Nurses Try Out Plant-Based Diet, Report Health Benefits

            If you don’t take care of your body, where will you live?

Photo from Shutterstock.

This adage, sometimes attributed to Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu, reminds us that the personal choices we make are important. Drugs and procedures are unlikely to ensure continuing good health, especially if we don’t first attend to the basics. And when it comes to personal choices, nothing is quite as personal as food.

Maybe this is why some nurses and physicians are so quick to dismiss decades of promising research on the effects of meatless diets. “People will never change the way they eat; it’s not worth talking about.” But as Michael Greger, a general practitioner specializing in nutrition and an advocate for plant-based diets, once said in a lecture I attended, “That attitude may be one of the true leading causes of death and disability.”

In “A Plant-Based Nutrition Program” in this month’s AJN, Joanne Evans and colleagues describe the results of a “personal experiment” in which nurses at three faculty-led community health clinics associated with George Mason University followed a plant-based diet for three weeks. Their goals were to

2017-12-19T10:03:39-05:00March 22nd, 2017|Nursing, nursing research|11 Comments
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How to Create a Poster that Attracts an Audience: New Research Yields Clues

Have you ever designed a poster to present at a nursing conference?

If so, how did you know what to do?

Today, digital design and printing capabilities present many options for professional-looking posters. But how can you increase the chances that nurses at a conference will actually read what you’ve gone to so much trouble to share?

In this month’s AJN, Sandra Siedlecki, PhD, RN, CNS, senior nurse scientist at the Cleveland Clinic, discusses the attributes of a good poster in an original research article: “How to Create a Poster That Attracts an Audience.”

Past articles in the nursing literature have described how to create a “winning poster,” but Siedlecki could find no actual evidence-based recommendations about poster design. So she set out to learn what attracts nurses to specific posters by surveying attendees at a nursing conference.

What captures the attention of conference attendees?

In addition to asking nurses to rate the importance of various poster design elements on a scale of zero to 10, Siedlecki also asked attendees these open-ended questions:

2017-03-13T10:13:59-04:00March 10th, 2017|Nursing, nursing research|0 Comments
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Nurses and Patient Safety: Parallel Histories

Photo from AJN archives.

I’m especially pleased that one of the CE articles in the February issue focuses on nursing’s role in creating a safe environment for patients: “Nursing’s Evolving Role in Patient Safety.” And in full disclosure, I was excited to see that the authors used the AJN archives to chronicle how nursing addressed (or didn’t address) safety issues around patient care.

From the earliest days of nursing through to the current complex systems in which we practice, nurses have been the health professionals responsible for ensuring safe passage of patients through the health care system. From Nightingale’s criteria for creating a healing environment to the “5 rights of medication administration,” patients rely on nurses to act as sentinels.

The authors reviewed 1,086 AJN articles from 1900 to 2015 and conducted a content analysis to identify patient safety themes. Aside from uncovering many fascinating (and sometimes alarming!) details of former health care practices, the authors drew this general conclusion:

“Emphasis on patient safety increased as patient care became more complex. As nurses developed a professional identity, they often put a spotlight on safety concerns and solutions.”

Here’s a quote from a nurse who wrote in 1908 about nurses’ duties:

2017-02-15T15:46:47-05:00February 15th, 2017|Nursing, nursing history, nursing research, patient safety|0 Comments
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Metabolic Syndrome: Lifestyle Factors and Prevention

Metabolic syndrome: one-third of U.S. adults.

Cycling Mother and Daughter, Netherlands/via Wikimedia CommonsConversations about health—whether between neighbors or between clinicians and patients—often revolve around weight problems, blood pressure, blood sugar, and cholesterol levels. Taken together, these are the cardiovascular risk factors referred to as metabolic syndrome.

In the United States, more than one-third of all adults have metabolic syndrome. This is an astonishing figure, especially because these risk factors can be modified.

What keeps some who are obese or overweight ‘metabolically healthy’?

In recent years, researchers have learned that some people who are overweight or obese do not demonstrate the other risk factors that are part of metabolic syndrome, and therefore these people have a lower-than-expected risk of cardiovascular disease. In a study reported in this month’s AJN (“Examining the Links Between Lifestyle Factors and Metabolic Syndrome“), a group of Taiwanese nurse researchers set out to learn whether there might be lifestyle factors that keep this subgroup of people “metabolically healthy,” protecting them from the other cardiovascular risk factors that usually come with extra weight.

Lifestyle factors associated with prevention.

Dr. Shu-Hung Chang and colleagues performed community-based physical exams on more than 700 people in northern Taiwan and questioned them about lifestyle factors including smoking, drinking, exercise, and the foods they ate. The […]

2017-07-27T11:53:43-04:00December 5th, 2016|nursing research, personal health practices|1 Comment
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Getting It Right: Putting the ‘QI’ in Quality Improvement Reports

Towards a Safer Health System

Photo of AJN editor-in-chief Shawn KennedyEver since the famous report To Err is Human: Building a Safer Health System was issued by the Institute of Medicine (now the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine) in 1999, health care institutions have been pushed towards reducing errors and increasing safety.

Changes have been spurred by accrediting and government organizations like the Joint Commission and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, by independent and professional initiatives like the Institute for Healthcare Improvement and the Magnet Recognition Program, and by consumer advocacy groups like the The Leapfrog Group and the National Patient Safety Foundation.

Nursing Education and Quality Improvement

Nursing, as the largest department in hospitals and the one tasked with shepherding patients through the system, is a key player in any system redesign and many nursing departments are playing an active role in improving the safety and quality of care.

Nursing education has also embraced the QI movement, adopting the Quality and Safety in Nursing (QSEN) program in many curriculums and also making it a hallmark of its doctor of nursing practice (DNP) programs. Developing and implementing QI projects is frequently a requirement for completing these programs. […]

2016-11-21T13:00:57-05:00September 29th, 2016|Nursing, nursing perspective, nursing research, patient safety|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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