Strong Nurse and Patient Voices On the Blogs This Week

By Jacob Molyneux, senior editor/blog editor

Photo by mezone, via Flickr. Photo by mezone, via Flickr.

Here’s a short Friday list of recent smart, honest, informative blog posts by nurses, as well as a couple of interesting patient perspectives on prominent types of chronic illness and the ways they are talked about by the rest of us.

At Head Nurse, in “Yes…No. I’m Having Some Thoughts About BSNs,” an ADN-prepared nurse makes some familiar and some more surprising observations about the effects of the new policy of hiring mostly BSN-prepared nurses at her facility as it tries for Magnet status. For example, one of the effects she notes is “a massive drop-off in terms of the diversity of our nursing staff.” The move toward BSNs is obviously the trend in nursing, and is supported by research, but this doesn’t mean that there aren’t still two sides to the issue, or real unintended consequences to address as this change is gradually implemented.

At Hospice Diary, the blog of hospice nurse Amy Getter, there’s a post called “Hearts, Flowers, and Bucket Lists.” Reflecting on the imminent death of a patient, the author puts the popular notion of bucket lists into perspective:

“I think about some of the things I would still like […]

2016-11-21T13:02:58-05:00February 20th, 2015|career, healthcare social media, nursing perspective|0 Comments
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Fish Safety Concerns: Navigating the Waters

Considering the conflicting advice on eating fish that has appeared in the media over the past few years, the public is undoubtedly confused. Nurses and other health care professionals will likely find themselves having to address this issue, especially with pregnant and nursing patients and parents of young children, all of whom are likely to be concerned.

–(from “To Eat Fish or Not to Eat Fish” in the February issue of AJN)

Photo by Emilio Ereza/ag e fotostock Photo by Emilio Ereza/ag e fotostock

I’ve been hearing about the unexplained illness of a good friend’s close colleague for a number of months. Dozens of costly and invasive tests have been performed to explain her malaise, headache, chronic stomach and digestion problems, fatigue, dizziness, and so on. Recently, a potential culprit was identified: mercury poisoning. I don’t know all the facts, but her mercury poisoning may well have something to do with the fact that she eats sushi at least once a week, and perhaps a lot of other mercury-containing fish as well.

What does this have to do with nursing? Maybe a lot, in terms of providing sound nutritional advice to patients who might be at particular risk for mercury poisoning, or in terms […]

2017-07-11T14:49:23-04:00February 19th, 2015|Nursing, nursing perspective, Patients|0 Comments
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Paired Glucose Testing With Telehealth Support to Empower Type 2 Diabetes Patients

Jacob Molyneux, senior editor

bloodglucosetestingType 2 diabetes is challenging for those trying to meet blood glucose target ranges, often requiring one or more daily medications, increases in exercise, changes in eating habits, and self-monitoring of glucose level. Those who are willing and able to learn about factors affecting their glucose level and to make small daily efforts in one or more areas have the potential to radically improve their sense of control over their diabetes.

This month’s Diabetes Under Control column, “Better Type 2 Diabetes Self-Management Using Paired Testing and Remote Monitoring” (free until April 1), presents a successful story of patient engagement in diabetes self-management. It describes the case of a participant in a clinical trial who, with clinician support, incorporated paired glucose testing (self-testing before and after meals) and telehealth (remote patient monitoring, or RPM).

The article is easy to follow and gives a series of biweekly updates on the patient’s progress. Before the study starts, she’s not very engaged in self-management. For example, she’s only testing her own glucose level three to four times a month. To get a sense of how much more empowered she’s come to feel by week 12 of the protocol, consider this brief excerpt: […]

2016-11-21T13:03:02-05:00February 13th, 2015|digital health, Nursing, patient engagement, Patients|4 Comments
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Measles 101: The Basics for Nurses

While debates about measles vaccination swirl around the current U.S. measles outbreak, most U.S. nurses have never actually seen the disease itself, and right now we are a lot more likely to encounter a case of measles than of Ebola virus disease. Here, then, is a measles primer.

Symptoms.

Measles is an upper-respiratory infection with initial symptoms of fever, cough, runny nose, red and teary eyes, and (just before the rash appears) “Koplik spots” (tiny blue/white spots) on a reddened buccal mucosa. The maculopapular rash emerges a few days after these first symptoms appear (about 14 days after exposure), beginning at the hairline and slowly working its way down the rest of the body.

Infected people who are severely immunosuppressed may not have any rash at all. “Modified” measles, with a longer incubation period and sparse rash, can occur in infants who are partially protected by maternal antibodies and in people who receive immune globulin after exposure to measles.

Transmission.

The virus spreads via respiratory droplets and aerosols, from the time symptoms begin until three to four days after the rash appears. (People who are immunosuppressed can shed virus and remain contagious for several weeks.) Measles is highly contagious, and more than 90% of exposed, nonimmune people will contract the disease. There is no known asymptomatic carrier state, and no […]

2019-01-22T15:31:41-05:00February 11th, 2015|infectious diseases, nursing perspective|3 Comments
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A Nursing Conference Focused on Quality and Safety, and a Big ‘What If?’

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By Maureen ‘Shawn’ Kennedy, AJN editor-in-chief

“What would quality in hospitals look like if health care institutions were as single-minded about serving clients as the Disney organization?”

Last week I attended the 2015 American Nurses Association Quality Conference in Orlando. The conference, which had its origins in the annual National Database of Nursing Quality Indicators (NDNQI) conference, drew close to 1,000 attendees. Here’s a quick overview of hot topics and the keynote speech by the new Secretary of the Department of Veterans Affairs, plus a note on an issue crucial to health care quality that I wish I’d heard more about during the conference.

Most sessions presented quality improvement (QI) projects and many were well done. There were some topics I hadn’t seen covered all that much, such as reducing the discomfort of needlesticks, enhancing postop bowel recovery, and promoting sleep. But projects aimed at preventing central line infections, catheter-associated urinary tract infections (CAUTIs), and pressure ulcers ruled the sessions. These of course are among the hospital-associated conditions that might cause a hospital to be financially penalized by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). The ANA also had a couple of sessions on preventing CAUTIs by means of a tool it developed in the Partnership for Patients initiative of the CMS to reduce health care–associated infections.

The keynote by Robert McDonald, the fairly new Secretary of […]

2016-11-21T13:03:03-05:00February 9th, 2015|Nursing, nursing perspective, nursing research, safe staffing|2 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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