Nursing Archives - Page 106 of 407

Nurses Getting Things Done: A Red Cross Volunteer’s Experience

Providing support after a local disaster.

Red Cross volunteer nurse Debby Dailey hugging her client, Janetta Sconiers. Photo by Eddie Zamora for the American Red Cross

Most people are aware of the important role nurses play in the American Red Cross, from its founding by Clara Barton—138 years ago this week—to nurses’ contributions during national and regional disasters. Yet the varied work of these nurse volunteers is often unseen by other nurses, health care providers, and the public.

Within the Red Cross, nurses hold leadership, teaching, and crisis response positions, providing crucial and sometimes long-term follow-up assistance to people who’ve been affected by disasters.

Nurses “are in an ideal position to do this work.”

Debby Dailey is a nurse and former firefighter and emergency medical technician. She currently works as a nursing clinical instructor and has been a Red Cross volunteer for 40 years, responding to national disasters and playing an important role in all aspects of Red Cross work in her region, California’s Central Valley.

This month’s In the Community column, “Advocating for Janetta,” features a rare look inside a Red Cross nurse volunteer’s daily work. In it, Dailey sequentially […]

Corinne McSpedon, senior editor2019-05-24T10:28:11-04:00May 24th, 2019|Nursing|0 Comments

When Children Hurt

As an ER nurse, I saw a lot of people in pain, either arriving at our door to have their pain relieved or enduring the pain of needed treatments, knowing that the interventions were necessary. In my experience, though, there’s nothing worse than seeing a child in pain, and the younger the child, the more awful it was.

You began the encounter with a sick or injured child who was already frightened by the circumstances that had caused their parents or guardians to bring them to the hospital. It’s hard to get past the frightened eyes and tears, the little ones trying to burrow into their mother’s shoulder and not wanting to be put down on a paper-covered table. And this was before even attempting any assessment.

Nurse uses Wong–Baker FACES Pain Rating Scale to help assess patient’s pain. Photo by Gerry Melendez/The State/MCT via Getty Images.

Factors to consider in assessing a child’s pain.

We were taught that “pain is what the patient says it is,” and that still seems to be true of children’s reports of pain. But there are many factors that need to be considered, such as the […]

Shawn Kennedy, MA, RN, FAAN, editor-in-chief (emerita)2019-05-23T10:18:37-04:00May 23rd, 2019|Nursing, patient experience, Patients|1 Comment

Mild Cognitive Decline or Physical Limitations: What’s a Nurse to Do?

Noticing small changes in what’s possible.

I worked for many years in infection prevention and control, and loved it. Still do. But I loved bedside work too, and it was always in the back of my mind that I might one day return to staff work. That is, until I took care of a family member during the last year of his life.

While I think I provided him with reasonably good care—let’s not get into the emotional connection that made me a less objective caregiver than were his fantastic CNAs—there was no fooling myself any longer. After years away from the bedside, my assessment skills have slipped. I’m not used to working while wearing glasses (without which I can’t read labels or check for reddened skin or cloudy urine). And arthritis in my wrists meant that those bed-to-walker transfers were not optimally safe.

What about multitasking, 12-hour shifts?

My difficulty in providing physical care made me wonder whether my cognitive skills, too, might not be up to managing the pace and pressure of floor work today. I may still be good at supporting and teaching, but can I multitask through 12 hours of nonstop problem-solving and decision-making?

In “When Is It Time to Leave Nursing?” in this month’s AJN, nurse Janet Blake (a […]

Betsy Todd, MPH, RN2019-05-21T12:18:44-04:00May 21st, 2019|career, Nursing|0 Comments

Can You ‘Stop the Bleed’?

Reconsidering tourniquets.

Bystanders apply pressure to woman’s leg to stop bleeding after explosion at 117th Boston Marathon. Photo by John Tlumacki / Boston Globe via Getty Images.

Have you ever used a windlass tourniquet? I had never even heard of one until recently. The only tourniquets I knew were fashioned from belts, scarves, or neckties, and we were always admonished to use these sparingly, because it was thought that they could cause severe damage to a limb.

In “Leading the Effort to Promote Bleeding Control in Our Communities” in this month’s AJN, James Reed and Margaret Carman dispel myths about tourniquets and share the growing evidence for their safety.

They also introduce us to the Stop the Bleed campaign. Hemorrhage is the second-leading cause of death (head injury, the first) after a traumatic injury, and when an extremity is the source of bleeding, rapid tourniquet application saves lives.

“More than 50,000 casualties sustained in the wars in Central and Southwest Asia have provided evidence that recognizing hemorrhage and controlling it should be the highest priority in caring for an […]

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Betsy Todd, MPH, RN2019-05-16T12:15:52-04:00May 16th, 2019|Nursing, Public health|0 Comments

One in 4 Million: The Nurse Who Mentored Me

Hostility among nurses is a well-documented topic of discussion, a phenomenon studied by both academics and hospital administrators wanting to create functional teams. Perhaps the remedy for healthy nurse–coworker relationships isn’t found by studying dysfunctional relationships but by observing the successful ones.

I was lucky to have one.

I excelled as a student, even with balancing the role of nursing student with the role of mother to a preschool-aged daughter.

However, academic success and my talent for multitasking did not prepare me for the reality shock of a new-grad nurse.

Thrown into the deep end.

There was a nursing shortage. I was hired to a pediatric unit before graduation, skipping the two years of adult medical-surgical nursing before entering a specialty that was customary for new grads at the time. I began my first job, pending successfully passing state boards, with an interim permit.

It was an era before nurse residencies or comprehensive orientations. My orientation consisted of accompanying a day shift nurse while she managed her patients.

After two weeks, I began night shift on a 30-bed pediatric unit during the height of the respiratory infection season.

Night shifts were staffed with up to three RNs, overseeing certified nursing assistants. Often the CNAs came from agencies, possessing varying amounts of skill. As a new grad overseeing CNAs, […]

Julianna Paradisi, RN, OCN2019-05-08T08:44:03-04:00May 8th, 2019|career, Nursing, nursing career|1 Comment