nursing perspective Archives - Page 123 of 158

With Inadequate Staffing, ‘Nonessential’ Care Goes First–Then Patient Safety

A coworker of mine made a medication error a few weeks ago. It was a multifactorial error—the medication had been ordered wrong, labeled wrong, and administered wrong—and was investigated accordingly. That particular nurse was also “tripled,” with two ICU trauma patients and one critically ill medical resident patient. The nurse’s workload wasn’t factored into the documentation or investigation of the error, though, since the nurse manager didn’t consider it relevant. I heard her say, “An extra patient shouldn’t make any difference in the standard procedure for passing medications.”

Guest Author2016-11-21T13:15:51-05:00September 8th, 2010|Ethics, nursing perspective, nursing research, safe staffing|7 Comments

Nightingale, One More Time

By Shawn Kennedy, AJN interim editor-in-chief

I know we’ve written a lot about Florence Nightingale on this blog recently (see Susan Hassmiller’s series of posts, In Florence’s Footsteps: Notes from a Journey) and I don’t want to put off those who aren’t necessarily fans, but I came across an editorial written by Gloria Donnelly, editor-in-chief of Holistic Nursing Practice, that resonated with me. She writes about how the holistic nature of Nightingale’s approach fits with much that’s going on today in health care reform, citing as one example the trend toward teaching people to take charge of their own health. (The entire Fall issue highlights the work of holistic practitioners—I especially liked Garden Walking for Depression: A Research Report.)

Donnelly writes:

We believe that Ms. Nightingale, an advocate of health, self-healing, and healthy environments, would be proud of the strides that nurses have made to promote holistic health and care around the world. . . . Nightingale believed that ’health nursing‘ and cultivating good health were equally important to ’sick nursing,’ the art and principles of which she developed almost single-handedly. Prevention superceded cure in Nightingale’s schema as she advocated for Health Missioners to work, first in the villages of rural India and then in England, teaching women how to prevent disease and maintain healthy environments.

This, in a nutshell, describes nursing at its core. It’s a shame that of all of Nightingale’s philosophies and improvements that were […]

Guest Author2016-11-21T13:15:54-05:00September 2nd, 2010|health care policy, nursing perspective|1 Comment

Back to School: Team Sports and Concussions

By Shawn Kennedy, AJN interim editor-in-chief

Concussions among young athletes are on the rise—are parents and coaches taking them too lightly?

My sons played ice hockey and football in their high school years, what my husband and I referred to as “collision sports.” The unmistakable sound of helmet-hitting-helmet always made me cringe, especially in hockey where a good skater can generate considerable speed (and therefore force) before impact. I’ve witnessed many players being helped off the ice. The coach, who knew I was a nurse, would sometimes signal to me to come to the bench and check out a player. Most of the time, the player was fine; but there were a few times when it was clear that the player was a bit more than just shaken up.

I recall one 12-year-old who had nystagmus and ringing in his ears and kept asking the same question in a slow, sleepy voice. The coach wanted to put him back out on the ice (“He just saw a few stars, right?”), but instead I sent him with his parents to the ED for evaluation. After an overnight stay in the hospital he was released, but was cautioned not to play hockey for two weeks because he’d suffered a concussion. So he waited two weeks and […]

Guest Author2016-11-21T13:15:56-05:00September 1st, 2010|nursing perspective|0 Comments

Dog Days of August Blog Roundup

What are nurses blogging about this August? (And why do they call these the “dog days”?) A random sampling of what crossed our desks:

The labor and delivery RN who writes the blog At Your Cervix has a nice short post this week on a team of nurses working together to avert a potential catastrophic event.

Artist, writer, nurse, JParadisiRN has a new post that takes the Steven Slater flight attendant incident as a jumping-off point to discuss what drives nurses crazy and unnecessarily slows down work flow. Her answer, in this post at least: waiting for the physician’s order.

Nursetopia writes of a few of her favorite things about being a nurse. (Preprinted physician order forms are one of them, to refer back to the previous post mentioned… So is working on Christmas Day.)

GuitarGirl RN asks why, why, why about the patients who come to the ER where she works. Why do they believe the Internet over the advice of their physicians? Why do they see a crisis when nothing is happening? And so on…

Ok, and just to balance things out, here’s one from Anonymous Doc, who asks why people in the end stages of terminal illness go on believing in long-shot treatments, and physicians go on giving them, despite the fact that he’s never seen a single one result in a miracle. In other words, when is hope justified, and when is it less […]

Jacob Molyneux, senior editor/blog editor2016-11-21T13:16:04-05:00August 18th, 2010|nursing perspective|2 Comments

A Nurse So Cold

Al is weak, frail, and most important, scared. At 55 years of age, after 34 years providing care, she finds herself in a major medical center— on her back, staring at ceiling tiles. The woman who’s always had skin as pure as a china doll now ironically has a porcelain hip. She’s just 36 hours out from a total hip replacement, and she knows something is wrong. She feels her heart pounding, she can hear the beating in her ears, feel the pulsing on her pillow. She rings the call bell to ask for the nurse to check her. An hour comes and goes, and no one comes to her room.

That’s from the August Reflections essay, titled “Miss Orienting Nurse.” The author is Linda Pellico, an assistant professor at the Yale School of Nursing, who tells of her chagrin at witnessing rote care provided to a hospitalized friend by a former student of hers. We hope you’ll read the essay and let us know your own experiences as a nurse or patient—or both. How many of us will someday have to rely on such cold and distant figures as the nurse and MD portrayed in this essay?-JM, senior editor