Reflective Writing as a Crucial Counterweight to Clinical Experience

By Amanda Anderson, a critical care nurse and graduate student in New York City currently doing a graduate placement at AJN.

Kevin V. Pxl/Flickr Kevin V. Pxl/Flickr

When I first started working as a nurse, I didn’t write much. My shifts, twelve hours of chaos, weren’t stories to be told, just days to survive. I wrote only when, after a traumatic event surrounding a patient’s death, I felt like I didn’t know who I could talk to about it. I had always written in a journal, but I hadn’t really thought of writing as a tool for healing—I just knew that I felt better after banging on the keyboard a bit.

Other than this single instance, I didn’t make writing a regular practice during my first year of nursing—a choice I still regret. I covet all of those forgotten lessons, missed descriptors, and stories that I might use in my writing now, but mostly, I wish I had known that moving my pen on a piece of paper might’ve helped me heal from the consistent stress of my new work.

A few years ago, by then a relatively experienced ICU nurse as well as a graduate student, I took a class called, “Writing, Communication, & Healing.” Taught by a poet and health care journalist, Joy Jacobson, it came at a time when I needed to learn how to […]

2016-11-21T13:01:58-05:00September 25th, 2015|career, healthcare social media, narratives, Nursing, nursing perspective|1 Comment
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A Tech-Savvy Nurse’s Initial Take on Uses for the Apple Watch

Megen Duffy, RN, BSN, CEN, is currently working in hospice case management and writes AJN‘s iNurse column, which focuses on technology and nursing.

AppleWatchMegenPhotoBPMI’ve had my Apple Watch for several months now. I ordered it at 12:01 the morning they went on sale, and it arrived the Saturday after its Friday release. I was fairly certain I’d return it or sell it for a profit, but I still have it and keep finding new uses for it. I also have ideas for how it could be handy for a variety of fitness and health care scenarios.

Health tracking. Even at this early stage, though, patients and their families are using Apple Watches to track and enhance their health. The Watch tracks your heartbeat—not every second, but often enough that a useful bank of data results. Rumors say that a mystery port on the back of the watch will allow SpO2 tracking soon. I have already busted out my phone to show my cardiologist my heart rate trends, and it saved me from wearing a Holter monitor. That kind of thing is exciting!

Fitness wearables (e.g., Fitbit) and smart watches (e.g., Pebble) have been around for a few years, with sharply increasing popularity. The (often) colored plastic bands people wear around their wrists are the kind of wearable I mean. Pedometers (included in the wearables category) […]

2016-11-21T13:02:11-05:00August 5th, 2015|digital health, nursing perspective, patient engagement, Patients|2 Comments
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Good Jokes, Bad Jokes: The Ethics of Nurses’ Use of Humor

By Douglas P. Olsen, PhD, RN, associate professor, Michigan State University College of Nursing in East Lansing, associate editor of Nursing Ethics, and a contributing editor of AJN, where he regularly writes about ethical issues in nursing.

Humor has real benefits. But when does nurses’ joking about patients, each other, and the care they provide cross a line?

Photo from otisarchives4, via Flickr. otisarchives4/Flickr

“Nurses make fun of their dying patients. That’s okay.” That was the provocative title of an op-ed by Alexandra Robbins in the Washington Post on April 16. The author’s treatment of the topic was more complex than the title suggested, but some examples of humor given in the article were troubling.

For ethical practice, nurses must consider if it is ever appropriate to discuss the clinical care of patients for humorous purposes. An easy answer would be—never. If patient care is never joked about, then no one’s feelings are ever hurt and nothing inappropriate is said as a joke. However, my experience as a nurse in psychiatric emergency and with human nature suggests two arguments against this approach:

  • Jokes will be made despite any prohibition.
  • Considerable good comes from such humor.

If jokes are going to be told anyway, it’s better to provide an ethical framework than to turn a blind eye. If joking about patient […]

2016-11-21T13:02:39-05:00April 29th, 2015|career, Ethics, healthcare social media, Nursing, nursing perspective, Patients|1 Comment
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Never Too Late: One Family Practice’s Shift to EHRs after 50 Years of Paper

Editor’s note: We hear a lot about the stress and lack of time for direct patient care that nurses (and physicians) have experienced with the movement to EMRs or EHRs. We’re in a transitional period, and in some instances the use and design of these systems has a long ways to go. But here’s a story with a positive slant, written by someone who might easily have responded very differently, given the circumstances. Change is inevitable; how we react to it throughout our lives, less so. 

By Marilyn Kiesling Howard, ARNP

Niklas Bildhauer/ Wikimedia Commons Niklas Bildhauer/ Wikimedia Commons

I am a nurse practitioner and my husband of 60 years is a family practitioner. We still work full time in our Gulf Breeze, Florida, practice. About five years ago, we first learned that our paper records were becoming archaic and that Medicare was planning to penalize providers who didn’t switch to the use of electronic health records (EHRs) by a certain date.

It was terrible news—we had 50 years of work in the paper chart genre, and were unsure about how to make the transition. Some who were in our position took the pending requirements as an opportunity to retire, but we weren’t ready for that.

Embracing a predigital innovation. In the 1960s, we started a small family […]

2016-11-21T13:02:42-05:00April 16th, 2015|digital health, Nursing, Technology|4 Comments
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Tips for Getting a Nursing Job Interview in the Age of Electronic Applications

Illustration by the author

Julianna Paradisi, RN, OCN, is an oncology nurse navigator and writes a monthly post for this blog. The illustration is by the author.

Twenty-plus years ago I was job hunting in Portland, without a local connection in health care. Prepared with an Oregon nursing license, I applied for the only two open pediatric ICU positions in the city, found in newspaper want ads. The positions were in the same unit. Having several years of PICU experience, I was hopeful that I’d get an interview.

Two weeks went by without a phone call for an interview. Worse, I noticed that only one of the postings remained. With nothing to lose, I called the hospital’s human resources department.

“Hi, I applied for the positions of pediatric intensive care nurse at your hospital,” I said. “I see that one has been filled. I have seven years of experience, including transport of critically ill children, and PALS certification. I’m curious if there’s a reason I haven’t been offered an interview? I know if the manager meets me, she’ll love me.”

“I’ll look up your application, and get back to you,” was the response. Half an hour later, the PICU nurse manager called to set up an interview. “I’m sorry,” she explained. “Your application didn’t make it to my desk. Apparently it was misplaced by HR.”

I was hired at the interview, and […]

2016-11-21T13:02:56-05:00February 26th, 2015|career, healthcare social media, Nursing, nursing perspective|2 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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