About Guest Author

This author has not yet filled in any details.
So far Guest Author has created 494 blog entries.

The Ethics of a Nurse’s Refusal to Force-Feed Guantanamo Hunger-Strikers

Douglas Olsen is an associate professor at the Michigan State University College of Nursing in East Lansing and a contributing editor of AJN, where he regularly writes about ethical issues in nursing.

Nasal tubes, gravity feeding bags, and the liquid nutrient Ensure used in Guantanamo force-feeding/ image via Wikimedia Commons Nasal tubes, gravity feeding bags, and the liquid nutrient Ensure used in Guantanamo force-feeding/ image via Wikimedia Commons

The Miami Herald reported this week that a U.S. Navy nurse and officer refused to take part in force-feeding hunger-striking detainees at Guantanamo Bay.

There’s much we still don’t know about this story, but the force-feeding of prisoners at Guantanamo has been a contentious issue for some time. The practice has been compared by some to torture, and ethicists in the medical literature have urged the physicians involved to refuse to participate, while the U.S. government and President Barack Obama defend the practice on humanitarian grounds of preventing the deaths of the detainees.

Whether or not one feels that nurse participation in the force-feeding is justified, this officer, whose identity has not been released, appears to deserve the profession’s praise for taking a moral stand in an extraordinarily difficult circumstance. All nurses have the […]

2016-11-21T13:04:16-05:00July 18th, 2014|career, Ethics, Nursing, Patients|10 Comments
Read More

Getting Patients Involved in Care Redesign: What the Research Says

By Sylvia Foley, AJN senior editor

“I think the whole thing is we’re trying to im­prove care. It’s all about [patients] anyways. So if we’re gonna make changes that impact them I think we have to get them involved.” —study participant

Although there is considerable support for increasing patient involvement in health care, it’s not clear how best to achieve this. And few researchers have specifically investigated the views of patients and providers on patient engagement. In this month’s CE–Original Research feature, “The Perceptions of Health Care Team Members About Engaging Patients in Care Redesign,” Melanie Lavoie-Tremblay and colleagues describe findings from their recent study. Here’s a brief overview.

Objective: This study sought to explore the perceptions of health care workers about engaging patients as partners on care redesign teams under a program called Transforming Care at the Bedside (TCAB), and to examine the facilitating factors, barriers, and effects of such engagement.
Design: This descriptive, qualitative study collected data through focus groups and individual interviews. Participants included health care providers and managers from five units at three hospitals in a university-affiliated health care center in Canada.
Methods: A total of nine focus groups and 13 individual interviews were conducted in April 2012, 18 months after the TCAB program began in September 2010. Content analysis was used to analyze the quali­tative data.
Findings: Health care providers and managers benefited from engaging patients in the decision-making process because the patients brought a new point of view. Involving the patients exposed team members to valuable information that they […]

2017-07-27T14:45:30-04:00July 16th, 2014|nursing perspective, nursing research|1 Comment
Read More

Providing Culturally Sensitive Care: It Takes More Than Knowledge

By Karen Roush, AJN clinical managing editor. Photos by the author.

DSC_0136One Saturday a few weeks ago I grabbed my camera and headed out to spend the afternoon taking photographs around the city. I ended up wandering around the streets of Chinatown, photographing the street life—the rows of fresh fish on piles of ice, the colorful patterns of vegetables in crates outside shops, old women in variations of plaid and flowered housedresses lined up on a bench, children scattering clusters of pigeons.

Eventually I happened upon a vigorous and highly skilled game of handball in a park. The competitors were predominately young Asian men, though there were a few Hispanic men playing too. Standing next to me, a young man was telling his friend about a clever way a mutual friend had devised to get out of paying a parking ticket. If you live in New York, or almost any big city, you will earn yourself a parking ticket or two at some point. Intrigued by this man’s idea, I asked him if it actually worked and he assured me it did. Then he rolled his eyes and said, “Oh no, I shouldn’t have said anything. Once the white people know, that’s the end of it!” […]

2016-11-21T13:04:26-05:00June 25th, 2014|career, nursing perspective, nursing research|1 Comment
Read More

Addressing Health Care Disparities: Best Practices for LGBT Patients

By Sylvia Foley, AJN senior editor

Lawrence Johnson feeds his partner of 38 years, Alexendre Rheume, at a nursing care facility. Rheume suffered from Parkinson's dementia. The couple struggled to find a facility welcoming of them as a couple. Photo © Gen Silent documentary film / http://gensilent.com. Lawrence Johnson feeds his partner of 38 years, Alexendre Rheume. Rheume suffered from Parkinson’s dementia. Photo © Gen Silent documentary film / http://gensilent.com.

It’s arguably easier these days to identify as “queer”—lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender (LGBT). Our society has come a long way since 1969, when the infamous Stonewall riots and other events heralded the gay rights movement. Many LGBT people can live more openly and fully as who they are. Yet this population—which constitutes an estimated 5% to 10% of the U.S. population—continues to receive often substandard health care. In this month’s CE feature, “Addressing Health Care Disparities in the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Population: A Review of Best Practices,” Fidelindo Lim and colleagues explore these disparities and explain why it’s important for nurses in all practice settings to know how to address them. Here’s a quick overview.

The health care needs of people who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender (LGBT) have received significant attention from policymakers in the last several years. Recent reports from the Institute of Medicine, Healthy People 2020, and the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality have all highlighted the need for such long-overdue attention. The health care disparities […]

2017-07-27T14:46:55-04:00June 9th, 2014|Nursing|0 Comments
Read More

“One Day He Breaks Your Arm, and Then . . .”: How Nurses Can Help Rural Survivors of Intimate Partner Violence

Photo by Damien Gadal, via Flickr. Photo by Damien Gadal, via Flickr.

 By Sylvia Foley, AJN senior editor

“Imagine for a moment that your husband or boyfriend is regularly assaulting you, and often tells you that ‘nobody cares.’ Now imagine that you live in an isolated rural community. The nearest health care services are 75 miles away—and you can’t get there because he removes the car battery to keep you from driving . . . One day he breaks your arm, and then he drives you to that distant hospital. Will the nurses recognize what is happening? Will there be a chance for you to tell them?”

In this month’s CE feature, “Intimate Partner Violence in Rural U.S. Areas: What Every Nurse Should Know,” Amanda Dudgeon and Tracy Evanson explain why it’s important for nurses in all practice settings to understand the particular issues that rural survivors face and how to address them. (Most, though not all, victims of intimate partner violence are women; this article focuses primarily on female survivors.) Here’s a brief overview.

Intimate partner violence is a major health care issue, affecting nearly 6% of U.S. women annually. Multiple mental and physical health problems are associated with intimate partner violence, and billions of health care dollars are spent in trying to address the consequences. Although prevalence rates of intimate partner violence are roughly the same in rural and nonrural areas, rural survivors face distinct barriers in obtaining help and services. Because rural […]

2016-11-21T13:04:49-05:00May 7th, 2014|nursing perspective|4 Comments
Read More

Comment ground rules

1. Please be respectful.
2. We moderate all comments.

Content disclaimer

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.
Go to Top