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

Editor-in-chief, (emerita), AJN

Nurses Don’t Seek Help When They Need It Most

Nurses with suicidal ideation are less likely to seek help. We need to change that.

The original research article in AJN‘s November issue should prompt concern among the nursing and broader health care community. The article, “Suicidal Ideation and Attitudes Toward Help Seeking in US Nurses Relative to the General Population,” describes the results of a survey sent to nearly 87,000 members of the American Nurses Association (ANA) in late 2017. It provides essential pre-pandemic data which can serve as a post-pandemic baseline going forward.

Higher prevalence of suicidal ideation in nurses.

Of the 7,378 nurses who responded (over 47% were hospital based), 5.5% reported suicidal thoughts over the prior year. Over 43% “screened positive for depression symptoms.” When researchers compared nurses with almost 5,200 age-matched other types of workers, the prevalence of suicidal ideation was 5.8% for nurses, compared to 4.3% for other U.S. workers.

Perhaps of greatest concern is that while most nurses (85%) indicated they would seek help for emotional problems, of those reporting having had suicidal ideation, 72.6% said that they would “probably or definitely” seek help. According to the authors, this is similar to results from studies of physicians and medical students.

As caregivers, we often ignore our own needs and focus on those of […]

2021-11-04T09:35:44-04:00November 4th, 2021|Nursing|0 Comments
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Acute Care Nurses: An Endangered Species?

Our acute care settings are in crisis—staff are physically and emotionally exhausted. And many have decided they can’t take it anymore.

“At the virtual conference of the American Organization for Nursing Leadership (AONL) in July, researcher Peter Buerhaus reported preliminary findings of his study on the impact of the pandemic on the nursing workforce. He reported that a phone survey of over 800 AONL members conducted in May revealed that more than 50% of hospital chief nurse officers were seeing “increased retirements, sick leave, and early exits, including among younger nurses.”— AJN Editorial, September 2021

It’s been no secret that the hospital work environment has been problematic for nurses and patients alike—we know stressed and worn-out clinicians make more errors, and patient care suffers. In 2004, the Institute of Medicine released Keeping Patients Safe: Transforming the Work Environment of Nurses, which discussed workplace staffing and processes as intrinsic to ensuring patient safety. More recently, the National Academy of Medicine published Taking Action Against Clinician Burnout: A Systems Approach to Professional Well-Being (2019), which noted, “The job demands placed on clinicians are often greater than the job resources available to them; this imbalance can lead to burnout.”

2021-09-10T08:59:51-04:00September 9th, 2021|Nursing|0 Comments
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Monitoring for Intolerance to Gastric Tube Feedings

Monitoring GRV is one way to assess gastric emptying in patients with tube feeding intolerance. Here aspirate is drawn from the stomach through the port via a small-bore feeding tube.

At some point in their education, nurses might have read a book or article by Norma Metheny, PhD, RN, FAAN, long considered an expert on fluid and electrolytes and tube feedings. She’s been researching tube feeding placement and assessment throughout her career—her current article in our August issue, “Monitoring Adult Patients for Intolerance to Gastric Tube Feedings,” marks her 12th publication in AJN.

Monitoring GRV.

Nurses have long been taught to check, before administering tube feedings, whether there are any residual contents remaining from the prior feeding. Monitoring gastric residual volume (GRV) was a key indicator to determine gastric emptying and thereby reduce the chance of regurgitation or vomiting and aspiration pneumonia.

Intolerance to feeding, as Metheny notes in her article, can be as high as 36% in critical care patients and approximately 27% among […]

2021-08-13T14:20:21-04:00August 13th, 2021|Nursing|0 Comments
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AJN – More Than ‘Just’ a Print Journal

An overview from our editor-in-chief of what you can find on AJN’s home page.

As many of you might know, the American Journal of Nursing (AJN) has been providing nurses with information since 1900, when AJN first appeared in nurses’ mailboxes. Now, when people want information, they’re more likely to head online and search for information.

Print subscriptions at many publications have declined, supplanted by the demand for online content, and most journals, AJN included, have been part of this trend. Many journals now have interactive sites hosting not only the monthly or weekly journal issue content, but supplemental digital content that includes videos (for practical, “how to” information, you can’t beat videos to show step-by-step procedures), webinars, and podcasts (and of course, links to blogs and other social media channels).

So for those of you who may not have visited us in a while (or, who knows, maybe never!), here’s a summary of what you can access on AJN’s website, AJN Online.

On the home page, you’ll find the journal’s featured articles for the month. Most of these, including the CE article or articles of the month, are usually free to read.

Under the Articles & Issues tab at the top left of the home page, you can find the archives, including every issue published since the first issue in October […]

2021-08-04T08:24:48-04:00August 4th, 2021|Nursing|0 Comments
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‘Just’ a Backache: Red Flags for Serious Underlying Conditions

A common complaint in the ED.

Years ago, as an ED nurse, I saw many patients whose primary complaint was back pain. Most of these were from recent trauma, such as after the patient had sustained a fall or was involved in a motor vehicle accident or other injury-causing incident. In one dramatic case, a patient came in with sudden, severe back pain, not realizing he had been stabbed!

I remember a young man who came in on a Sunday, complaining of a backache that had developed over the prior few weeks. He assumed it was just a muscle strain from working out, but finally sought treatment because the pain wasn’t letting up and had spread to include pain and numbness down one leg. As it turns out, he had a badly herniated disc.

Emergency departments fill a care gap for many patients.

Today, patients come to EDs not just for emergencies or even “urgencies”—EDs are often the only place an individual may have access to care. For some patients with ongoing health problems, an ED is where they go when the pain or disability has finally become too much to bear.

What red flags should nurses look out for with back pain in the ED?

“[N]onspecific low back pain that does not resolve with self-care and prompts patients to seek treatment in an ED may result from a serious underlying pathology…”

This month’s CE article, “Assessing Back Pain in Patients Presenting to the ED” (free to […]

2021-07-08T10:55:16-04:00July 8th, 2021|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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