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

Editor-in-chief, (emerita), AJN

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% […]

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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Revisiting Psychedelic Drugs for Therapeutic Use

Renewed interest in psychedelics to treat depression and PTSD.

An MDMA therapy session is conducted by researchers Marcela Ot’alora, MA, LPC, and Bruce Poulter, MPH, RN. Photo courtesy of the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies.

As the saying goes, “everything that’s old is new again,” and that apparently applies to the exploration of using psychedelic medications as part of mental health therapy. That’s the topic of one of our feature articles in the June issue.

When I was an ED nurse in the early 1970s, we often saw patients who were brought in because they were on a “bad trips” from illicit use of psychedelic drugs: acid (LSD, lysergic acid diethylamide), but also mescaline (3,4,5-trimethoxyphenethylamine, a hallucinogen derived from the peyote plant), or “magic mushrooms,” which contained psilocybin.

While these drugs were used in in psychiatric research as early as the 1950s (see the AJN article from 1964, “Supporting the Patient on LSD Day,” free until the end of June), they were later banned for use in the 1970s under the Controlled Substances Act after they became popular illicit drugs in the counterculture […]

2021-06-11T07:50:48-04:00June 11th, 2021|Nursing|0 Comments
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Summertime: Rest, Relax, and Write

With summer stretching ahead, I hope many nurses will take some well-deserved time off—rejuvenating bodies and spirits, processing emotions that were put aside, and reflecting on the long and difficult past year. But time off is also good for doing those “other things”—items that have drifted to the bottom of a to-do list. Perhaps writing is one of them.

As I noted in a 2014 editorial, there are various perspectives on how one should approach writing, and I list some from editors and scholars. I also offer what works for me:

First, spend some time thinking about what you want to say before you start writing. Know what you want to tell readers—the purpose of your paper—so that you can say it clearly.

Next, sit down and start writing. Write anything you want to say about the topic; you can go back and organize later. (Contrary to what many of us were taught, you don’t have to outline first. Some writers write this way, but many don’t.)

Third, leave the work alone for a while. Take a walk or do something else.

And fourth, go back and start shaping and polishing your piece, paying attention to organization and transitions. Aim for a logical flow of ideas. Weed out the jargon, too.

AJN has a collection of writing resources for nurses—we’ve made them free to access through September 1. You’ll also find some great resources at Nurse […]

2021-06-07T14:10:43-04:00June 7th, 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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