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

Workplace Violence Against Nurses — Neither Inevitable Nor Acceptable

I’ve read about hospital nurses dealing with violence at work, but I always told myself that was something that happened in the emergency room or the psych ward. In oncology, I reasoned, we have relationships with our patients, and I have always felt safe with them.

So begins a harrowing—and remarkably nonjudgmental— story of a really bad day at work, written by Theresa Brown, a nurse who blogs regularly for the NY Times. (AJN will be featuring a profile of Brown in the May issue.)

Unhappy coincidence: It so happens that AJN published a Viewpoint essay on workplace violence in the March issue. Here’s how it starts:

I was working in the ED one day when a patient looked up and threatened to kill me. Grabbing my hand, he squeezed it until I thought it would break. It took several staff members to restrain him and force him to let go. I’ll never forget how he looked into my eyes and smiled as I screamed in pain.

Some of my colleagues said I should file a police report; others told me to get used to this type of behavior and toughen up. I called the police, and although they took my statement, they wouldn’t arrest the patient because he hadn’t inflicted “serious bodily injury.”

The author, Jessica Leigh, offers advice to those who have faced workplace violence as nurses, and makes several recommendations for influencing policies at your hospital or facility, as well as […]

2016-11-21T13:18:45-05:00March 17th, 2010|nursing perspective|4 Comments
Read More

Advanced Practice Nurses: Pushed Forward by Health Reform Advocates, Pushed Back by Physicians over Turf – Enough Already!

By Shawn Kennedy, MA, RN, AJN editor-in-chief

As we’ve noted in past posts on this blog and in AJN editorials in August 2006 and August 2008, organized medicine does not want to acknowledge that nurses can practice independently.  And now the turf war between advanced practice nurses (APRNs, which include nurse practitioners, nurse anesthetists, nurse midwives and clinical nurse specialists) and physicians is heating up.

In California, physicians are suing the state for allowing nurse anesthetists to practice without supervision, using patient safety as a reason. In Kentucky, physicians are opposing legislation to expand the scope of practice for NPs—at issue is whether NPs should need a signed collaborative arrangement with a physician (even though the physician does not supervise the NP). According to an article by a Louisville, Kentucky, newspaper, the Courier-Journal, the physicians charge high fees for their signature or demand a percentage of the practice.  The bill, though, passed the state House committee on March 4, with several members questioning the ethics of physicians’ requiring fees.

Nurses have been and continue to fight for the right to practice, and during this period where the government is seeking solutions to health reform, this is a battle that shouldn’t have to happen—a view shared by Stephen Ferrara, NP, at A Nurse Practitioner’s Place (“I have tried to refrain from taking the bait from some recent negative opinions regarding nurse practitioner delivered care”). […]

2016-11-21T13:18:48-05:00March 12th, 2010|health care policy, nursing perspective|2 Comments
Read More

Notes from the Healthweb and Nursosphere

This week Not Nurse Ratched has an amusing, meandering, and thoughtful post about the uses of Facebook by patients in the hospital. There’s a short excerpt below, but read the whole thing here.

They update Facebook constantly. CONSTANTLY. They have us take photos of injuries they can’t reach so they can post the photos to Facebook. I am not making this up. “I want a photo of my hideously dislocated ankle/knee/shoulder but I can’t move, so would you mind using my phone to take a picture for me?” And they keep updating and updating. I have actually said, “I’m about to give you a medicine that is going to render you unconscious immediately, so you should set your phone down.”

How could we have a weekly Web roundup that doesn’t at least mention health insurance reform? The spotlight has been slowly turning toward the insurers themselves, a crucial part of the equation (along with cost control and many other factors). This week Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius met with the top executives of insurance companies to demand an explanation for the steep increases in rates seen in the last year.

If you’re looking for yet another reason why processed food isn’t good for you (besides the frequent presence of high fructose corn syrup and massive doses of salt, and the inaccurate packaging claims that the foods are “healthy” and “lean”), this week the NY Times reported news […]

2016-11-21T13:18:59-05:00March 5th, 2010|health care policy, nursing perspective|1 Comment
Read More

Is This Teamwork? Learning to Supervise Isn’t Easy

By Sheena Jones, who attends Dutchess Community College and lives in Beacon, NY

So I’m a young nurse, one of the youngest in my facility. I used to be a nurse’s aide; now I’m an LPN in training to be an RN. It’s very difficult when the aides are either the same age as me or old enough to be my grandmother.

What do you tell a 19-year-old aide who just got mandated for a second shift on a Saturday evening and who is texting all shift but getting her work done? Do you tell her to put it away, knowing that you would be doing the same thing if you were still a young aide and had already gone the extra mile to check that all the patients were safe and happy?

What do you tell the 57-year-old aide who is always the last one struggling to finish her assignment because she can’t keep up? She can’t get her two baths done plus get the other eight residents washed and in bed by 10 pm, even though everyone else is done by 8:30 pm. Do you tell her to hurry up and finish? Do you send the frustrated younger aide to finish her assignment, and call it ‘teamwork’? Who wants to do extra work? 

This is the situation I face every couple of weekends. I’ve tried changing the aide assignments to make the older aide’s workload easier, but she just can’t seem to work fast enough no matter what I do. I have a frustrated younger aide who […]

2016-11-21T13:19:01-05:00March 4th, 2010|nursing perspective|17 Comments
Read More

Why the ‘Greatest Generation’ Is Bagging Groceries (No, It’s Not Because of Taxes)

By Shawn Kennedy, MA, RN, AJN interim editor-in-chief

In surfing the Web Monday, I came across this interesting tidbit on the blog run by Gary Schwitzer, creator of HealthNewsReview.org, a site devoted to assessing the accuracy of health news coverage. He quoted statistics from a report  by the Center for Public Integrity, which claims that “there are eight lobbyists for every member of Congress.” The number of lobbyists went from about 1,400 in the first quarter of 2009 to nearly 3,700 by year’s end. 

I see elderly people in the supermarket bagging groceries—some may like the company, but others are doing it to pay for medical care not covered under plans. My uncle—one of the “greatest generation”—used to cut his pills in half to make them last longer. Does this qualify as “rationing care”? […]

2016-11-21T13:19:04-05:00March 2nd, 2010|health care policy, nursing perspective|5 Comments
Read More

Comment ground rules

1. Please be respectful.
2. We moderate all comments.

Content disclaimer

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.
Go to Top