Driving the Nursing Profession Forward with Continuous Professional Development

A challenging few years.

The last few years have been especially challenging for the nursing profession. We fought a virus that wreaked havoc on our patients, families, and on ourselves. We struggled with equity, diversity, and inclusion issues and we had to adjust how we educate nursing students, moving from in-person to hybrid and online models. Faced with inadequate numbers of competent staff, we developed innovative workforce and care models while focusing on fostering resiliency.

Through it all we recognized the need to acquire new knowledge and skills through continuing professional development to keep up with the demands of the evolving health care paradigm.

‘Every day we learned something new.’

Investment in professional development is essential so that we are prepared to care for our patients and ready to help shape and lead the future of health care. Every day during the pandemic we learned something new about caring for patients with COVID-19. Learning new skills, investing in new knowledge and education, challenging ourselves to think differently about situations, and being mindful can all help propel and focus our nursing journey. […]

2022-05-16T10:08:47-04:00May 16th, 2022|career, Nursing, nursing career|0 Comments

RN Resiliency: Humor, Hounds, and Holistic Medicine

‘Even my hair is tired.’

If you’ve been faced with death, trauma, significant stressors, and losses, you’ve had to be resilient. And boy, did I choose a career with all of the above. I started my nursing career during the AIDS epidemic, and later moved to active duty Air Force nursing, travel nursing, polytrauma, rehab, chronic pain, spinal cord injury, working with the homeless, mental health, and lastly COVID-19. After 27 years of this, even my hair is tired. But I’ve never been so proud to pick this career—it is a calling. As Nurses Month begins, I tear up thinking there aren’t enough words to express my gratitude.

During COVID, understaffing, hourly policy changes, increased workloads and responsibilities, an increase in mental health disorders, the political climate, and anti-science rhetoric only added to the stressors. I had to look hard to find the gold, because every day you could definitely find the rust. I often asked myself, “How can I keep a healthy attitude, a warm heart, continuous focus, and a genuine nurse smile?” The answer for me has been my humor, hounds, and holistic medicine approaches.

Humor as stress relief.

This realization started when I landed in the ED after a period of not taking care of myself after learning my patient died by […]

2022-05-04T09:28:13-04:00May 4th, 2022|Nursing, nursing career|1 Comment

Should Medical Errors Result in Jail Time?

Image via PxHere

On March 25, Tennessee nurse RaDonda Vaught was convicted of criminally negligent homicide and negligent abuse of an impaired adult for a 2019 medication error that resulted in the death of a patient. We covered this story as it first unfolded three years ago. In fact, the most recent update on our blog, published in March 2019, reported that state health officials had considered the circumstances surrounding the error and declined to take any action.

Outrage from multiple nursing and health care organizations.

Subsequently, however, the Tennessee board of nursing revoked Vaught’s license and the decision was taken to charge her after all. In the past weeks, Vaught’s conviction has sent shock waves through the health care professional community, and many organizations have spoken against the verdict:

From the statement by the American Nurses Association:

“Health care delivery is highly complex. It is inevitable that mistakes will happen, and systems will fail. … The non-intentional acts of Individual nurses like RaDonda Vaught should not be criminalized to ensure patient safety.”

From the statement of the American Association of Critical-Care Nurses:

“Decades of safety research, including the Institute of Medicine’s pioneering report To Err Is Human, has demonstrated that […]

An ICU Nurse Reflects on ‘Returning Home from COVID Island’

“It’s hard to remember my job before all this began,” writes critical care nurse Deirdre McNally in this month’s Reflections essay, “Returning Home from COVID Island.” As the pandemic abates, she finds herself searching for a coherent narrative to understand what she’s experienced. But it’s not so simple. Memories of patients, moments, stray images from many months before slip unbidden into her head.

The difficulty of making sense of the past two years.

What does it mean to ‘make meaning’ from such an all-consuming experience? Maybe the answer will come with time. For now, she suggests, there are too many events, too many emotions and impressions to really absorb as things slowly resume a semblance of greater normalcy:

“For many health care providers,” she writes, “I think this is a protective mechanism meant to shield us from experiences too difficult to absorb.”

[…]

Ready to Write for Publication? AJN’s Manuscript Wish List

The American Journal of Nursing (AJN) is currently seeking article submissions in a number of topic areas and of various types. Please read this short post for more information, and pass the link along to anyone you know who might have a particular area of expertise or interest to write about.

AJN publishes original research, quality improvement (QI), and review articles as CE and feature articles. We also publish shorter, focused columns. Submissions must be evidence based and are peer reviewed.

Clinical features should cover epidemiology, pathology, current research, “what’s new” in knowledge and/or treatment, and nursing implications. Feature articles are usually 5,000 to 8,000 words.

We currently seek articles on these clinical topics:

  • Diabetes management
  • Orthopedic topics—joint replacement, spinal injuries
  • Most pediatric topics—but especially pain, scoliosis, adolescent mental health
  • Best practice in anticoagulant therapy
  • Acute/critical care updates (new guidelines, research)
  • Autoimmune disorders (such as lupus)
  • Infectious disease and public health
  • Polycystic ovary syndrome, gynecologic cancers
  • Managing/troubleshooting skin rashes
  • Parenteral and enteral feeding update

[…]

2022-01-26T10:11:38-05:00January 26th, 2022|career, Nursing, nursing career, writing|0 Comments
Go to Top