern, MSN, RN, is a retired advanced practice nurse, formerly at Rush University Medical Center, Chicago.

Nurse volunteers as an essential resource.

As of April 15, 2021, there have been over 31 million cases of COVID-19 in the United States and over 561,000 deaths. Sobering numbers. But there are some heartening numbers as well: 198 million vaccination shots have been administered so far, with 3 million doses now being given per day. To reach and continue to meet the current pace has required an extraordinary ramp-up of sites—and of the number of individuals administering the vaccines. An essential resource that’s emerged is the use of nurses as volunteers to help staff these sites.

For more than a year, the public has witnessed the compassion, competence, and heroism of nurses who are on the front lines of the COVID pandemic. Those of us who are nurses and not in the clinical setting watched with pride and empathy, knowing better than most what these nurses were experiencing—and wishing there were something that we could do. Stepping forward to volunteer for service in a vaccine clinic is one way to make a difference. These volunteer opportunities are as varied as the vaccination sites themselves, but in all cases the effort is being enriched by the active engagement of nurses, retired and otherwise.

Defuniak Springs, Florida

2021-04-16T09:15:42-04:00April 16th, 2021|COVID-19, infectious diseases, Nursing, nursing career|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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