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

Who’s a Nurse? The Leech Test at AJN

"Leech dance," by Thejaswswi, from Flickr.

The editorial staff of AJN includes both RNs and non-nurses. You can always tell who the RNs are by their reaction to photos of ugly wounds. The nurses love them and some of the non-nurses don’t even want to look at the photos. Case in point: the April CE article on leeches for wound healing. I think the photos are great. But many of the non-nurses find them disgusting. Are nurses simply sensitized to looking at ghastly images of wounds and abnormalities? Or do those who become nurses have a different sensibility? As a teenager, I used to love to babysit the children of a physician. After the kids were in bed, I’d comb through his medical library in search of the odd and gruesome images. I found them fascinating. I look forward to the New England Journal of Medicine each week and turn first to the Images in Clinical Medicine. A bit weird, I suppose. Or is it?

–Diana J. Mason, RN, AJN editor-in-chief emeritus

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2016-11-21T13:36:36-05:00April 2nd, 2009|nursing perspective|1 Comment
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Postcard from Cardiff, Pt. 2: Diana Mason Wins the Impact Factor Debate

We won! To follow up on my last post: At a debate today at the Royal College of Nursing’s so-called “fringe session” at its annual International Nursing Research Conference, Elizabeth Anionwu, emeritus professor of nursing at Thames Valley University in Middlesex (near London), joined me in arguing in opposition to the statement, “research should be published in the highest impact journals available.” […]

2009-03-30T16:14:25-04:00March 30th, 2009|career, nursing perspective, nursing research|2 Comments
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“Nurses don’t teach. They educate!” OK, but…. (A style update from the Word Curmudgeon)

I had a few comments but no death threats after my first post, about “nurse writers.” That fact gives me the courage to tackle another grammatical pet peeve of mine. Let me admit, up front, that probably no one else in the world cares about this, and no one else appears to have written about it. This could mean either that I’m really astute or completely wrong.

Education is central to what nurses do. Nurses educate. They work hard, as we do here at AJN, to elevate the image of nursing and nurses in the public eye (as well as the eyes of the medical community, policymakers, and politicians).

It’s understandable, then, that when nurses want to talk or write about something as central to nursing as patient education, they would choose the verb “educate” rather than “teach.”

[…]

2020-02-07T11:22:39-05:00March 23rd, 2009|nursing perspective|1 Comment
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The Invisible Experts: What Nurses Know About Aging and Chronic Illnesses Like Diabetes

Is it any coincidence that AJN recently heard from editorial board member Michael Desjardins and contributing editor Jane Seley about ways physicians and the mainstream media remain blind to the cutting-edge work being done by nurses in developing new models of care for the elderly and the chronically ill, including those with diabetes? This is a narrative that has to change if our health care system is going to face the challenges coming its way. […]

2016-11-21T13:37:50-05:00March 20th, 2009|career, nursing perspective|1 Comment
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President Obama: Where Are the Nurses?

I was delighted to see President Obama nominate nurse Mary Wakefield to head up the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) (see my posting about this on  February 20th at www.disruptivewomen.net).  I was expecting him to understand the value of having the nursing perspective represented in meetings focused on health care reform. So I am quite disappointed to be told by colleagues that there will only be a token nurse at today’s Health Care Reform Summit. Lots of physicians and insurers are there, but only the president of the American Nurses Association will represent nursing. (While I expect that Wakefield will be there, she will not be there to represent nursing.) My message to the president and those he has charged to lead health care reform: You can’t reform health care without nurses. And nurses have a lot of solutions to our ailing health care system. For examples of these solutions, look at the American Academy of Nursing’s Raise the Voice Campaign.

–Diana J. Mason, PhD, RN, Editor-in-Chief

2009-03-26T21:19:13-04:00March 5th, 2009|career, health care policy, nursing perspective|2 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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