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 Conflict Engagement for Nurses: Consider the System

By Amanda Anderson, a critical care nurse and graduate student in New York City currently doing a graduate placement at AJN.

by Sachin Sandhu/Flickr by Sachin Sandhu/Flickr

This month, Debra Gerardi writes about initial steps to managing workplace conflict as nurses. The quotes below are from her article in the March issue of AJN, “Conflict Engagement: A New Model for Nurses” (free until April 30, the article is one in an ongoing series on conflict).

Just as with most medical errors, there is usually not a single cause of workplace conflict—instead, a number of interrelated variables lead up to an event.

Sure, I was new to nursing, but I wasn’t new to work. My life as the child of small business owners had ingrained in me a certain sense of duty that I felt my colleague lacked. When you grow up with parents who make you pick up cigarette butts in their business parking lots, no work is below you, and there’s no time to complain. Maya wasn’t new to nursing, but she seemed, to me, new to the idea that work was to be done without a fight.

In my first months on the unit, I saw her complain much more than I saw her put her head down and plod through the tasks before her. Our unit was full of really […]

2016-11-21T13:02:50-05:00March 20th, 2015|career, Nursing, nursing perspective|2 Comments
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Early Localized Prostate Cancer: Nurses Can Help Men Weigh Diagnostic, Treatment Options

By Jacob Molyneux, AJN senior editor

A new diagnosis of prostate cancer can be daunting. Nurses play an increasingly important role in helping men and their partners find their way through the maze of available information and choices. One of the two March CE feature articles in AJN, “Early Localized Prostate Cancer,” gives a thorough overview of tests and treatments.

The author, Anne Katz, is a certified sexuality counselor at CancerCare Manitoba, a clinical nurse specialist at the Manitoba Prostate Centre, and a faculty member in the College of Nursing at the University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Canada, and Athabasca University, Alberta, Canada. She is also the editor of Oncology Nursing Forum. Writes Katz:

. . . as many as 233,000 men in the United States are diagnosed with prostate cancer each year, 60% of whom are ages 65 or older. Most diagnoses are low grade and localized . . . . Since low-grade, localized prostate cancer is slow growing and rarely lethal, even in the absence of intervention, it can be difficult for men to make treatment decisions after diagnosis—particularly if they do not understand the nuanced pathology results they receive and the potential for treatment to result in long-term adverse effects that can profoundly affect quality of life.

Pros_Cons_PSA_ScreeningThe article discusses options for intervention, potential adverse effects associated with each option, and, crucially, the nurse’s “role in helping […]

2016-11-21T13:02:51-05:00March 18th, 2015|Nursing, nursing perspective, patient engagement, Patients|0 Comments
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Color-Coded Wristbands and Patient DNR Status: Can We Do Better?

In the Viewpoint column in the March issue of AJN, a staff nurse at an oncology center argues that we can improve our use of color-coded wristbands to communicate patient DNR status. There’s also a short podcast interview with the author below, in which she explains that her motivation for writing this article was “a near-miss” on her unit several years ago.

A lot of attention has been paid lately to the reasons why clinicians don’t follow end-of-life preferences in advance directives. Overaggressive care by some physicians is one reason, as is the vagueness of the language used in advance directives to express treatment preferences. BlimaMarcus_ViewpointAuthor Author Blima Marcus

Another major reason advance directives are ignored is lack of immediate access to a patient’s end-of-life preferences at critical moments, such as during a code. This month’s Viewpoint column, “Communicating Patient DNR Status Using Color-Coded Wristbands,” is by Blima Marcus, a doctoral student at the Hunter-Bellevue School of Nursing in New York City as well as an RN at the NYU Langone–Perlmutter Cancer Center. Marcus points out that a “patient’s choice of do-not-resuscitate (DNR) status is a major one, and communicating this status in the hospital is often the responsibility of nurses.”

However, she argues, paper and/or electronic chart documentation of patient end-of-life preferences isn’t always adequate, given clinical realities, and can […]

2016-11-21T13:02:52-05:00March 16th, 2015|Nursing, nursing perspective, Patients|2 Comments
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Drive for Show, Putt for Dough: A Cliche With Some Truth for Nursing

By Clint Lange, BSN, RN, a MICU nurse at University Hospital, San Antonio, Texas.

Wikimedia Commons Wikimedia Commons

Before becoming a registered nurse, I was a resident in the wonderful world of professional athletics, where cliches are fed to you almost as much as protein shakes and supplements.

I was a golfer, and golfers are the worst in terms of cliches. I sprained my eyes rolling them so much while listening to desperate golfers try to rationalize their poor performances or give themselves some hope. “I gave it 110%.” Ever take a math class? Because what you are saying isn’t possible. “It ain’t over till it’s over.” After that abysmal last hole, you are, in truth, officially mathematically eliminated from this tournament. For you, it’s over.

I’ll admit it, I’m cynical. I didn’t see the merit in cliches then and to a great extent I still don’t. But I have something else to admit; I’m kind of missing cliches. It seems one can’t quit them cold turkey without having withdrawal.

Or it could simply be that I played in a golf tournament recently for the first time in years, and I couldn’t help thinking about one of golf’s most-used phrases: Drive for show, putt for dough. It simply means that driving the ball is very flashy and fun to watch, but it is generally […]

2016-11-21T13:02:52-05:00March 13th, 2015|career, Nursing, nursing perspective|1 Comment
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Women’s History Month: Nurses Started What?

Lillian Wald and other notable nurse pioneers, 1923The first paragraph of Maureen Shawn Kennedy’s editorial in the March issue of AJN, “Securing Our Place in History,” ends with a thought-provoking suggestion:

In 1980, after realizing that women were largely missing from the history books, a group of women formed the National Women’s History Project . . . and, in 1987, were successful in getting Congress to designate the month of March as Women’s History Month. . . .This year’s theme, “Weaving the Stories of Women’s Lives,” reflects the . . . tenet that “ [k]nowing women’s achievements challenges stereotypes and upends social assumptions about who women are and what women can accomplish today.” One might substitute the word nurses for women in this statement.

Public health nursing, school nurses, hospice, and many other crucial areas of health care today began with the efforts of nurses. Noting the many accomplishments of Lillian Wald, Lavinia Dock, Annie Goodrich, M. Adelaide Nutting, and the other nurses in the 1923 group photo on our March cover, shown as they gathered to celebrate the opening of the new headquarters of the Henry Street Visiting Nurse Service, Kennedy urges nurses today to learn about this tradition and to envision how they can carry it forward:

“The […]

2016-11-21T13:02:53-05:00March 11th, 2015|career, Nursing, nursing perspective|0 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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