A New Nurse Learns Focus and Grace Under Pressure

“I entered this new chapter in my life running at full speed. But at nearly the same time, the world seemed to be coming to a full stop.”

That’s from the August Reflections essay in AJN: “2020: What a Time to Become a Nurse.” Alicia Sgroi finished nursing school and started as an RN in a Florida ICU in February 2020, just as the pandemic was starting to get a foothold in the United States. By June, her unit had been converted to a COVID-positive step-down unit.

Much has been written about the pressures and trauma of being a nurse during the pandemic. We know that it’s been tough for all nurses, sometimes overwhelmingly so. In fact, the original research article in the August issue of AJN is a study that looks at personal and institutional factors affecting levels of well-being and resilience among nurses during the pandemic, from staffing to support networks to personal resilience.

Rising to the occasion.

As a new nurse, Sgroi was understandably worried about catching the virus and also about having the skills to care for such patients. But as she tells it, far from discouraging her from continuing as a nurse, the experience taught […]

2021-08-06T10:41:37-04:00August 6th, 2021|COVID-19, Nursing, nursing stories|0 Comments
Read More

Accepting Patients’ End-of-Life Decisions Can Be Hard

“The most important decision an individual can make may be how much treatment they want at the end of life.”

photo from pxhere

When it comes to end-of-life decisions, it may be hard for a nurse to accept to support only what the patient wants, but it’s also vitally important. In the Viewpoint column in our June issue (Viewpoints are free to read), Nadine Donahue, PhD, RN-BC, CNE, describes caring for an elderly patient in his home as he begins to lose the ability to breathe on his own because of COVID-19.

When she implores the normally spry, physically active retired executive to let her call an ambulance to take him to the ED, he refuses. Writes Donahue, an associate professor of nursing at York College, City University of New York:

“He’d always told me that he believed in a time to be born, a time to live, and a time to die. He was not going to be attached to a ventilator and in a hospital if he could help it.”

[…]

2021-06-09T09:31:31-04:00June 9th, 2021|COVID-19, end of life|0 Comments
Read More

Pregnancy and COVID: What We Now Know

Meagan Garibay, RN, BSN, CIC, an infection preventionist at Comanche County Memorial Hospital in Lawton, Oklahoma, received the COVID vaccine in December 2020, when she was 35 weeks pregnant. Photo courtesy of WAVE 3 News.

Few aspects of pregnancy and birth have been unaffected by the COVID pandemic. In the past year, pregnant people and their health care providers have had to alter everything from the way they assess risk to the manner in which care is accessed.

Although little information about pregnancy and COVID was available early in the pandemic, emerging evidence is providing a clearer picture. As a result, in the past year recommendations have shifted—sometimes radically so—for both women and their health care providers. Based on the latest available research, this month in AJN Reports we cover what we now know about COVID and maternal health, including guidance about risk and vaccination.

Higher risks for pregnant people with COVID.

As the articles explains, research suggests pregnant people who have COVID are at higher risk of […]

2021-06-03T08:43:24-04:00June 3rd, 2021|COVID-19, infectious diseases, Public health|0 Comments
Read More

Making Sense of Loss, Finding Strength as a Nurse

Maria, day 6.

It was bright outside, the sun was shining, and as I looked at the window in Room 303, I saw the light peering through. Maria, a 78-year-old Hispanic woman, mother of three, could not move and did not see that spring had begun as she struggled to breath. She looked at me with her helpless teary eyes trying to communicate, but I could not hear the words.

I’d d been Maria’s primary nurse for five of the six days that she has been hospitalized. During that time, I had witnessed the tension and anxiety that existed within her family around her admission with Covid-19. I hoped silently that a DNR order would be initiated if her breathing worsened instead of her being placed on a ventilator. But I tried not to express my feelings to her family about this when I helped them to communicate with and see their mother using FaceTime.

Maria’s family watched as she slowly declined, and saw how she didn’t respond to treatments. Feeling hopeless and overwhelmed, I tried to schedule a time to speak to my nursing manager about how I was feeling, but she was always too busy scheduling and assisting on the floor after other staff called in sick.

Hard decisions […]

2021-05-13T10:24:41-04:00May 13th, 2021|COVID-19, Nursing|0 Comments
Read More

Isn’t It Ironic: A Nurse Reflects on Her J&J Vaccination

Irony: a state of affairs or an event that seems deliberately contrary to what one expects and is often amusing as a result. -dictionary.com

Vaccine, by Julianna Paradisi

On a recent Saturday afternoon I received the Johnson and Johnson/Janssen COVID-19 vaccine. The following Tuesday, its further administration was put on pause, “out of an abundance of caution,” after reports that six women between the ages of 18 and 48 developed a rare but serious form of blood clot six to 13 days after receiving the vaccine. One of the six women died.

There is nothing amusing about the irony that people seeking protection from COVID-19 may have developed a life-threatening adverse reaction from the vaccine. For health care providers, and perhaps especially for nurses, such events are heartbreaking.

Lifting the J&J pause.

On Friday, April 23, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the FDA lifted the 10-day pause on the J&J vaccine, without restrictions, instead issuing a fact sheet to medical providers warning them of the potential for the extremely rare but serious blood clots.

When the pause was lifted, over 7 million people had received the vaccine, with additional confirmed cases of blood clots that had been reported bringing the […]

2021-04-26T11:16:05-04:00April 26th, 2021|COVID-19, infectious diseases, Nursing, nursing perspective, Public health|0 Comments
Read More

Comment ground rules

1. Please be respectful.
2. We moderate all comments.

Content disclaimer

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.
Go to Top