AJN’s December Issue: Working During a Pandemic, HIV Foot Care, Healing Pet Visits, a Focus on Narrative

AJN1213.Cover.OnlineAJN’s December issue is now available on our Web site, just in time for some holiday reading. Here’s a selection of what not to miss.

Working during a pandemic. Flu season is in swing, but how do nurses feel about working during a flu pandemic? Researchers investigating terrorism and catastrophic events found that up to 96% of health care workers reported being unable or unwilling to work during some emergencies, with some infectious diseases associated with the highest rates of unwillingness. “Predictors of Nurses’ Intentions to Work During the 2009 Influenza A (H1N1) Pandemic,” December’s original research CE, suggests that providing adequate resources during an emergency (such as personal protective equipment) will not only ensure the safety of patients, nurses, and nurses’ families, but may also increase nurses’ willingness to work in times of crisis. Earn 2.5 CE credits by reading this article and taking the test that follows. If you’re reading AJN on your iPad, you can listen to a podcast interview with the author by clicking on the podcast icon on the first page of the article. The podcast is also available on our Web site.

HIV foot care. Peripheral neuropathy, which causes debilitating symptoms such as burning pain and sensation loss in the foot, continues to be prevalent in people with HIV, but is often overlooked. “HIV Peripheral Neuropathy and Foot […]

2016-11-21T13:05:57-05:00November 27th, 2013|nursing perspective, nursing research|0 Comments
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Scrubs on the Street: Big Concern?

This colorized 2005 scanning electron micrograph (SEM) depicted numerous clumps of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus bacteria, commonly referred to by the acronym, MRSA; Magnified 2390x. CDC/via Wikimedia Commons This colorized 2005 scanning electron micrograph (SEM) depicted numerous clumps of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus bacteria, commonly referred to by the acronym, MRSA; Magnified 2390x. CDC/via Wikimedia Commons

By Shawn Kennedy, AJN editor-in-chief

Last week I came across this article on the Reporting on Health blog from the Annenberg School of Communications and Journalism at the University of Southern California. It discusses one woman’s campaign to get hospital health care providers to stop wearing scrubs outside of the hospital. She wants people to photograph the ‘offenders’ and send the photos to hospital administrators. She’s concerned that the clothing will pick up infection-causing bacteria in the community and spread infection to weak, immunocompromised patients.

Wearing uniforms outside of the clinical setting has been debated on and off for years. Here’s an excerpt from an editorial comment that appeared in the March 1906 issue of AJN (you can read the full article for free as a subscriber):

AJNArchiveExcerptNursesonStreet

2016-11-21T13:05:59-05:00November 20th, 2013|nursing perspective, nursing research|6 Comments
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A Report from the ANA Safe Staffing Conference

Katheren Koehn, MA, RN, AJN editorial board member and executive director of MNORN (Minnesota Organization of Registered Nurses), reports from last week’s ANA conference on staffing held in Washington, DC.

staffiing Click image for source page at ANA staffing site.

The ANA Safe Staffing Conference ended on Saturday. There were almost 700 registered nurses from all over the country in attendance—nurses in management, direct care, and leadership—all gathered to try to discover new strategies for how to solve the most challenging issue in nursing: safe staffing.

Not a new issue. This has long been the most challenging issue for nursing. Teresa Stone, editor of Poems from the Heart of Nursing: Selected Poems from the American Journal of Nursing, told me that, as she was searching the archives of 113 years of AJN issues for her book, she found that staffing issues were a frequent theme. Today, as the work of nurses has become more complex, the need to create sustainable solutions to ensuring appropriate staffing is our most critical issue—hence the ANA Staffing Conference.

The body of evidence supporting the idea that appropriate nurse staffing makes a difference in saving patients’ lives has grown exponentially in the past 20 years. This evidence—paired with the new federal financial incentives for hospitals to improve patient outcomes and experiences—makes it seem inevitable that increasing nurse staffing would be […]

2016-11-21T13:06:06-05:00November 11th, 2013|career, health care policy, nursing perspective, nursing research, safe staffing|0 Comments
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Measuring Dyspnea Upon Unit Admission: Is It Feasible?

Do You Ask Your Patients about Dyspnea?

Photo by Thomas Northcut. Photo by Thomas Northcut.

As a CE article this month, we feature a report of a pilot study on routine assessment of dyspnea on admission to a patient unit. It’s routine to take vital signs on all patients on admission, but really, how many nurses actually stand there and count respirations for all patients? And even if you are the exceptional nurse who does, that doesn’t necessarily tell you if the patient actually feels any shortness of breath. And then, of course, there’s the issue of whether it’s a good idea to add to the burden of documentation that many nurses are already concerned about.

This article reports on one group’s experience piloting a short dyspnea assessment tool for all admissions on several units. Here’s the abstract:

The assessment of dyspnea, like that of pain, depends on patient self-report. Expert consensus panels have called for dyspnea to be measured quantitatively and documented on a routine basis, as is the practice with pain. But little information is available on how to measure and record dyspnea ratings systematically. Consequently, the prevalence of dyspnea in hospital settings may be greater than is generally recognized, and dyspnea may be insufficiently managed. This article describes a pilot study that sought to test the feasibility of measuring dyspnea as part of the initial patient assessment performed by […]

2016-11-21T13:06:08-05:00November 4th, 2013|nursing perspective, nursing research, Patients|0 Comments
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AJN’s November Issue: Voices of New RNs, Intraosseous Vascular Access, Measuring Dyspnea, Coccidiodomycosis, More

AJN1113 Cover OnlineAJN’s November issue is now available on our Web site. Here’s a selection of what not to miss.

New RNs. Hospitals invest in orientation or residency programs for newly licensed nurses, but turnover rates for first-year nurses remain relatively high. This month’s original research article, “Hearing the Voices of Newly Licensed RNs: The Transition to Practice,” looks at the orientation experience of new nurses in order to explore how institutions can best transition new nurses from an academic to a clinical setting. If you’re reading AJN on your iPad, you can listen to a podcast interview with the author by clicking on the podcast icon on the first page of the article. The podcast is also available on our Web site.

Starting an IV. Nurses are often faced with the challenge of starting an IV line in a patient who is dehydrated, has suffered trauma, or is in shock. This month’s Emergency CE feature, “Intraosseous Vascular Access for Alert Patients,” describes how nurses can use this fast, safe, and effective route for delivering fluids and medications when IV access fails. Earn 2.1 CE credits by reading this article and taking the test that follows. Don’t miss the video demonstration of the placement of an intraosseous  (IO) needle in the proximal tibia using an IO access power driver (click on the video icon on […]

2016-11-21T13:06:12-05:00October 25th, 2013|nursing perspective, nursing research|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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