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

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We like your comments. In fact, we need them. We’re grateful when you express an opinion, raise a question, respond to each other. Below we’ve collected some recent comments that we particularly appreciated. We have a constantly growing number of readers or visitors. We’re happy about this–but we hope that more of you will go beyond reading and take a moment to let us know your responses. (About your privacy: When you comment, you have to give a valid e-mail address to the system. However, this e-mail address will not be published unless you deliberately insert it into the body of the comment. When you sign your comment, you can use your full name or initials or whatever else you’d like to identify yourself to other readers.  It’s entirely up to you!)

About Nurses Write, Right?:

“If 1 percent of the three million nurses in the USA would write about what they do, we could take over health care.”
–Dr. Teena McGuinness

About Saving SimBaby-Teaching Nurses to Speak Up, a post about using simulation technology for training nurses:

“I used to dread simulation situations (like ACLS years ago when it was much more stressful). Now I think they are the best way to learn and to teach some situations. Reproducing a certain degree of anxiety helps young nurses, and more experienced nurses, learn how to keep anxiety and stress from becoming fear. Being forced to repetitively face those anxieties diminishes the likelihood that a nurse will be overwhelmed by them in a […]

2016-11-21T13:21:01-05:00November 19th, 2009|nursing perspective|1 Comment
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‘Mercy,’ Revisited: A Nurse Goes from Harsh Critic to Fan

MercyScreen2

By Peggy McDaniel, BSN, RN

The new NBC television series Mercy is starting to grow on me. Like some other recent shows (Nurse Jackie and Hawthorne), this drama features nurses as the lead characters. As I explained here a while back, my response to the first episode was very negative. Disparaging comments made about nurses by other staff and by patients’ family members struck me as unnecessary and irritating. Lines like “what do you know, you’re only a nurse?” were hard for a real nurse to take. My first impression was that the characters could have been women in almost any career. The words and actions of Veronica, one of the lead characters, seemed harsh and inappropriate. The overall image of nursing was negative.

So now for my confession: I have continued to watch Mercy. And I’ve become less of a critic and more of a fan. We still get more dramatic effects than convincing reality. For example, in a recent episode, Veronica runs in and bangs a patient’s chest with her fist, an action which ultimately restarts the patient’s heart. I still miss the comparatively realistic practices depicted in ER; Mercy doesn’t attempt to get such details right. 

But recent story lines have shown our nurse heroines to be strong patient advocates. This is a true (believable, and inspiring) nursing role. Even if the story line takes liberties with what a real nurse would do—such as when a character visits a patient’s son at his home to encourage him to visit his dying mother—the point about patient advocacy is made and appreciated. Advocating […]

2016-11-21T13:21:12-05:00November 10th, 2009|nursing perspective|1 Comment
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Are Domestic Violence and Pregnancy Preexisting Conditions?

By Peggy McDaniel, BSN, RN

Kaiser Health News recently ran a story about an attorney who was denied private insurance coverage based on a “preexisting condition”—that is, treatment she’d received following a domestic abuse incident. A majority of states have passed laws prohibiting insurers from denying coverage based on treatment for domestic violence, but  eight states as well as the District of Columbia have no such legislation. It is a challenge to track the occurrence of such denials. Insurers often use alternative ways to find out about a history of domestic abuse. They have been known to search for protective orders at local courthouses, which is public information, and search through medical records for documentation of treatment related to such incidents. 

A bitter irony is that nurses are expected to be aware of and directly question patients about suspected abuse, yet in doing so we could be setting up patients for future loss or denial of coverage. 

Pregnancy, likewise defined as a preexisting condition, can also be used to deny coverage. Health reform bills under consideration would disallow the practice of basing insurance rates on gender, a practice which has in effect discriminated against women, particularly those of child-bearing age. 

The practice of denying private health insurance coverage based on these and other preexisting conditions must stop. As a nurse and a consumer, I believe that everyone should be able to buy health care at a reasonable price. A rate such as $1,000 per month for a family is not affordable. In the end we all pay if people do not have some […]

2016-11-21T13:21:15-05:00November 6th, 2009|health care policy, nursing perspective|2 Comments
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An End to Interruptions: Nurses Preventing Medication Errors

By Christine Moffa, MS, RN, AJN clinical editor

By NathanF/via Flickr (Creative Commons) By NathanF/via Flickr (Creative Commons)

Interruptions are distracting.

I have a hard time focusing when I am repeatedly interrupted. How many times have you walked down the hall to get something, met with an unexpected request or encounter, and then found you couldn’t remember where you were going or why?

A few years ago I was working as float nurse in an outpatient facility. One of the specialties I floated to was the pediatric clinic. There were seven or eight nurses (a mix of RNs and LPNs) working at the same time, with half assigned to administering medication, mostly vaccines, and the others performing telephone triage and monitoring patients in the observation room.  I can now admit that I used to pray to get assigned to the triage section—not because giving injections was a problem, but because the setup of their system terrified me. […]

2019-04-11T14:14:07-04:00November 5th, 2009|nursing perspective, nursing research, patient safety|7 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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