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Health Care Terms and Words To Retire and Replace?

This week, two bloggers posted lists of words or terms they felt should no longer be used when referring to health professionals or patients.

Harrison Reed, a physician assistant who writes for In Practice, a blog at NEJM Journal Watch, wrote “Seven Medical Terms to Ditch in 2017.” On his list was LFTs (liver function tests); regular rate and rhythm (RRR): little old lady (LOL); AAM or AAF (other potential objections aside, these are often taken to mean African-American male or female, but can just as easily mean Asian-America male or female); and nauseous when one actually means nauseated. He also would like to see an end to the use of the modifier “midlevel,” as when it’s used to refer to NPs or PAs as “midlevel providers.”
Over at KevinMD.com, physician Pamela Wible published “Stop saying these 7 shaming words in medicine. Right now.” Her list included phrases to abandon, along with replacements that she believes to be more accurate and/or respectful. For example, she advocates replacing “is bipolar” with “has bipolar disorder.” She also wants to replace the phrase “is the patient noncompliant?” with “is the treatment working?” “Noncompliant,” as she points out, conveys blame. (Nonadherence may now be the preferred term—there are many reasons someone may not be able to adhere to a treatment plan.) Wible also wants to eliminate the terms “burnout,” “provider,” […]
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Shawn Kennedy, MA, RN, FAAN, editor-in-chief (emerita)2017-01-11T12:45:05-05:00January 10th, 2017|healthcare social media, Nursing, nursing perspective|0 Comments

Stop the Eye Rolling: Welcoming Future Nurses to the Profession

Rosemary Taylor

One perennial topic that comes up among nurses on social media is the extent to which many nurses have been treated unkindly by colleagues at some points in their careers. New nurses and nursing students are, for obvious reasons, particularly vulnerable to rudeness and other forms of unprofessional conduct. The Viewpoint in the January issue of AJN, “Stop the Eye Rolling: Supporting Nursing Students in Learning,” by Rosemary Taylor, PhD, RN, CNL, assistant professor of nursing at the University of New Hampshire, makes the case that nursing students often face an “unwelcoming introduction” to the profession when they venture out of the classroom for clinical instruction.

Writes Clark:

Nursing students are often targets of the kinds of incivility that can be classified as vertical violence. The majority of these incivilities are “low risk,” as described in Cynthia Clark’s “continuum of incivility,” with eye rolling (“low risk”) just below sarcasm on one end of the spectrum and threatening behaviors and physical assault (“high risk”) on the other.

Citing her own students’ sometimes disheartening experiences, as well as Cynthia Clark’s book Creating and Sustaining Civility in Nursing Education, Taylor makes a convincing argument that “eye rolling, a seemingly trivial gesture, is in fact a particularly hurtful form of nonverbal aggression.”

Yet, says Taylor, these and other forms […]

Jacob Molyneux, senior editor/blog editor2017-01-05T08:25:57-05:00January 5th, 2017|Ethics, Nursing, nursing perspective, nursing students|7 Comments

AJN in January: Triglycerides, HPV–Related Oral Cancers, Year in Review, More

The January issue of AJN is now live. Here are some articles we’d like to bring to your attention.

CE Feature: “Triglycerides: Do They Matter?”

In light of the increasing incidences of obesity, insulin resistance, and type 2 diabetes, lowering triglyceride levels has been getting renewed interest. In addition to the focus on lowering low-density lipoprotein cholesterol levels in cardiovascular disease (CVD) prevention, clinicians need to be aware of the role of triglycerides—their contribution to CVD, and the causes and treatment of hypertriglyceridemia. In this article, the authors discuss the importance of lowering triglyceride levels and review the lifestyle changes and pharmacologic treatments that can help achieve this goal.

CE Feature: “Human Papillomavirus-Related Oral Cancers: The Nurse’s Role in Mitigating Stigma and Dispelling Myths”

The prevalence of human papillomavirus (HPV)–related oral cancers has been rising, with the cancers occurring in adults at a younger age than HPV-negative oral cancers typically do and in men more often than women. Because HPV is sexually transmitted, diagnosis with an HPV-related oral cancer may prompt feelings of shame and guilt. It’s essential for nurses to educate patients on HPV transmission and HPV-related oral cancer, thus helping to mitigate the stigma and dispel myths, and to promote vaccination in at-risk populations, including children and young adults.

In the News: […]
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Diane Szulecki, editor2016-12-30T10:46:54-05:00December 30th, 2016|Nursing|0 Comments

AJN: Holding the Line on Quality in 2016

In the midst of the day-to-day demands of our lives and the constant multitasking, it’s often hard to step back and think about where the time went. Days and events seem to blur together. During the last week of the year, I like to review my calendar. I find that this exercise helps me put the year in perspective and revisit what I’ve done and who I’ve done it with.

My December editorial, “Taking Care of Business,” addresses how we can sometimes overlook colleagues who go about doing their jobs with little drama or complaint: the volunteers who give their time to free clinics, those who serve in the military or public service, the quietly competent colleagues we work with every day. They can easily become part of the blur of passing days because they show up, do their work, and move on to the next thing that needs to be done.

In the editorial, I briefly mentioned my colleagues here at AJN in that category. The staff works diligently to ensure that all manuscripts are fact-checked for accuracy and are edited to present the content in the best light and form. After a first round of editing, the articles are then copyedited. They’re laid out in page proofs and go through additional proofreading by a copy editor, nurse editors, and the article’s author(s). The process can be painstaking and repetitive, but accuracy and quality don’t happen without careful attention.

While AJN has […]