Nursing Archives - Page 227 of 407

Nursing Homes Need Nurses

By Amy M. Collins, managing editor

Photo by Ulrich Joho, via Flickr.

Recently, the Association of Health Care Journalists (AHCJ) released updated nursing home inspection data, which is “derived from a large file that is split up for easier use by members.” (Members get a data set containing three years of the most severe deficiencies found during inspections, as well as current ratings assigned by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services [CMS]. To register for membership and gain access to more detailed information, click here.)

A news release put out by AHCJ based on their analysis of these ratings isn’t pretty. The latest number of deficiencies recorded by the CMS (which range from “isolated incident of actual harm” to “widespread immediate jeopardy to resident health or safety”) has reached 16,806.

Medicare ratings themselves have also been called into question in a recent article suggesting that nursing homes with the highest ratings may be gaming the system. Despite these ratings being the gold standard in the industry, the data they are based upon on is largely self-reported by the nursing homes and not verified by the government. Often, details such as fines and other enforcement actions by the state, as well as complaints filed by consumers with state agencies, are left out.

Could part of the problem be […]

Amy M. Collins, managing editor2016-11-21T13:03:59-05:00September 4th, 2014|nursing perspective, nursing research|14 Comments

Labor Day Déjà Vu – Nurses’ Views of Work, Then and Now

By Maureen Shawn Kennedy, AJN editor-in-chief

Photo from otisarchives4, via Flickr.

If you like nursing history, there’s a new blog called Echoes and Evidence by the Barbara Bates Center for the Study of the History of Nursing at the University of Pennsylvania. (The first post draws on a 2005 AJN article on how nurses over 100 years ago responded to a series of typhoid epidemics in Philadelphia.)

Because AJN is over 100 years old (115 next year), it has a rich archive that I’ve been digging into recently (see my post from last week about an article Virginia Henderson wrote for AJN 50 years ago, and from late June, about nurses and D-Day).

So it seems especially fitting, just after Labor Day, to point to a January 1953 article by Sister Mary Barbara Ann, a former president of the Iowa Nurses Association (INA), which detailed findings from a survey of 223 general duty nurses in Iowa to learn their opinions of the hospitals in which they worked. I won’t present her exact findings here—we’ve made the article free until the end of September: just click through to the PDF. (Subscribers can always access the archives.) But here’s how she summarized what she learned:

“They [general duty nurses] are asking only for reasonable working conditions in which they can feel happy and secure. They are pleading for recognition and appreciation for what they are as persons and […]

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Shawn Kennedy, MA, RN, FAAN, editor-in-chief (emerita)2016-11-21T13:04:00-05:00September 2nd, 2014|infectious diseases, Nursing, nursing perspective|0 Comments

AJN’s September Issue: Anaphylaxis at School, Central Line Care, EBP, More

AJN’s September issue is now available on our Web site. Here’s a selection of what not to miss.

It’s back-to-school time, and on our cover this month is a photo of Head Start nursing supervisor Travia Williams weighing a student in the program’s classroom at Cocoa High School in Brevard County, Florida. The program provides enrolled children with screening, physicals, and other health care services.

According to the National Association of School Nurses, a third of all school districts in the United States have reduced nursing staff and a quarter don’t have any nurses at all. Yet there is the potential for more emergencies in school now than ever, with school nurses treating increasingly complex medical conditions and chronic illnesses. For more on the important role school nurses play in handling these health emergencies, see the In Our Community article, “Emergency Anaphylaxis at School.” And don’t miss a podcast interview with the author (this and other podcasts are accessible via the Behind the Article page on our Web site or, if you’re in our iPad app, by tapping the icon on the first page of the article).

Applying EBP to Practice. Despite the recognized importance of evidence-based practice (EBP), there continues to be a gap between the emergence of research findings and their application to practice. In this month’s original research article, “Staff Nurses’ Use of […]

Amy M. Collins, managing editor2016-11-21T13:04:00-05:00August 29th, 2014|career, nursing research|1 Comment

How Do You Define Nursing?

Virginia Henderson

By Maureen Shawn Kennedy, AJN editor-in-chief

Fifty years ago this month, in the August issue of AJN, Virginia A. Henderson, one of nursing’s giants, explained how she came to her definition of nursing: “The unique function of the nurse is to assist the individual, sick or well, in the performance of those activities contributing to health or its recovery (or to peaceful death) that he would perform unaided if he had the necessary strength, will or knowledge.” (We’ve made the article, “The Nature of Nursing,” free until September 30. Click through to the PDF under “Article Tools.”)

Many (older) nurses may remember Henderson as one of the authors of Harmer and Henderson’s The Principles and Practices of Nursing, a mainstay textbook for nursing schools, or for her internationally published book, Basic Principles of Nursing Care, which was translated widely. She also taught nursing at Teacher’s College, Columbia University, and then later at Yale University, where she developed a comprehensive index of nursing research. But her accomplishments went far beyond that. Her writings helped change how nursing was being regarded—from an occupation that existed only to provide physicians with helpmates to a scholarly, independent profession.

I had the good fortune to meet Henderson in the early 1990s, when she came to AJN’s offices to meet with Fred Pattison, AJN’s librarian at the time, who was also the editor of the International Nursing Index. She was warm, engaging, down-to-earth, and had […]

Amy M. Collins, managing editor2016-11-21T13:04:01-05:00August 27th, 2014|career, Nursing|2 Comments

Coincidental Violence Against a Nurse: More Prepared Than You Think?

Julianna Paradisi, RN, OCN, writes a monthly post for this blog and works as an infusion nurse in outpatient oncology.

The Myth of Closure/ oil stick and charcoal on paper 2014/ Julianna Paradisi

Recently I was attacked by a stranger while running in the bright, mid-morning sunlight of summer through a populated urban setting.

My attacker did not know I am a nurse, so it’s only coincidental that it was violence against a nurse. However, I believe my nurse’s training contributed to choices I made in response.

How It Began: As I was running towards home through a busy recreational area along the river, a disheveled man on a bicycle turned a corner from the opposite direction and I swerved left to avoid collision. I thought nothing of it, and continued on.

First Contact: A few yards later, the same man rode closely up alongside of me so suddenly that I was startled when he angrily yelled something in gibberish. My nurse’s education and experience had schooled me not to react, not to make eye contact, and to get out of his personal space. At this point, the sidewalk forked. The stranger continued towards the left. I went right, on the greenway along […]

Julianna Paradisi, RN, OCN2016-11-21T13:04:02-05:00August 25th, 2014|career, Nursing, nursing perspective|1 Comment