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

Why Aren’t There More Men in Nursing?

Male nurse action figure/ gcfairch, flickr Male nurse action figure/ gcfairch, flickr

By Maureen Shawn Kennedy, MA, RN, AJN editor-in-chief

Men have served in nursing roles since at least the third century, when a special order of men was said to have existed to care for plague victims in Alexandria. And various religious orders seem to have had groups of men devoted to nursing tasks during the Middle Ages.

More recently, a number of men served as nurses or in nursing roles during the U.S. Civil War—Walt Whitman, who extensively visited wounded soldiers during the Civil War, has sometimes been described as one, though he mostly focused on tasks like writing letters for illiterate soldiers, bringing them special foods and necessary items, and providing companionship. (See our article on Whitman from our 100th anniversary issue of October, 2000.)

There were schools of nursing for men since the early 1900s. Last year, we published “My Grandfather’s Unpublished Manuscript” (August, 2012), a wonderful story of how the author (a nurse) found an article describing her grandfather’s experiences during his education and nursing career, which began with graduation from nursing school in 1929.

There were several early articles about male nurses in AJN—the oldest one I found was from March, 1924: “A School of Nursing for Men,” by Kenneth T. Crummer, described the school of nursing for men at the Pennsylvania Hospital and its founding 10 years earlier, in 1914. The final sentence reads, “Who knows […]

2016-11-21T13:08:36-05:00January 8th, 2013|career, nursing perspective|22 Comments
Read More

Web Pickings: 2013 Predictions, Good Fat, Mammograms, Moderation, Nurse Wisdom, More

By Jacob Molyneux, senior editor

Cartoon showing baby representing New Year 1905 chasing old man 1904 into history/ Wikipedia Cartoon showing baby representing New Year 1905 chasing old man 1904 into history/ Wikipedia

Ah, another new year starts (not 1905, despite the illustration) and received wisdom is overturned. Sort of. Consider the widely reported news that a JAMA study has found that being overweight doesn’t seem to increase your risk of dying, or, as the Kaiser Health News headline puts it, “A Little Extra Fat Could Be Protective.”

Many news summaries do point out that severely obese people had a higher risk of dying than did people of normal weight. What the study does and does not mean is being debated, with some pointing out that the study didn’t look at whether being overweight increased consumption of health care resources, number of prescribed medications, etc. We’re sure to hear more on this.

To continue with the theme of questioning long-term assumptions, NPR’s story “Breast Cancer: What We Learned in 2012” gives a nice summary of updated guidelines for who should and shouldn’t get mammograms, including pro and con arguments, the latest research, and so on.

Some pretty cynical journalism can be found in an opinion piece in the Palm Beach (Fl.) Post, which suggests that Hillary Clinton’s blood clot is a hoax.

A New York Times piece, in giving a tidy summary of important exercise-related research from the […]

2016-11-21T13:08:38-05:00January 2nd, 2013|nursing perspective|0 Comments
Read More

A Mental Health Nurse’s Perspective on Newtown and Its Aftermath

Mary Magdalene Crying statue/Wikimedia Commons Mary Magdalene Crying statue/Wikimedia Commons

By Donna Sabella, MEd, MSN, PhD, RN, mental health nurse, AJN contributing editor, and coordinator of the monthly Mental Health Matters column

As we all know by now, last Friday, December 14, our nation was forced to bear witness to another act of unconscionable violence, as 20 children and six adults were gunned down inside their elementary school on a morning that began with the murder of the  gunman’s mother.

As the country ponders why and how this could have happened, we know that there are no easy answers. Those answers that we do arrive at will undoubtedly involve much thought and soul-searching. How could one human being, one lone gunman barely an adult himself, wreak such devastation on so many?

The pain and grief of Friday hangs heavy over Newtown, and only those who lost a child or loved one that day can begin to imagine the sorrow they are experiencing. But the sorrow and grief do not stop there. As President Obama stated on Sunday night in his remarks to the Newtown community, the nation collectively shares their sorrow, disbelief, and pain.

As we know, one need not be directly involved in an event to be affected by it. This horrible event forces us all to confront the notion that while we are the land of the brave and the home of the free, we share our land with evil, with senseless […]

2016-11-21T13:08:40-05:00December 19th, 2012|nursing perspective|1 Comment
Read More

In Memory of the Victims in Newtown

shawnkennedyBy Shawn Kennedy, AJN editor-in-chief

I could scarcely watch the news coverage of the horrific shooting that occurred in the small Connecticut town of Newton on Friday. It was just too awful. Children no older than seven, all shot, along with several teachers, by a young man who had already killed his mother and who later took his own life after causing unimaginable carnage. When the first reports emerged and newscasters were speculating on the number of people killed, I recalled then-mayor Rudy Giuliani’s reported response to a journalist who asked him how many were killed in the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center: “More than we can bear.”

As nurses, we are no strangers to what happens when violence occurs. We see the results of it every day in our workplaces. Individuals, families, and communities are changed forever, and often we as caregivers are, too. What begins as an ordinary day becomes a tragic milestone: future events are remembered as “before” or “after” the event.

I’m tired of hearing “Guns don’t kill people, people kill people.” Yes, but some guns make it a heck of a lot easier to do so, and in large numbers. We’ve had Columbine, Virginia Tech, the Aurora movie theater, a Portland mall, Congresswoman Gabby Giffords and others on an Arizona street, and now Newtown.  And as I was writing this, the Chicago Tribune reported that a 60-year-old man in Indiana was arrested after threatening […]

2016-11-21T13:08:43-05:00December 17th, 2012|nursing perspective|5 Comments
Read More

Precarious Hope: A Hospice Nurse Balances Truth and Kindness

This couple might be your elderly neighbors: he helps his wife into the house as she moves slowly, step by unsteady step, in time with her four-point cane; at the same time, you know that he is recovering from recent chemotherapy treatments. Or they may be your aging parents: your mother’s role as primary caregiver hampered by her right leg weakness from a stroke and advancing heart disease, while your father needs more care from day to day as his renal failure approaches the decision to begin dialysis or not. They support and care for each other.

PrecariousHopeIllustrationThe December Reflections column in AJN, “Precarious Hope,” is by an RN case manager at a hospice. She describes a couple in which one partner has dementia and the other has cancer, their mutual dependency, and the challenge of knowing how best to care for them:

In hospice, I’m often confronted with the difficulty of balancing honesty with kindness. I love a quote often attributed to the Buddha: “When words are both true and kind, they can change our world.” It follows that sometimes what is true is not kind, and that truth must be cloaked in kindness—as in this instance, as I sit at the table listening to George, whose hopeful, unrealistic comments confirm that he simply can’t hear the truth.

It’s a sensitive portrait of love, the fine line between self-delusion and perseverance, and the way that sometimes simply bearing witness is the […]

2016-11-21T13:08:44-05:00December 14th, 2012|nursing perspective|1 Comment
Read More

Comment ground rules

1. Please be respectful.
2. We moderate all comments.

Content disclaimer

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.
Go to Top