The nurses I work with don’t discuss superstition any more openly than they discuss spirituality or religion. Most of us, however, have certain notions that we recognize and quietly adhere to.
By Shawn Kennedy, AJN interim editor-in-chief
On my last day at the American Association of Critical-Care Nurses’ annual meeting last week in Washington, DC, I had a chance to speak with both Beth Hammer, whose term as president ended with the meeting, and Kristine Peterson, the new president. Our conversation ranged from how they felt about being president of such a large nursing organization to their views on health care reform and how rapid response teams are affecting the work environment of critical care nurses. You can hear the conversation free on AJN’s Web site: go to the Podcasts tab and click on Conversations. Or just click here (the download may take a minute or two).
And don’t miss my first post from the exhibit hall floor at the meeting (the National Teaching Institute & Critical Care Exposition, or “the NTI”) and my second post on a conversation with a critical care nurse about a bad staffing practice, which seems to have hit a nerve!
By Christine Moffa, MS, RN, AJN clinical editor
Impending graduation is usually a happy, exciting time, especially for those who, after putting in years of hard work, are finally about to get that college degree. In the mid-1990s I was in what I considered to be a pretty tough nursing program. For example, during my second semester of core classes we went from 30 students to 19; the drop-off was due to students failing out. Graduation couldn’t come fast enough.
However, when you find out that people who graduated one and two semesters before you are still looking for work, it can be a real buzz kill. That’s how it was for me in May 1995. During that time several hospitals were going through restructuring or reengineering (as this AJN article reported) and were replacing RNs with UAPs. It was next to impossible for a nurse without at least a year of recent experience to find a job in a hospital. Now, as a result of the recession, new graduates are facing a similar situation. It took me almost a year to get my first job—and this was not without some sacrifices: I had to relocate from New York to Miami and work the 12-hour night shift.
It ended up being worthwhile, but it was one of the hardest years of my life and potentially could have turned me off of nursing forever. Has anyone else out there had a similar experience? What […]
By Shawn Kennedy, AJN interim editor-in-chief
After I last wrote to you from the NTI (the American Association of Critical-Care Nurses’ annual National Teaching Institute and Critical Care Exposition), I headed back to the exhibit hall to check out the helicopter and the Army’s mobile operating tent. But I didn’t get to either one, because I met a young critical care nurse from a regional hospital in Missouri. We chatted about her workplace, and it was obvious that she was very proud of the work she and her colleagues did. When I asked her, “What’s your biggest issue?”, she said that it was probably staffing. I expected her to cite the shortage and the difficulty of finding qualified critical care nurses. But that wasn’t what she meant—rather she was talking about bare-bones staffing because of tight budgets. Her hospital routinely switches between two tactics: it sends nurses home when the patient census is low (when this happens, the nurses are paid only $2 an hour to be on call, but must still use a vacation day to retain full-time benefits, a tactic that rapidly depletes their vacation time); or, when the patient census is higher, the hospital imposes mandatory overtime, creating havoc in nurses’ schedules, finances, and personal lives. And people wonder why there’s a nursing shortage! […]
It makes my blood boil when I hear a nurse say, “I’m just a nurse.” Sure, I’ve heard some nurses say, “I’m a nurse,” and I’ve heard many qualify their position by specifying, “I’m a critical care nurse” or “I’m a dialysis nurse.” But all too often, especially when asked whether they work in a specialty area, I hear nurses say apologetically, “No, I’m just a regular nurse,” or “I’m just a floor nurse.”
So says AJN‘s interim editor-in-chief Shawn Kennedy in her May editorial. Now here at AJN we’d like to reassure you that we don’t believe that anyone’s blood can actually boil. THAT is not an evidence-based statement. But Shawn’s hyperbole is meant to drive home a point: this is a topic that should matter to nurses, whatever their education level or exact job description.
We hope you’ll take a moment to read Shawn’s editorial in full and then let us know here what you think.
Longish sidebar: AJN may be a little uptight and old-fashioned about checking the facts we publish and making sure our editors and copyeditors fix unclear or inaccurate or simply awkward language, structure, and use of sources; ferret out conflicts of interest in our writers; and generally keep the journal a place you know you can trust in a world of shifting sources driven by suspect motivations. But here on our more informal blog, we also really really like (and do not edit!) reader comments, even very casual comments punched out on a tiny smartphone keypad.
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