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

AJN in June: IPV, Late Effects of Breast Cancer Treatment, Nurse Activists, More

AJN0616 Cover Online

This month’s cover photo evokes the isolation faced by victims of intimate partner violence (IPV). According to Karen Roush, PhD, RN, lead author of the study in this issue that reports on the perceptions of rural health care providers who care for these victims, “ [i]solation is one of an abuser’s biggest weapons,” especially for those who live in rural areas.

Health care providers are positioned to provide support for victims of IPV, but knowledge and practice gaps get in the way. For more on this topic, read this month’s original research CE, “Intimate Partner Violence: The Knowledge, Attitudes, Beliefs, and Behaviors of Rural Health Care Providers.”

Some other articles of note in the June issue:

CE Feature: “Late and Long-Term Sequelae of Breast Cancer Treatment.” More than 12% of women will be diagnosed with breast cancer at some point in their lives; 78% of them can be expected to survive for at least 15 years. There are more than 2.8 million breast cancer survivors in the United States and as many as 90% of them report physical problems that can reduce functional ability, produce or exacerbate emotional problems, negatively affect body image, and diminish quality of life.

This third article in a series on cancer survivorship care […]

2016-11-21T13:01:12-05:00May 27th, 2016|Nursing, nursing perspective|0 Comments
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Recent Decline in U.S. Opioid Prescriptions: Good News But Some Concerns

by frankieleon/ via flickr by frankieleon/ via flickr

It was widely reported in the past week that there have been steady declines in the number of opioid prescriptions in the U.S. for the past three years, with the declines the steepest in some of the states considered to have the worst opioid misuse crises.

This is good news, suggesting that efforts to address some problem areas like renegade pain clinics prescribing for profit, patients who go from doctor to doctor seeking opioid prescriptions, and the diversion of legitimate opioid prescriptions may be starting to bear fruit.

A balanced overview of the situation can be found in this New York Times article. The authors also acknowledge that patients in pain are now facing new hurdles to pain relief, quoting the director of one prominent medical school’s program on pain research education and policy: “The climate has definitely shifted. . . . It is now one of reluctance, fear of consequences and encumbrance with administrative hurdles. A lot of patients who are appropriate candidates for opioids have been caught up in that response.”

Much of the reporting on the opioid epidemic lumps all people who take opioids into one big statistical brew. While startling and alarming numbers about overdoses from legal and illegal opioids steal the headlines, little media and scholarly analysis focuses on the lower […]

2016-11-21T13:01:12-05:00May 26th, 2016|health care policy, Nursing, nursing perspective, pain management, patient experience, patient safety, Patients|1 Comment
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Psychiatric Nursing: The Seemingly Unreachable Patient

By Jennifer Rodgers for AJN. Illustration by Jennifer Rodgers for AJN

In many fields, we must keep doing the same thing over and over without any apparent results. Nurses, for example, may find that their efforts to make a patient safe, to reach a patient, to ease a patient’s suffering have little visible effect. This is just part of the work, but some patients will inevitably pose a greater personal challenge than others.

“Five Words,” the Reflections essay in the May issue of AJN, written by former psychiatric nurse Tania Renee Zayid, is about one of those patients and the feelings of hope and disappointment his nurse experiences in his presence. In it, she writes:  […]

2016-11-21T13:01:12-05:00May 23rd, 2016|narratives, Nursing, nursing perspective, patient engagement, Patients|0 Comments
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What a Nurse Really Wants

Lois Corcoran, BSN, PCCN, is pursuing a master of science in nursing degree and works on a cardiac step-down unit. Although Nurses Week recently ended, we felt that this short, honest post sums up the way a lot of nurses seem to feel.

via flickr creative commons/by you me via flickr creative commons/by you me

I have been a nurse for 18 years. I went to nursing school when I was 33 years old, a year after I’d completed treatment for Hodgkin lymphoma. I was a single mom, newly divorced, trying to make my way.

Becoming a nurse felt like my calling. I was passionate about it. I had been through so much, and I knew I had a lot to give back—I wanted to be with patients, holding their hands, giving them the reassurance we so desperately want to hear when we are going through ill health. I knew that I could be that nurse. I felt that my cancer had been the portal to this realization, opening my eyes and heart to what patients need.

Eighteen years later the truth of my life as a nurse is a little more complicated. It’s not that my original soul’s calling isn’t still there, deep inside me. I still feel a close connection with my patients. I […]

2017-08-04T09:53:14-04:00May 19th, 2016|career, Nursing, nursing perspective, Patients|9 Comments
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Napping on the Night Shift: What a Pilot Study Revealed

By Sylvia Foley, AJN senior editor

Table 1. Guidelines for Hospital Nurses on Implementing Naps on the Night Shift (click to enlarge)Nurses who work the night shift often struggle with high levels of sleepiness. But while onsite napping is effectively used to counter worker fatigue in other safety-sensitive industries, the practice has yet to win wide acceptance in nursing.

Curious about why this is so, nurse researchers Jeanne Geiger-Brown and colleagues recently conducted a pilot study. They report their findings in this month’s CE–Original Research feature, “Napping on the Night Shift: A Two-Hospital Implementation Project” (for some night shift napping ground rules, see, at right, Table 1: Guidelines for Hospital Nurses on Implementing Naps on the Night Shift—click table to enlarge).

Here’s an overview:

Purpose: To assess the barriers to successful implementation of night-shift naps and to describe the nap experiences of night-shift nurses who took naps.

Methods: In this two-hospital pilot implementation project, napping on the night shift was offered to six nursing units. Unit nurse managers’ approval was sought, and further explanation was given to a unit’s staff nurses. A nap experience form, which included the Karolinska Sleepiness Scale, was used to assess pre-nap sleepiness level, nap duration and perceived sleep experience, post-nap sleep inertia, and the perceived helpfulness of the nap. Nurse managers and staff nurses were also interviewed at the end of the three-month study period.

Results: Successful implementation occurred on only one of the six units, with partial success seen on […]

2016-11-21T13:01:12-05:00May 16th, 2016|Nursing, nursing perspective, nursing research, patient safety|3 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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