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

Editor-in-chief, (emerita), AJN

Halloween Nurse

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

by indigoprime/via Flickr

When I was a little girl about six or seven years old, I decided that I would dress up as a nurse one Halloween.

My mother bought me a play nurse’s kit.  It was a pink plastic “little nurse bag” containing a white nurse’s cap, a stethoscope, a tongue depressor, blue-framed plastic glasses that perched on your nose, a plastic thermometer with the “mercury line” painted to 101 degrees, a plastic hypodermic syringe, a small notepad and pencil, cotton balls, and Band-Aids.  (For your information, the “junior doctor kit” contained pretty much the same things, except it was black plastic, had a yellow and orange plastic otoscope, and a headband with a reflector disc. My brother received one of those.)

I wore a white blouse and tan skirt (my mother drew the line at buying clothes for one day) and used a safety-pin to clip a blue towel around my neck as a cape. I wore the nurse’s cap and glasses. My brother dressed in his Catholic school uniform (white shirt and navy blue pants and red tie) and wore his stethoscope around his neck and his little blue glasses perched on his nose.

We were quite the medical team. I wonder how many nursing or medical career seeds were planted with those play kits. by rosmary/via Flickr

With Halloween this weekend, many schools celebrated […]

Why Didn’t Physicians Know What Nurses Know?

By Shawn Kennedy, AJN interim editor-in-chief

A recent post on our blog highlighted the experience of AJN’s associate editor Amy Collins in trying to get someone to diagnose the underlying reason for acute confusion in her grandmother. Over a two-week period, Amy’s grandmother was seen by various private and ED physicians, none of whom seemed to have an adequate diagnosis or a suggestion for treatment. Finally, nurses suggested that a urinary tract infection (UTI), fecal impaction, or some other infection might be a factor. It was a fecal impaction and yet none of the five physicians who previously evaluated Amy’s grandmother had thought about or assessed for it.

What the nurses said. Amy’s post generated many comments, both on the blog and on our Facebook page. What was interesting to me was how many nurses knew to first check for a UTI, electrolyte disturbance, or fecal impaction as a reason for confusion. Here are a few samples:

“Though not conclusive, in every case I have seen a change in cognition or behavior it was either a UTI or fecal impaction. I work in home health as a CNA and I am a nursing student.”

“The first thing I think to check is infection (UTI) with elderly, confused patients.”

“I’m a senior nursing student…and this material is on our exam that we are taking Friday. With acute confusion, always check for UTI and constipation.”

“Possible UTI. Possible dehydration &/or  constipation. Poor nutrition. All can (and do) manifest as “altered mental status.” Think I’d start with […]

Searching for the Evidence? AJN Series Demystifies EBP

By Shawn Kennedy, AJN interim editor-in-chief

Trying to get evidence-based practice (EBP) implemented in your hospital or nursing home? Running into problems or just not quite sure how to proceed? Well, AJN has the answer.


EBP should be the basis for any clinical practice. Since last November, AJN has published a series of articles by the faculty at Arizona State University College of Nursing and Health Innovation’s Center for the Advancement of Evidence-Based Practice. Articles are published every other month and are designed to take the reader, step-by-step, towards implementing EBP. The current article describes the beginning steps to appraising the evidence; or go here to read the first article and follow in sequence.

Listen to a podcast with series leaders Bernadette Melnyk, PhD, RN, CPNP/PMHNP, FNAP, FAAN, and Ellen Fineout-Overholt, PhD, RN, FNAP, FAAN, the authors of Evidence-Based Practice in Nursing & Healthcare: A Guide to Best Practice. And we’ll have a second “Ask the Authors” call in November (check our home page for details after November 1).

If you’ve had problems or hit snags on your journey to EBP, e-mail me (shawn.kennedy@wolterskluwer.com) so we can address these issues on our next call.

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Tech, EBP Buzzwords Among Nurse Researchers

By Shawn Kennedy, AJN interim editor-in-chief

As a lover of history, especially nursing history, I’ve been following Sue Hassmiller’s posts retracing the steps of Florence Nightingale with great interest and a bit of envy.

Well I went on a trip, too—to Sigma Theta Tau International’s 21st International Nursing Research Congress in Orlando. I was astounded by the truly international aspect of the meeting—many meetings say they are international if there’s a few hardy travelers from abroad, but there were many presenters, poster presenters and attendees from outside the United States.

What AHRQ does. Carolyn Clancy, director of the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), was the good choice for keynote. She shared some interesting data—like the fact that AHRQ is the leading funder of patient safety research in hospital and ambulatory care, or that the U.S leads the world in rates of hysterectomy. (While our rates are comparable with other countries for hysterectomy for endometrial cancer, they are “all over the map” for hysterectomy for noncancer diagnoses.) She also spoke about the agency’s research priorities—patient safety and quality of care, comparative effectiveness research, and reducing disparities in access to care for minorities and women (she acknowledged that “lack of health insurance is the biggest barrier”).

If there was a catchphrase from this conference, it was “evidence-based practice”—how to do it, teach it, evaluate it, and use it to transform practice, education, leadership style, and workplaces.

Using technology—virtual technology, simulation, social media, and Web technology—was another major theme, and presenters focused on […]

Nurses Under the Influence of Pharma—Not Just an NP Problem

The danger of an NP succumbing to influence is obvious—she or he may prescribe for reasons (which may be on an unconscious level) other than clinical ones. The issues for nurses who do not prescribe medications are subtle and different. AJN's ethics columnist Doug Olsen did a two-part series exploring this last year—in January and February 2009. And AJN's editor-in-chief emeritus Diana Mason wrote on this even earlier, in an editorial in December 2000, noting, among other concerns, that "it's not unusual to see drug company underwriting of speakers at nursing conferences; of course, the topic addressed is almost always related to one of the company's top drugs."

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