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

Much Ado About a Fist Bump Study

hands touching illustrates post about fist bump study and germsBy Karen Roush, clinical managing editor

In this world of evidence-based care, is there anything to be said for common sense? Last week a study was published in the American Journal of Infection Control that found that a fist bump transmitted fewer organisms than a handshake.

Really? We know that hands carry untold numbers of organisms. We know that skin-to-skin contact transmits organisms. We know that duration of contact plays a role in how many organisms are transmitted. Did we need a study to tell us that hand-to-hand contact with less surface area for a shorter duration of time would transmit fewer organisms?

With the attention being paid to this study, you might think it was a major discovery. Why? Because it’s fun to talk about fist bumps versus handshakes? (David Letterman seems to think so; he recently opened his monologue with a joke about the study results.) Because we kind of like the visual of everyone, from the staid to the cool, walking around giving fist bumps?

Or perhaps, on a serious note, because we’re still struggling unsuccessfully to get people to simply wash their hands and are ready to jump on anything that mitigates the risk of transmission when they don’t? (Adherence to hand hygiene guidelines among health care workers remains low. Read our March 2013 CE–Original Research feature, […]

2016-11-21T13:04:12-05:00August 4th, 2014|Nursing, nursing perspective|1 Comment
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AJN’s August Issue: Preventing Pressure Ulcers, Strengths-Based Nursing, Medical Marijuana, More

AJN0814.Cover.OnlineAJN’s August issue is now available on our Web site. Here’s a selection of what not to miss.

Toward a new model of nursing. Despite the focus on patient-centered care, medicine continues to rely on a model that emphasizes a patient’s deficits rather than strengths. “Strengths-Based Nursing” describes a holistic approach to care in which eight core nursing values guide action, promoting empowerment, self-efficacy, and hope. This CE feature offers 2.5 CE credits to those who take the test that follows the article.

Decreasing pressure ulcer incidence. Hospital-acquired pressure ulcers take a high toll on patients, clinicians, and health care facilities. “Sustaining Pressure Ulcer Best Practices in a High-Volume Cardiac Care Environment” describes how one of the world’s largest and busiest cardiac hospitals implemented several quality improvement strategies that eventually reduced the percentage of patients with pressure ulcers from 6% to zero. This CE feature offers 2.8 CE credits to those who take the test that follows the article. And don’t miss a podcast interview with the authors (this and other podcasts are accessible via the Behind the Article page on our Web site or, if you’re in our iPad app, by tapping the icon on the first page of the article).

Read our Cultivating Quality column this month for another article on using evidence-based nursing practice to reduce the […]

2016-11-21T13:04:12-05:00August 1st, 2014|Nursing, nursing perspective, nursing research|0 Comments
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Revisiting Reality Shock – What’s Changed for New Nurses?

julie kertesz/ via flickr creative common julie kertesz/ via flickr creative common

By Maureen Shawn Kennedy, AJN editor-in-chief

Last month, we highlighted on Facebook a blog post I had written in 2010, “New Nurses Face Reality Shock in Hospital Settings – So What Else is New?” (It seemed timely in terms of all the June graduations.)

I wrote that original post in response to a study that had just been published in Nursing Outlook (here’s the abstract) describing the experiences of new nurses. Generally, these newbies felt harried, unprepared, overworked, and unsupported—all similar concerns voiced by nurses in Marlene Kramer’s 1974 book, Reality Shock: Why Nurses Leave Nursing. (Here’s AJN’s 1975 review of the book. It will be free for a month; note that you have to click the PDF link at the article landing page to read it.)

My post back in 2009 noted how nothing much seemed to have changed since the publication of Kramer’s book. Now, once again, this post has generated many comments, a number of them on our Facebook page as well as on the original blog post.

Here are a few. I’ll start with Facebook:

I’m almost a 20yr RN and have experienced [this] in a new job. I’ve developed skills to deal with this over the course of my career, so it doesn’t impact […]

2016-11-21T13:04:14-05:00July 28th, 2014|career, Nursing, nursing perspective, students|10 Comments
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Getting Patients Involved in Care Redesign: What the Research Says

By Sylvia Foley, AJN senior editor

“I think the whole thing is we’re trying to im­prove care. It’s all about [patients] anyways. So if we’re gonna make changes that impact them I think we have to get them involved.” —study participant

Although there is considerable support for increasing patient involvement in health care, it’s not clear how best to achieve this. And few researchers have specifically investigated the views of patients and providers on patient engagement. In this month’s CE–Original Research feature, “The Perceptions of Health Care Team Members About Engaging Patients in Care Redesign,” Melanie Lavoie-Tremblay and colleagues describe findings from their recent study. Here’s a brief overview.

Objective: This study sought to explore the perceptions of health care workers about engaging patients as partners on care redesign teams under a program called Transforming Care at the Bedside (TCAB), and to examine the facilitating factors, barriers, and effects of such engagement.
Design: This descriptive, qualitative study collected data through focus groups and individual interviews. Participants included health care providers and managers from five units at three hospitals in a university-affiliated health care center in Canada.
Methods: A total of nine focus groups and 13 individual interviews were conducted in April 2012, 18 months after the TCAB program began in September 2010. Content analysis was used to analyze the quali­tative data.
Findings: Health care providers and managers benefited from engaging patients in the decision-making process because the patients brought a new point of view. Involving the patients exposed team members to valuable information that they […]

2017-07-27T14:45:30-04:00July 16th, 2014|nursing perspective, nursing research|1 Comment
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VA Nursing Leadership Silent on Veterans’ Wait Times Scandal

By Gail M. Pfeifer, MA, RN, AJN news director

Audie L. Murphy Veterans Administration Hospital in San Antonio, TX / Wikimedia Commons Audie L. Murphy Veterans Administration Hospital in San Antonio, TX / Wikimedia Commons

I’ve been trying to arrange an interview with a nurse in a leadership role at the VA’s Office of Nursing Services (ONS) for over a month now, with little success.

Granted, an excessive wait time for an interview pales in comparison with how long many veterans have had to wait for health care. Still, this has given me a tiny taste of what it must be like to enroll with the Veterans Health Administration for services: you can contact them, but you have to wait a really long time to even schedule a first appointment.

A substantive interview with AJN might have been a golden opportunity for the ONS to get out ahead of the story that has plagued the VA since the Phoenix scandal about lengthy waiting times at the VA broke in early May. (I did finally get a response of sorts. More on that below.)

To recap: The allegations in May that the Phoenix VA system had manipulated data about appointment wait times to hide the fact that veterans were not getting timely appointments galvanized public […]

2016-11-21T13:04:19-05:00July 9th, 2014|Nursing, nursing perspective|5 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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