About Shawn Kennedy, MA, RN, FAAN, editor-in-chief (emerita)

Editor-in-chief, (emerita), AJN

Decreasing the Trauma of IV Sticks – for Patients and Nurses

In my clinical days, I was adept at IV sticks. I had a lot of experience from my days in the ER, but especially from working as a chemotherapy nurse, where I had patients with fragile and damaged veins. I learned every trick to coax a vein to appear and which gauge needle would work the best to avoid puncturing through the vein. I was so “into” IVs at one point, I’d note the veins on people’s arms, judging whether they’d be an easy or hard stick.

Venous access may be difficult to achieve in older adults. Photo © Alto / Alamy Stock Photo.

Little instruction in starting an IV.

But it wasn’t always so. I recall approaching the first time I had to draw blood with much trepidation. There was virtually no training—a more experienced colleague had me watch her and then walked me through it in a few minutes:

“It’s not that hard: see which hand or arm has the better veins; tie the tourniquet around the arm; swab the skin with alcohol; insert the needle, bevel down; pull […]

2018-07-19T12:02:08-04:00July 19th, 2018|Nursing|0 Comments
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AJN Wants You! A Call for Peer Reviewers and Authors

nurse typing on keyboardTake your career to the next step—become a peer reviewer or author.

For over 118 years, AJN has presented its readers with timely and informative content to support best nursing practice and to examine issues of the day that are relevant to nurses and the profession. While that’s still our aim today, content development is more complex—it now includes peer review; fact-checking to ensure accuracy; citing evidence from the literature; ethical guidelines that govern editor, reviewer, and author behavior; careful editing to meet standards for quality writing; transparency to avoid bias and conflicts of interest. We’re proud of our commitment to high standards, and our success is borne out by the many awards we’ve received—more than any other nursing journal.

All of this wouldn’t be possible without the help of peer reviewers and authors, who commit to making the content we publish the best that it can be: timely, accurate, readable, and useful.

Peer reviewers are essential to any scholarly journal.

Peer-reviewing is also an excellent way for fledgling writers to better understand what editors look for in manuscripts. We welcome new reviewers who have expertise in nursing, are current with the literature and practice in their area of expertise, have a master’s degree or higher (or a BSN and certification in a specialty area), and are willing to review three to […]

2018-07-12T11:15:23-04:00July 12th, 2018|Nursing, nursing career, writing|0 Comments
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NPs ‘Move Mountains’

Rear Admiral Susan Orsega, chief nurse officer of U.S. Public Health Service

Last week I attended the annual conference of the American Association of Nurse Practitioners (AANP) in Denver. Yes, I was there for the record attendance (over 5,000) and the record heat wave (104 degrees). As with most large nursing conferences, there were numerous concurrent sessions—but here, many of them were like skills labs, including things not part of most RNs’ skill set, like performing a thoracentesis.

What was also different from other meetings was that the legislative and policy sessions, which were of high interest to me in order to find out how NPs are doing with scope of practice authority, were closed to media. No one could say exactly why.

Audio interview with U.S Public Health Service CNO Susan Orsega.

I did get a chance to speak with the keynote speaker, Rear Admiral (RADM) Susan Orsega, MSN, FNP-BC, FAANP, FAAN, chief nurse officer and assistant surgeon general of the U.S. Public Health Service. She focused on the critical role of NPs in addressing health inequities. She urged NPs to become active advocates to improve health, and, mindful of our Colorado setting, she charged them to “Go, move mountains.” […]

2018-07-06T08:27:26-04:00July 6th, 2018|Conference reports, Nursing, nursing perspective, Public health|0 Comments
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Separating Children from Parents as Policy? Really?

Photo by Will Hedington via Wikimedia Commons

We’ve all seen the images of the migrant children who have been separated from their parents at the border and are living in pens in detention centers. We’ve read reports of their distraught parents, and of various government officials being turned away from the detention facilities. We’ve heard heart-wrenching audio of children sobbing for their parents, and of one young girl reciting a carefully memorized phone number and pleading to make a call to her aunt. And we’ve heard the stories of parents who have been deported without knowing where their children are being held or when they might see them again.

As a nurse, I worry about the acute and long-term health effects that this horrific experience will have on both parents and children.

As a mother, I cannot think about what these parents must be feeling without a knot forming in my stomach and my eyes tearing up—it’s a parent’s worst nightmare.

As a rational person, I cannot understand how any politician could think such actions would make for good policy.

As a citizen, I am grieved to see this unprecedented level of callousness, lack of empathy, and disregard for basic human decency from our government leaders. I’m […]

2018-06-28T10:04:01-04:00June 25th, 2018|Public health|11 Comments
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Critical Mass at the Critical Care Nursing Conference

Boston + 9,000 nurses = NTI2018

The American Association of Critical-Care Nurses (AACN) is well-known for its annual National Teaching Institute (NTI), but this year, in terms of sheer scope, it surpassed all other meetings I know of. With over 9,000 attendees, registration had to be closed for the first time ever. Imagine—there were almost too many people at the Boston Convention Center, one of the largest venues in the country.

The exhibits, as always, were never-ending, with sections for industry, education, organizations, recruiters, and publishers. And as always, the “newbies” could be identified by the bags of giveaways they carted off . . . as opposed to the NTI veterans, who merely scan badges and have info sent to them.

Obstacles as opportunities for change.

Monday’s opening address by AACN president Christine Schulman was heartfelt. Reflecting on her soon-to-end year as the president and its chosen theme, “Guided by Why,” she encouraged us to explore the possibilities of making real changes when we face obstacles. And she announced that AACN was planning to take on the fundamental issue of nurse staffing:

“Inappropriate staffing has gone on for far too long. It involves many factors . . . and needs a major shift in how we think about delivering patient care.”

Body language creates and projects confidence.

The next day’s keynote address by social psychologist Amy Cuddy (see her popular TED Talk, “Your Body Language May Shape Who You Are“) gave attendees some insight […]

2018-06-06T12:38:27-04:00June 6th, 2018|career, Conference reports, Nursing|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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