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

Editor-in-chief, (emerita), AJN

Black History in AJN: From Booker T. Washington To Today’s Influential Voices

Black nurses at Camp Sherman, Chillicothe, Ohio, in 1918.

Acknowledging Black History Month

February is the month designated for remembering the contributions of black people to our nation and our culture. It’s a good reminder that in nursing, too, we have benefited from many strong black women (and at least a few men), who often persevered in the face of discrimination in obtaining education and jobs.

The AJN archives have several articles worth revisiting.

This article from 1976, “Black Nurses : Their Service and Their Struggle” (to read, click on the pdf), describes the struggles of several of our profession’s notable black nurses, including Mary Mahoney (the first black nurse to be licensed).

In a 2010 editorial, Alicia Georges, professor and chairperson of the department of nursing at Lehman College of the City University of New York, writes, “We all stand to benefit from the active participation of black nurses in our communities and our lives.”

A 2013 commentary by Kenya Beard (an AJN editorial board member) and Kellie Voicy speaks to the need for increasing minority representation in nursing.

And a jewel: an article by Booker T. Washington, published in 1910, on nurses’ training at Tuskegee.

The above articles will be free until March 1. Please read them and become informed and inspired.

Defending Against Moral Distress

A collaborative initiative offers recommendations to build moral resilience.

All nurses have at some point been faced with situations that challenge their values. Whether dealing with families or patients or the actions of colleagues, we may be faced with acting (or not acting) in accordance with our professional or personal values. I can easily recall several situations (which I detail in my February editorial) that involved unnecessary invasive procedures and surgery or removing life support.

Such situations take a toll on the individual and the care team and ultimately have a negative effect on patient care quality. Moral distress is not something that can be entirely eliminated—there will always be situations that provoke angst. But individuals can build moral resilience if they learn to recognize it when it occurs and if their organizations support them in finding ways to manage ethically challenging situations. […]

Health Care Terms and Words To Retire and Replace?

This week, two bloggers posted lists of words or terms they felt should no longer be used when referring to health professionals or patients.

AJN: Holding the Line on Quality in 2016

In the midst of the day-to-day demands of our lives and the constant multitasking, it’s often hard to step back and think about where the time went. Days and events seem to blur together. During the last week of the year, I like to review my calendar. I find that this exercise helps me put the year in perspective and revisit what I’ve done and who I’ve done it with.

My December editorial, “Taking Care of Business,” addresses how we can sometimes overlook colleagues who go about doing their jobs with little drama or complaint: the volunteers who give their time to free clinics, those who serve in the military or public service, the quietly competent colleagues we work with every day. They can easily become part of the blur of passing days because they show up, do their work, and move on to the next thing that needs to be done.

In the editorial, I briefly mentioned my colleagues here at AJN in that category. The staff works diligently to ensure that all manuscripts are fact-checked for accuracy and are edited to present the content in the best light and form. After a first round of editing, the articles are then copyedited. They’re laid out in page proofs and go through additional proofreading by a copy editor, nurse editors, and the article’s author(s). The process can be painstaking and repetitive, but accuracy and quality don’t happen without careful attention.

While AJN has […]

A Status Update for World AIDS Day

Photo of AJN editor-in-chief Shawn KennedyIn light of the recent focus on Zika virus and the last few years’ attention to Ebola, there’s been little attention to HIV/AIDS. Today, December 1, World AIDS Day, is a good time to remember that millions still suffer from this disease and thousands contract it annually.

According to the MMWR report released last week by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the statistics are still sobering:

  • Globally, over 36 million people have AIDS and 2.1 million were newly infected in 2015; 1.1 million died.
  • In the United States in 2013, approximately 1.2 million people had an AIDS diagnosis; approximately 44,000 were newly diagnosed in 2014.

There is good news, in that global access to treatment has increased greatly—in 2010, 7.5 million had access to antiretroviral treatment; by June 2016, over 18 million had access to antiretrovirals.

It’s been over 35 years since AIDS was first reported by the CDC—you can read an overview of the CDC’s response here. I recall the AIDS epidemic only too well. As I wrote in an editorial in 2010:

In 1975, while attending graduate school, I worked part time as a chemotherapy nurse for a hematologist in New York City. Because of his expertise, he was increasingly being asked to consult on cases involving seemingly healthy young men, most of […]

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