Avoiding the Chaos of Unit Transfers

Photo by Photographer’s Mate 2nd Class Johansen Laurel, U.S. Navy.

Patient transfers between units can be less than orderly, resulting in miscommunication and frustration. Most ICU nurses have a war story (or two) that quickly comes to mind if asked about a memorable admission to their unit from the OR or recovery unit. I recall one instance, when I was a clinical nurse specialist covering critical care, in which I received a frantic call at 11:30 am from the ICU nurse manager.

Apparently, the ICU had been told they would receive a patient from recovery at about 2 pm. With this in mind, the ICU had arranged to transfer a patient out to a med-surg unit just after noon. The ICU manager had worked out the transfer time with the med-surg nurse manager to allow the med-surg RN to return from lunch before the transfer, and also to give the ICU nurse a chance to have lunch and prepare the equipment in the ICU slot for the new patient after it was cleaned by housekeeping.

But as it happened, the recovery nurse manager called the ICU at 11:30 am to say her unit needed the bed and the new patient […]

2018-02-20T10:06:37-05:00February 20th, 2018|Nursing, nursing research|0 Comments
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Will Millennials Stave Off a Threatened Nursing Shortage? Hard to Say

Photo © Cultura Creative (RF) / Alamy Stock Photo.

The aging of the baby boom generation means that a large proportion of the U.S. population will soon be living with health conditions that may require complex care. At the same time, it’s estimated that a million nurses will retire by 2030, resulting in an enormous loss of experience and knowledge, not to mention the possibility of a national nursing shortage.

Millennials to the rescue? It’s complicated.

Can millennial nurses help mitigate the effects of this workforce shift? As discussed in our February AJN Reports, “Nurses Pass the Baton: Exit Baby Boomers, Enter Millennials,” millennials (born between 1982 and 2000) are becoming nurses in larger numbers than any generation before them. In fact, the nursing workforce is expected to grow by 36% between 2015 and 2030.

Why this surge of millennials? Commentators have speculated that those who reached adulthood during the recent recession may be drawn to the relative job security of the nursing profession, or that this generation […]

2018-02-16T08:42:08-05:00February 16th, 2018|career, Nursing, nursing career|0 Comments
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Wabi-Sabi: Nursing and the Art of Brokenness

Wabi-Sabi (Kintsugi), watercolor and acrylic on paper, 2018 by Julianna Paradisi

Nursing is the art of healing, which ironically also makes it an art of brokenness. We pack and bind wounds. We administer medications to cure disease. We offer interventions for the side effects caused by the medication administered to cure.

We work in a health care system which, despite our best intentions, is broken: not enough resources, not enough staff or providers, not enough health care to go around for everyone.

Nurses have broken areas within ourselves too, but our work environments expect us to perform as perfectly as possible, amidst the brokenness of our patients, the brokenness of health care.

Patients, physicians, other departments, and hospital administrators expect nurses will fix problems, whatever they are, despite the brokenness.

A timely example this flu season is the paradoxical message: “Don’t come to work sick,” coupled with the implication, “Your sick call leaves us understaffed.”

The answer to brokenness is wholeheartedness.

The effort to fix the brokenness or imperfection of nursing and health care may be particularly exhausting for nurses because we are directly responsible for the safety of our patients.

The words of author David Whyte as he recounts a wise friend’s advice elegantly express […]

2018-02-14T10:05:33-05:00February 14th, 2018|healthcare social media, Nursing, nursing perspective|0 Comments
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Black Nurses, Then and Now

“Despite the surgeon general’s plea for more nurses to enlist, the army set a quota of 56 black nurses. However, the NACGN helped to abolish this quota, and by the end of World War II, more than 500 black nurses had served in the army and four had served in the navy.”

Nurses gathered at Camp Sherman, Chillicothe, Ohio, 1918.

The theme for this year’s Black History Month, “African Americans in Times of War,” was chosen by the Association for the Study of African American Life and History (ASALH)* to commemorate the end of World War I in 1918.

In keeping with the theme, we offer this photo, which appeared on the cover of our February 2010 issue. The cover story, by Alison Bulman, provided context:

It was 1918 and the armistice ending World War I had just been signed when black nurses gathered at Camp Sherman in Chillicothe, Ohio, to take the photo that appears on our cover. Although the Army Nurse Corps had been established some 17 years earlier, black nurses had only just been permitted to join. Despite their honorable service in the Spanish-American War in 1898 and in World War I, it wasn’t until the desperate need for nurses during the influenza pandemic of 1918 that black […]

2018-02-12T09:00:39-05:00February 12th, 2018|Nursing, nursing history|1 Comment
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Staying Current with Sepsis Tools, Definitions, and Practices

© Alamy Stock Photo.

Whatever happened to SIRS? Why don’t we use the term “severe sepsis” anymore? And what’s a qSOFA score?

Changing knowledge, changing practices.

Since the Society of Critical Care Medicine and the European Society of Intensive Care Medicine launched the Surviving Sepsis Campaign (SSC) in 2002, there has been an ongoing search for best practices.

Education campaigns have focused on early diagnosis and aggressive treatment. Best practices continue to evolve rapidly. As our understanding of sepsis pathophysiology has increased, definitions have changed and “sepsis bundle” interventions have been updated. […]

2018-02-09T09:57:19-05:00February 9th, 2018|guidelines, Nursing|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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