A Nurses’ Week Visit with Theresa Brown

Nurse and author Theresa Brown Nurse and author Theresa Brown

By Shawn Kennedy, AJN editor-in-chief

Last week, I had the pleasure of chatting with nurse Theresa Brown (you can listen to our conversation here). Brown writes AJN’s quarterly What I’m Reading column. (This month, she writes about Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead, by Sheryl Sandberg, the chief operating officer of Facebook.)

Theresa Brown also blogs for the New York Times and is the author of The Shift: One Nurse, Twelve Hours, Four Patients’ Lives, which I first wrote about when it was released last July. As I noted then, it’s probably the first book I’ve read that really captures certain elements of nurses’ work:

Anyone who wants to know what it’s like to be a nurse in a hospital today should read this book. Patients, families, and non-nurse colleagues tend to see nurses as ever-present yet often in the background, quietly moving from room to room, attending to patients, and distributing medications or charting at computers.

But what they don’t understand about what nurses do is what Brown so deftly describes—the cognitive multitasking and constant reordering of priorities that occur in the course of one shift as Brown manages the needs of four very different patients (she was working in a stem cell transplant unit at the time); completes admissions and discharges; and […]

2016-11-21T13:01:14-05:00May 4th, 2016|Nursing, nursing perspective, nursing stories, patient experience|2 Comments
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That Ordinary Nightmare Shift

Sandy Klever, RN, currently works in hospice care in Des Moines, Iowa. At the time of the events described here, she was working on a medical/surgical floor at a Veterans Administration hospital.

julie kertesz/ via flickr creative common julie kertesz/ via flickr creative common

“Can you work tomorrow evening?” sweet-talks my nurse manager. Even though I will miss handing out treats on Halloween, I say yes. “But what about all my candy?” I ask. “Just bring it with you!”

Halloween night should be an easy shift. Do not say the ‘Q’ word, I tell myself. As I’m drinking coffee in the staff room, I’m assigned to four familiar patients, one of whom is a discharge.

Then the door opens and a colleague hands me a notecard about a direct admit coming from the ER, tells me that he’s having a COPD exacerbation and is homeless.

Well, I can manage a COPDer. At least he’s not a challenging laryngectomy patient transferring from the ICU.

“Oh, and by the way,” my colleague adds, “he’s confused and bipolar.”

Off to the floor! Because his room is still being cleaned, I have plenty of time. Within minutes, I have performed a complete assessment on my first patient. Moving on to my second patient, I see a commotion in the hallway and realize my new admit is coming on a cart already. As we maneuver the […]

2016-11-21T13:01:17-05:00April 25th, 2016|Nursing, nursing perspective, nursing stories|3 Comments
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A Room with A View: Physical Environments and Healing

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

Illustration by Janet Hamlin for AJN. All rights reserved. Illustration by Janet Hamlin for AJN. All rights reserved.

Computers, alarms, automated drug dispensing, complex medical protocols—the ways in which we provide care have changed a lot over the past 30 years. Has forced multitasking made us forget that, buried beneath the printouts and data, there is a human being in need of support?

In this month’s AJN, author Joy Washburn shares the story of David, a man with advanced Parkinson’s disease whose medical condition results in his transfer from a cheerful rehab setting to a long-term care bed in the same facility. While his old room in rehab overlooked gardens and a children’s play area, the new room faces a parking lot. To make matters worse, no one seems to have prepared David for the move, and many nurses erroneously assume that his advanced physical disability means that he is also cognitively impaired.   […]

2016-11-21T13:01:18-05:00April 13th, 2016|Nursing, nursing perspective, nursing stories, nursing students, patient engagement, Patients|1 Comment
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Nursing Insights: The Experience of a Chronic Illness as a Series of Subtractions

Illustration by Janet Hamlin for AJN. All rights reserved. Illustration by Janet Hamlin for AJN. All rights reserved.

Chronic illness is often experienced by patients as a series of subtractions. A progressive illness like Parkinson’s reveals this process vividly as the ability to move, speak, care for oneself, all gradually disappear or diminish.

The grief of lost freedom, lost abilities, lost agency, lost avenues of communication is easy to overlook. But it’s real, and can come out in uncomfortable ways. Here’s an excerpt from the start of this month’s Reflections essay in AJN, “A Room With a View.”

David was in his late 50s and had been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease several years previously. Following a lengthy hospitalization, David’s wife agreed to a placement on the subacute/rehab unit in the facility where I was the instructor for nursing students during their older adult clinical rotation. . . . Although ravaged by the disease, David seemed to like having students provide his nursing care. . . .

One of his favorite activities was sitting by his room window, which overlooked the facility gardens and a play area for the preschool next door. For several weeks, I discovered a nursing student and David sitting by the window watching the outdoor activities in companionable […]

2016-11-21T13:01:19-05:00April 4th, 2016|Nursing, nursing perspective, nursing stories, patient engagement|0 Comments
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So You’re a Nurse With a Story to Tell…

Madeleine Mysko, MA, RN, coordinator of AJN’s monthly Reflections column, is a poet, novelist, and graduate of the Johns Hopkins Writing Seminars who has taught creative writing in Baltimore for many years.

karindalziel/ via Flickr Creative Commons karindalziel/ via Flickr Creative Commons

Whenever I meet someone new who happens to be a nurse—in both clinical and social settings—I wait for the right moment to mention my work at AJN on the Reflections column. It’s not only that I’m proud of the column. It’s also that I’m forever on the lookout for that next submission—for a fresh, compelling story I just know is destined to shine (accompanied by a fabulous professional illustration) on the inside back page of AJN.

“I imagine you have a story or two to tell,” I’ll say to a nurse I’ve just met—which is the same thing I say, whenever I have the chance, to nurses I’ve known for years. I mean it sincerely; given the vantage point on humanity that our profession affords, I actually do believe that every nurse is carrying around material for a terrific story.

The response I usually get (along with a wry smile, the raising of eyebrows, or a short laugh) is, “Oh yes. I have stories.”

But then—even as I’m mentioning the Reflections author guidelines, even […]

2018-04-17T13:41:27-04:00January 30th, 2015|narratives, Nursing, nursing perspective, nursing stories|5 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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