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

My Supporting Role

In nursing as in acting, connecting is key.

The Actor, by Picasso/Wikimedia Commons

When I graduated from nursing school, I was given a pen, stethoscope, tape, and scissors. In my current practice as a pediatric nurse in acute care, I’ve found that it’s all too easy to let technology with all its conveniences and safety measures take center stage. I have a bedside computer, cell phone, and cardiac monitor, among many other technical tools.

Yet the importance of creating a therapeutic milieu for patients and families has remained unchanged. Now the challenge I have is how best to use technology as a prop and a backdrop and not as the main event, how to prevent data collection from creating a barrier between me and my patient.

Of course technology has many advantages. In the past, I had to spend long stretches of time away from the bedside, creating written medications sheets and care plans. I remember spending hours looking up each medication dose and side effects in reference books. Transcribing written doctor’s orders and medication information was an art form. Now we obtain the most current doctor’s order and medication information in seconds with a click of a button.

Making technology an asset, not an obstacle.

While these conveniences have given me more […]

2020-02-07T11:15:00-05:00September 16th, 2013|digital health, nursing perspective, patient engagement, Patients|3 Comments
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One Is the Loneliest Number

By Shawn Kennedy, AJN editor-in-chief

The great Bartholdi statue, liberty enlightening the world: the gift of France to the American people. Speculative depiction published the year before the statue was erected. In this depiction the statue faces south; it actually faces east/Wikimedia Commons The Bartholdi statue, liberty enlightening the world: the gift of France to the American people. Speculative depiction published the year before the statue was erected. In this depiction the statue faces south; it actually faces east/Wikimedia Commons

I’ve been struck recently by how the United States sometimes seems to stand apart from other nations. This is sometimes called “American exceptionalism.”

The most obvious example of this is the recent push—temporarily put on hold due to the emergence of negotiations about the possible handover of Syrian chemical weapons to Russia—to garner support among other nations for a military strike against the Syrian government in response to its use of chemical weapons against its own people.

By now, most of us have seen the graphic videos on media outlets and they are indeed disturbing. There are signs of neurotoxicity in some of […]

2016-11-21T13:06:34-05:00September 13th, 2013|health care policy, nursing perspective|2 Comments
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Delirium at the Hands of Nurses

by Augustin Ruiz, via Flickr by Augustin Ruiz, via Flickr

Amanda Anderson, BSN, RN, CCRN, works as a nurse in New York City and is pursuing a master’s in administration from Hunter-Bellevue Scahool of Nursing at Hunter College. Her last post for this blog was “A Hurricane Sandy Bed Bath.”

Leo is young but I’ve cared for him in the ICU many times. It’s late, but he’s awake, talking, in a voice like Kermit the Frog’s. My eyes traverse the path between his, the patch of hair beneath his moving lips, and the newly healed trach site on his neck. He is too long for the bed frame that supports him—we’ve taken off the footboard, and his big feet stick out from the white blanket over his legs.

Tonight, Leo is stable, but this hasn’t always been the case; I’ve known him since the beginning, months and months ago. A long and nasty alcohol addiction led to a bad case of pancreatitis and multiple interventions to save his life. The saving is what I’m most familiar with—the sedated, unstable, intubated, tenuous Leo, not this chatty, relaxed, stable Leo.

Leo is my only patient tonight, a rarity in a busy urban hospital. The unit is empty and slow, not much care to give, nothing requiring immediate attention. So, I sit with him and talk about […]

2016-11-21T13:06:35-05:00September 11th, 2013|nursing perspective, Patients|2 Comments
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Taking Flight: A Nurse Recharges Her Batteries

By Marcy Phipps, RN, a regular contributor to this blog. Her essay “The Love Song of Frank” was published in the May (2012) issue of AJN.

interior, BK 117 medical helicopter interior, BK 117 medical helicopter

You’re part of a fixed-wing flight transport team called to pick up a 32-year-old male who’s been involved in a paragliding accident in Puerto Rico. Upon landing, you see an ambulance at the end of the tarmac. As you exit your plane, the ambulance pulls up and the crew opens the back door of the rig. They pull the patient out on a stretcher and hand you a folder of X-rays, saying, “He’s all yours.”

After four days of intensive training in the Air Medical Crew Core Curriculum course, my team was given that scenario as a group assignment on the last day of class. We were given a folder of radiology films and briefed on our patient’s vital signs and our assessment findings. We conducted a quick “field interpretation” of his X-rays and presented our interventions, along with our concerns and specific accommodations for transporting this unstable patient to Florida in a Learjet.

This was no ordinary class. Offered to nurses and other […]

2016-11-21T13:06:38-05:00September 9th, 2013|career, nursing perspective|1 Comment
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Chemical Attack Response, Posts for Nursing Students, Ethical Agonies, Blog Carnivals, More

By Jacob Molyneux, AJN senior editor

You’re working in the ED of a 300-bed metropolitan hospital one Sunday morning when you receive a radio transmission from a paramedic whose ambulance is en route with a casualty of a suspected nerve gas attack. The paramedic reports that two additional ambulances are also on the way. Nerve gas? You’re stunned. What should you do first?

quinn.anya/via flickr creative common quinn.anya/via flickr creative commons

That’s the start of our 2002 article (free for a month, until October 5) about chemical attacks and their aftermath. Such an event is not an impossibility here in the U.S. Remember the 1995 attacks in Japan, in which sarin gas was released at several points on the Tokyo subways by members of a radical cult, killing 12 and injuring thousands? And there is now convincing evidence (not to mention horrific photos of the many children killed) that the Syrian government used nerve gas on its own people last week despite widespread prohibitions against its use. In fact, USA Today reported that a number of the nurses and physicians who treated the victims of the gas attack may have subsequently died themselves from exposure to the patients’ clothing and skin.

Our 2002 article describes how nerve gas works on the body, the main […]

2016-11-21T13:06:39-05:00September 6th, 2013|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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