Nurses spend more time with patients than most other types of providers and have unique insight into patient care and the the healthcare system.

Addressing Nurses’ Urgent Concerns About Ebola and Protective Equipment

By Betsy Todd, MPH, RN, CIC, AJN clinical editor. (See also her earlier post, “Ebola: A Nurse Epidemiologist Puts the Outbreak in Perspective.”)

This is not a time to panic. It is a time to get things right.—John Nichols, blogging for the Nation, 10/12/2014

Scanning electron micrograph of filamentous Ebola virus particles budding from an infected VERO E6 cell (35,000x magnification). Credit: NIAID Scanning electron micrograph of filamentous Ebola virus particles budding from an infected VERO E6 cell (35,000x magnification). Credit: NIAID

For years, nurses have tolerated increasingly cheap, poorly made protective gear—one result of health care’s “race to the bottom” cost-cutting. Now the safety of personal protective equipment (PPE) is being hotly debated as the Ebola epidemic spills over into the U.S.

If all nurses had access to impermeable gowns that extended well below the knee (and could be securely closed in back, had real cuffs, and didn’t tear easily); faceguards that completely shielded; N95 respirator masks that could be properly molded to the face; and disposable leg and shoe covers, we might not be having the same conversation. Yet how much protection can we count on from the garb we now have available, especially considering the minimal donning and doffing training given to most nurses?

While there is […]

2016-11-21T13:03:44-05:00October 15th, 2014|infectious diseases, Nursing, nursing perspective|17 Comments
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Planning Postdischarge Care with Cognitively Impaired Adults

McCauley A patient performs the CLOX 1, a clock-drawing task used to assess patients for cognitive impairment. Photo by Ed Eckstein.

By Shawn Kennedy, AJN editor-in-chief

The transition from hospital to home can be fraught with pitfalls, especially if the patient in question is an older adult with multiple conditions and a not-so-prepared caregiver. The transitional care model, in which NPs coordinate care and provide follow-up care after discharge, has been shown to be successful in reducing hospital readmissions in this group of patients.

With Medicare levying penalties on hospitals with higher-than-average readmissions rates, the stakes aren’t just high for patients and their families. Might similar models of care also work with cognitively impaired adults?

In “Studying Nursing Interventions in Acutely Ill, Cognitively Impaired Older Adults,” a feature article in AJN‘s October issue (free until the end of October), Kathleen McCauley and colleagues from the University of Pennsylvania seek to answer this question, among others.

In the article, McCauley and colleagues describe the methodology and protocols used in their study, summarize their findings, and discuss some of the challenges in conducting research in the clinical setting. Among their findings is the important lesson that research involving cognitively impaired older adults must actively engage clinicians, patients, and family caregivers, as well as the need for hospitals to make cognitive screening of older adults who are hospitalized for an […]

2016-11-21T13:03:45-05:00October 15th, 2014|Nursing, nursing perspective, nursing research, Patients|0 Comments
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How Do You Want to Be Cared For?

The patient in the next bed by mynameisharsha / Harsha K R, via Flickr The patient in the next bed by mynameisharsha / Harsha K R, via Flickr

By Betsy Todd, MPH, RN, CIC, AJN clinical editor

How do you want to be cared for?

Have you written your own personal nursing care plan? I’m not asking about your health care proxy or living will; most nurses have seen enough disastrous end-of-life scenarios to understand the need for formal advance directives. But if you become comatose or unable to communicate, what small pleasures would ease your suffering? What sights and sounds would promote healing for you, or ease your dying?

I’m often dismayed by the thoughtlessness of some staff regarding what their patients see and hear. Nurses will tune an unconscious patient’s television to the staff’s favorite soap opera, or blast the music of their own choice from the patient’s radio. I’ve witnessed staff talking on cell phones, and even arguing loudly with other staff, as though the person in the bed weren’t even there. When did we lose our attentiveness to patients as unique individuals? […]

2016-11-21T13:03:47-05:00October 8th, 2014|Nursing, nursing perspective, Patients|2 Comments
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As Sepsis Awareness Increases and Guidelines Change, Timing Remains Crucial

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

stopwatch/wikimedia commons stopwatch/wikimedia commons

September was Sepsis Awareness Month, but the urgency of the issue didn’t disappear when the month ended. I still remember my first day in the medical intensive care unit (MICU) I’d soon call home. I was shadowing the charge nurse, and an admission had just come in from the ED.

“Here, we need a CVP setup.” A crinkly bag of normal saline and a matching package containing something evidently important were shoved into my hands—a medical football passed to the only open player.

Very quickly, I would learn what a CVP, or central venous pressure, was and to monitor it. I would learn all about sepsis, and septic shock, and the treatment of its devastating process. Multiple organ dysfunction syndrome (MODS) was a primer for my care in this unit, and on my first day off of orientation, I was entrusted with one of its full-blown victims: Septic shock from pneumonia, causing respiratory, renal, and heart failure. Learning to spike a bag of saline for a CVP transducer was just my first step into the vast and complicated land of sepsis management.

This was 2007. Sometimes, as in all hospitals, care was delayed and septic patients sat without timely treatment for hours. Back then, we tubed people, snowed people, and flooded people. […]

2016-11-21T13:03:47-05:00October 6th, 2014|Nursing, nursing perspective|0 Comments
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10 Good Things About Being an Older Nurse

Alice Facente, MSN, RN, is a community health education nurse in Connecticut. Her Reflections essays, “At Her Mercy” and “The Dirtiest House in Town,” were published, respectively, in the August 2009 and January 2010 issues of AJN.

Puddle Reflection/by joiseyshowaa, via Flickr Puddle Reflection/by joiseyshowaa, via Flickr

I recently passed a professional career milestone: 40 years since I’d graduated from nursing school. When I began my career, nurses still wore white starched caps and white uniforms. I don’t know how we accomplished everything we did with those impractical caps perched on our heads. The shocking realization that four decades had so quickly passed forced me to think about all of the benefits of being a mature, experienced nurse. Right off the top of my head, I thought of 10 things (and yes, these are generalizations and exceptions exist).

1. Older nurses are often more empathetic. Chances are that in the last several decades every older nurse has been a patient, undergone surgery, become a parent and possibly a grandparent, encountered personal financial challenges, experienced the death of a close friend or family member, and much more.
2. Death is not so frightening. Nurses have cared for people at all stages of the life cycle and know that, with planning and preparation, […]

2016-11-21T13:03:49-05:00October 3rd, 2014|career, Nursing, nursing perspective|11 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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