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

Editor-in-chief, (emerita), AJN

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
Read More

Smoking Still Kills…in So Many Ways

Seven million tobacco deaths per year.

Today, May 31, is World No Tobacco Day, declared by the World Health Organization (WHO) to bring attention to the health problems caused by smoking. According to the WHO fact sheet on tobacco,

“Tobacco kills more than 7 million people each year. More than 6 million of those deaths are the result of direct tobacco use while around 890,000 are the result of non-smokers being exposed to second-hand smoke.”

When nurses smoked at the nurses’ station.

It’s amazing to me how far we’ve come in a relatively short time in curbing smoking. When I first started working in hospitals, nurses would be smoking at the nurses’ station; shift report was often in a smoke-filled room; patients and visitors were allowed to smoke as long as there was no oxygen tank in the room. And I always hated sitting in the airline seat that was the dividing row from the smoking section—as if a small sign on the seat made a difference in keeping the smoke at bay!

Some resources.

This year, the focus is on smoking as a leading cause of cardiovascular disease—second only to hypertension. Here are some articles from AJN, plus resources that provide information about the mulitple negative health effects […]

2018-05-31T12:27:31-04:00May 31st, 2018|personal health practices, Public health|1 Comment
Read More

Nurses, Dying, and Who Gets to Decide

by Ramon Peco/via Flickr

On Wednesday, a California court declared the state’s right-to-die law unconstitutional. The End of Life Act (AB-15) was passed in 2016 in a special session called by Governor Gerry Brown, and permitted physicians to prescribe medications to a patient “for the sole purpose of ending his or her life.” California was one of just a handful of states that had such legislation. Reports note that an appeal is likely.

And also last week, Australian scientist and right-to-die advocate David Goodall, who was 104 years old, flew to Basel, Switzerland, to take advantage of its right-to-die law and end his life. According to the New York Times, Goodall, whose health had been deteriorating since a fall, said, “One wants to be free to choose his death when death is at the appropriate time.” Mr. Goodall lamented that his home country didn’t allow him to die there.

An ongoing debate.

These events last week underscore the struggle over whether people have a right to choose to end their lives and who should decide that. It’s also why we are very pleased to highlight this important topic in the current issue of AJN.

In “Assisted Suicide/Aid in Dying: What Is the Nurse’s Role?”, ethicist Ann Hamric and colleagues report on […]

2018-05-18T14:04:40-04:00May 18th, 2018|Nursing|1 Comment
Read More

The Continuing Invisibility of Nurses in the Media

Nurse Jackie aside, how visible are nurses in the media today?

Nurse Jackie was supposed to put nurses “on the map” in the sense of portraying the real world of nursing. After all, here was a modern, gutsy, “take no guff” nurse who stood her ground and stood up for patients. (Sure, she had a drug problem, traded sex for drugs, and her marriage came apart—but one can’t have everything.) At least, there was a nurse character on television who wasn’t relegated to only saying “Yes, doctor,” or standing silently behind an OR mask.

The show portrayed a dynamic, compellingly complex nurse character. But what did the show, or what could any such fictional drama, do to change how people think about nurses and their place and value in health care? It certainly didn’t change the media’s thinking—in 2018, reporters rarely consider getting nurses’ views on stories about health care.

The 1998 Woodhull Study on Nursing and the Media: ‘dismal’ results.

In 1998, Sigma Theta Tau International commissioned a study—the Woodhull Study on Nursing and the Media—to examine how the media portrayed nursing. (You can read AJN’s summary (free until May 28) of the study in the December 1998 issue.) The results were dismal—after examining over 20,000 articles in newspapers and magazines, the researchers found that nurses were mentioned in only four percent of articles about health care.

2018-05-14T13:18:47-04:00May 14th, 2018|healthcare social media, Nursing|3 Comments
Read More

Recognizing the Value of Nurses, Health Care’s Often Silent Majority

“Inspire. Innovate. Influence.” That’s the theme the American Nurses Association set for this year’s Nurses Week. But for much of our recent history, however, nurses have not been considered particularly influential or innovative—despite the fact that during the 19th and early 20th centuries, nurses organized hospital systems (Isabel Hampton Robb), designed the public health system and implemented school nursing and community-based care (Lillian Wald), and demonstrated improved outcomes (Mary Breckenridge).

Somehow, as health care became more technology and intervention focused, we were relegated into the “background”—the silent majority at the point of care, but rarely the ones consulted on strategies and planning decisions. (My take: we didn’t directly bring in the revenue to support the higher cost of high-tech care.)

A dawning realization that nurses matter.

But I feel things are changing. Organizations whose goals were driven by quality care began to shift perspective when it became clear that nurses made a big difference in whether those goals could be realized. And as government and insurance reimbursements became increasingly tied to quality, safety, efficiency, and patient satisfaction with care, nurses began to matter even more. We’ve also come to realize that our costly health care system is not meeting the needs for too many Americans.

Now nurses are more visible than ever before. RNs in many areas, from acute and […]

2018-05-04T09:05:32-04:00May 4th, 2018|Nursing|0 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