Joy Jacobson, a freelance writer and the former managing editor of AJN, wrote “Heroin: Life, Death, and Politics” for the May issue of the journal. She is a senior fellow at the Center for Health, Media, and Policy at Hunter College in New York City, where she teaches writing to nurses and nursing students.
By Karen Roush, PhD, RN, FNP, AJN clinical managing editor
via Wikimedia Commons
We love getting letters to the editor . . . really . . . whether it’s to agree or disagree, applaud or admonish. With some articles we actually feel a sense of excited anticipation—this should get some letters!—not because we like to create controversy (though we don’t shy away from it either when there’s something important at stake), but because we want to create dialogue among our readers.
That’s what the Letters to the Editor column is for: to add to the conversation by pointing out nuances, adding support from personal experience, expressing a dissenting view of a topic, or offering corrections or clarifications.
A good letter to the editor contains:
• a point of view
• a sense of the writer and why they were moved to write a letter
• additional information that clarifies, corrects, or enhances the original text (and the evidence backing it up)
OR:
• a reasoned, respectful argument (and the evidence to back it up) against some aspect of the original text
OR:
• a narrative that gives a clearer sense of the human implications of the original text
These are the main criteria we look for in the letters we receive.
We are glad when you enjoy an article or are pleased to see the […]
By Karen Roush, MSN, RN, FNP-C, AJN clinical managing editor
My daughter Kim is starting nursing school next month, so last week I asked AJN’s Facebook followers for the best piece of advice I could give her. The response was overwhelming: over 600 people offered wisdom, encouragement, and tips for success. I went through and read them all and the following is an attempt to synthesize the advice.
Of course, with so many responses, there were many valuable pieces of advice I had to leave out, from the practical to the profound, such as:
sit in the front of class, stick to your principles, invest in good shoes, choose clinicals that push you out of your comfort zone, be early for everything, celebrate the small victories, get a really good stethoscope up front, believe in yourself, pick the hardest patient you can at clinical, audiorecord the lectures, be truthful and committed to your work, eat healthy, get to know your instructors, coffee and chocolate!
And finally: look into the eyes of your patients and be sure they know you care. Every patient, every time.
(Oh, and not to leave out the lighthearted—Don’t hold your nose in clinicals. The teachers frown on that.)
Below are five areas of advice that stood out:
1) “Take a good […]
By Sylvia Foley, AJN senior editor
Many people with sickle cell disease suffer from both acute and chronic pain, which can be severe. Although the exact mechanism isn’t known, the pain is believed to result when sickled erythrocytes occlude the vascular beds, causing tissue ischemia. Such pain, which often begins in early childhood, arises unpredictably. Although some pain crises may require ED visits, hospitalization, opioid treatment, or a combination of these, most are managed at home. Yet little is known about at-home pain management in people with sickle cell disease, especially children.
Table 2. Changes in Self-Efficacy, Imaging Ability, and Pain Perception in School-Age Children After Guided Imagery Training
Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) has shown promise in helping patients with other chronic illnesses to cope with pain. Cassandra Elaine Dobson and Mary Woods Byrne decided to test guided imagery, a form of CBT, among children enrolled at one sickle cell treatment clinic in New York City. They report on their findings in this month’s original research CE, “Using Guided Imagery to Manage Pain in Young Children with Sickle Cell Disease.” The abstract below offers a quick overview; if you click the image above, you’ll see an enlarged view of one table showing key results.
Objectives: The purposes of this study were to test the effects of guided imagery training on school-age children who had been diagnosed with […]
By Karen Roush, MSN, RN, FNP-C, AJN clinical managing editor
My daughter is about to start her nursing career. She’s got all her prereqs out of the way and she’s waiting to hear from the half-dozen colleges she applied to. Among them is the community college where I started my career 35 years ago. That’s right—a community college that confers an associate degree.
I hope she gets in.
Community colleges are seen by many as the bottom of the ladder of desired schools of nursing. Not only do they offer only a two-year degree, but they’re not seen as being as selective as four-year colleges and they don’t have the big name professors.
But community colleges can and do produce great nurses. Programs are rigorous, so a more liberal admission standard at the onset doesn’t necessarily change the caliber of student who graduates at the end. And once they graduate, they must meet the same standards as students from four-year schools to attain licensure as an RN—everyone takes the same NCLEX. At the time of my graduation, my school had a 98% pass rate, one of the highest in the country.
Community colleges even have some advantages over a lot of four-year programs. They may not have the big names—but really, how many of those big name professors […]