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

Editor-in-chief, (emerita), AJN

What’s So Hard to Understand: Patient Safety, Quality Care Linked to Nurse Staffing

shawnkennedy

The evidence linking nurse staffing and patient safety is strong.

The data linking nurse staffing as well as shift length with patient outcomes and satisfaction with care continue to roll in. The latest report on nurse staffing, published in the January 13 issue of Medical Care by McHugh and MA, links higher nurse–patient ratios and good work environments to reduced 30-day readmission rates. Read the abstract here.

Most nurses seem to support better nurse–patient ratios, but there’s continuing ambivalence about reducing shift length, as seen in the comments we received on a recent blog post asking whether it’s time to retire the 12-hour nursing shift.

In August, researchers reported a link between nurse staffing and hospital-acquired infections.  Publishing in the American Journal of Infection Control, the authors noted a “significant association” between nurse–patient staffing ratios and both urinary tract infections and surgical site infections. Further, they noted that reducing nurse burnout was associated with fewer infections. (Read our news report on the study here.)

Health Affairs published a report in November called “The Longer the Shifts for Hospital Nurses, The Higher the Levels of Burnout and Patient Dissatisfaction.” The findings were there, loud and clear—researchers Stimpfel, Sloane, and Aiken found that “extended shifts undermine nurses’ well-being, may result in expensive turnover and can negatively […]

2018-03-13T10:41:13-04:00January 29th, 2013|nursing perspective, nursing research|20 Comments
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Why Aren’t There More Men in Nursing?

Male nurse action figure/ gcfairch, flickr Male nurse action figure/ gcfairch, flickr

By Maureen Shawn Kennedy, MA, RN, AJN editor-in-chief

Men have served in nursing roles since at least the third century, when a special order of men was said to have existed to care for plague victims in Alexandria. And various religious orders seem to have had groups of men devoted to nursing tasks during the Middle Ages.

More recently, a number of men served as nurses or in nursing roles during the U.S. Civil War—Walt Whitman, who extensively visited wounded soldiers during the Civil War, has sometimes been described as one, though he mostly focused on tasks like writing letters for illiterate soldiers, bringing them special foods and necessary items, and providing companionship. (See our article on Whitman from our 100th anniversary issue of October, 2000.)

There were schools of nursing for men since the early 1900s. Last year, we published “My Grandfather’s Unpublished Manuscript” (August, 2012), a wonderful story of how the author (a nurse) found an article describing her grandfather’s experiences during his education and nursing career, which began with graduation from nursing school in 1929.

There were several early articles about male nurses in AJN—the oldest one I found was from March, 1924: “A School of Nursing for Men,” by Kenneth T. Crummer, described the school of nursing for men at the Pennsylvania Hospital and its founding 10 years earlier, in 1914. The final sentence reads, “Who knows […]

2016-11-21T13:08:36-05:00January 8th, 2013|career, nursing perspective|22 Comments
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White Uniforms for Nurses? The ‘Nays’ Have It…

By Maureen Shawn Kennedy, MA, RN, AJN editor-in-chief

Nurses and patients aboard U.S.S. Relief, 1921/via Wikipedia

Well, if sheer numbers rule, then the image of nurses in white uniforms has gone the way of the nurse’s cap.

Earlier this week, on AJN’s Facebook page, I asked whether RNs should go back to white uniforms as a professional standard. Within a few hours there were 20 comments; by the next day there were about 200 comments (we had to delete the post with the first 100 or so, since we were unsure about the copyright status of the image used—very sorry if that included your comment!).

Clearly, nurses care about what they wear. Comments ranged from one word (“No,” with multiple exclamation points), to thoughtful reasoning around stains and keeping the uniforms clean, to advocating for an individual’s right to choice (about colors, that is).

There were only a few comments that were pro-white, with arguments that they were more professional than colors and “wild prints” and helped patients identify RNs from other staff more easily.

Here’s a sampling of comments (a few minor typos corrected):

Yes—but no hats.

No—but I do think it makes a lot of sense to be able to clearly identify who is an RN when you are a patient in a hospital. Clear identification is definitely a problem.

I support white uniforms. This is the required color at the Cleveland Clinic. Patients tend to appreciate the crisp, clean look of […]

2016-11-21T13:09:03-05:00October 26th, 2012|healthcare social media, nursing perspective|4 Comments
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Nursing Research: Alive and Well

By Shawn Kennedy, MA, RN, AJN editor-in-chief

Last week I spent two-and-a-half days in Washington, DC, where there are LOTS of campaign collectibles. My favorite: coffee mugs proclaiming “Friends Don’t Let Friends Vote (insert Democratic or Republican).” Also noteworthy: “Hot for Mitt” and “Hot for Barack” hot sauce (see photos). I was there attending the meeting of the Council for the Advancement of Nursing Science (CANS), where close to 1,000 nursing researchers met to share their work. It wasn’t too long ago that one would have been hard-pressed to find that many nurses doing research. The National Institute of Nursing Research (NINR) only celebrated its 25th anniversary in 2010 (see our 2010 article about their many accomplishments).

Creativity and innovation. Kathi Mooney, PhD, RN, FAAN, from the University of Utah College of Nursing, gave the keynote—and it was perfectly suited to this group, many of whose members are immersed in analytical thought and scientific methodology. Mooney talked about the importance of creativity and innovation in moving research forward—yes, […]

2017-05-27T10:35:26-04:00September 17th, 2012|nursing perspective, nursing research|0 Comments
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Health information Technology, EHRs, Meaningful Use, and Nursing

By Maureen Shawn Kennedy, MA, RN, AJN editor-in-chief

If you’re like most nurses working in a health care organization, you’ve been involved in a migration to electronic health records, computerized physician order entry (CPOE), or bar code medication administration.

If you’re lucky, nursing input was considered during the planning stages of all this health information technology (HIT). We’ve heard from many nurses (and have had a few submissions from nurses about their experiences—see for example the Reflections essay “Paper Chart Nurse”) who have had “issues” with the systems or who wonder, why the big push?

In the August issue of AJN, which is available online and on the iPad (download the app here), Susan McBride and colleagues John Delaney and Mari Tietze debut their three-part series on HIT. The first article, “Health Information Technology and Nursing,” examines the federal policies behind efforts to expand the use of this technology, the importance of meaningful use, and the implications for nurses. Subsequent articles upcoming in the fall will take a closer look at the use of HIT to improve patient safety and quality of care, and the important role nurses are playing—and could play—in this system-wide initiative.

It’s crucial for nurses to understand HIT. As the authors note,

“If HIT systems are going to truly improve care, nurses need a voice in their planning and development to ensure patient safety and system usability. The success of this technology depends on nurses informing the […]

2016-11-21T13:09:28-05:00August 15th, 2012|digital health, nursing perspective|3 Comments
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