Preventing Delirium, The Luxury of Time, Things We Get Right, More: Nursing Blog Roundup

By Jacob Molyneux, senior editor

Here are a few recent posts of interest at various nursing blogs:

karindalziel/ via Flickr Creative Commons karindalziel/ via Flickr Creative Commons

In the throes of nursing school: An intriguing little pastiche of a poem (does it qualify as a ‘found word’ poem?) can be found at a newish blog, adrienne, {student} nurse, in a short post called anatomy of a bath. In another post, she makes the following observations: “In nursing school, you are not driving the train…You absolutely must keep telling yourself that there is nothing wrong with you.”

Preventing delirium in the ICU: At the INQRI blog (the blog of the Interdisciplinary Nursing Quality Research Institute), a post summarizes some recent research on implementing a “bundle” of practices to increase mobility and reduce sedation in the ICU, all in order to prevent patient delirium, which is known to have many short- and long-term negative effects.

The luxury of time. At Love and Ladybits, the author gets a tantalizing glimpse of the quality of care she’d be able to provide if she had more time to spend with each patient. Of course, this “alternative reality” can’t last, but perhaps it can serve as a touchstone of sorts during more […]

2016-11-21T13:05:16-05:00March 7th, 2014|career, healthcare social media, nursing perspective|1 Comment
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Nursing, HIV/AIDS, Continuity of Care, Treatment Advances, and the ACA: The Essentials

As the Affordable Care Act takes effect, a timely overview in AJN of recent developments in screening, treatment, care, and demographics of the HIV epidemic

CascadeofCare The ‘cascade of care’ (from the AJN article)

The newly released March issue of Health Affairs is devoted to looking at the ways the Affordable Care Act (ACA) will affect Americans with HIV/AIDS and those who have recently been in jail. One crucial feature of the ACA is that it prevents insurance companies from refusing coverage to those with a number of preexisting conditions. If you have a preexisting condition and don’t get insurance through work, you know how important this is.

Unfortunately, a large majority of those with HIV and AIDS do not have private health insurance. One article in the March issue of Health Affairs draws attention to the plight of the 60,000 or so uninsured or low-income people with HIV or AIDS who will not receive health insurance coverage because their states are among those that have chosen to opt out of the ACA provision that expands Medicaid eligibility. This means many patients in these states may lack consistent care and reliable access to life-saving drugs.

Antiretroviral therapy (ART) improves patient quality of life and severely reduces expensive and debilitating or fatal long-term health problems in those with HIV/AIDS. As noted in AJN‘s March CE article,

2016-11-21T13:05:17-05:00March 6th, 2014|health care policy, nursing perspective|3 Comments
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Acknowledging Nightingale’s Pervasive Influence on Medicine as We Know It

By Jacob Molyneux, senior editor

Florence Nightingale in Crimean War, from Wikipedia Commons Florence Nightingale in Crimean War, from Wikipedia Commons

There’s a very good article about Florence Nightingale in the New York Times right now (“Florence Nightingale’s Wisdom”)—and it’s by a physician.

The author, Victoria Sweet, writes that Nightingale was the last person she wanted to know about or identify with when she was in medical school. Then she gradually began to realize Nightingale’s extraordinary influence on modern medicine as it’s now practiced. As Sweet point out,

So much of what she fought for we take for granted today — our beautiful hospitals, the honored nursing profession, data-driven research.

It’s a good piece, and though you may already know some of what it covers, it’s well worth reading. For those who want to learn more about Nightingale, let me point out a series of short posts we ran back in the summer of 2010 on this blog. In Florence’s Footsteps: Notes from a Journey, written by Susan Hassmiller, senior advisor for nursing at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, detailed the stages of a trip she took that summer as she retraced Nightingale’s steps through England and all the way to the Crimea, all the while contemplating her legacy.

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2016-11-21T13:05:17-05:00March 4th, 2014|career, nursing history, nursing perspective|3 Comments
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AJN’s March Issue: New Series on Systematic Reviews, HIV Update, C. Diff on the Rise, Sexual Assault, More

AJN0314.Cover.OnlineAJN’s March issue is now available on our Web site. Here’s a selection of what not to miss, including two continuing education (CE) articles that you can access for free.

Advances in HIV testing and treatment. The photo on our cover, showing members of  Sexy With A Goal (SWAG), a program provided for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender individuals affected by HIV and AIDS by the AIDS Service Center of New York City’s Lower East Side Peer Outreach Center, reflects the changing face of the AIDs epidemic. Thirty years ago, a diagnosis of HIV was tantamount to a death sentence. But the young men on our cover prove that this is no longer the case. With advances in treatment and patient advocacy, education, and support, HIV is now a chronic, manageable disease. A CE feature, “Nursing in the Fourth Decade of the HIV Epidemic,” discusses HIV epidemiology and policy in the United States, the HIV care cascade, advances in HIV testing and treatment, and how nurses can continue to have a positive impact on the HIV epidemic.

If you’re reading AJN on your iPad, you can watch a video describing one author’s early experience with an HIV-infected patient by tapping on the podcast icon on the first page. The video is also available on our Web site. A

New option for victims of sexual assault. Until recently, survivors of sexual assault were not […]

2016-11-21T13:05:18-05:00February 28th, 2014|nursing perspective, nursing research|0 Comments
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Posttonsillectomy Pain in Children: Safer, More Effective Treatment Strategies

By Shawn Kennedy, editor-in-chief

Capture

One of the CE articles in the February issue is “Posttonsillectomy Pain in Children.” It might seem like a no-brainer—ice-collar, cold fluids, and acetaminophen with codeine, right? WRONG. As the article indicates, there’s a lot more to managing this stubborn, sometimes severe pain.

For one thing, there’s been a big reversal in choice of pain medication. Acetaminophen with codeine, long a mainstay in managing children’s pain, is no longer recommended—in fact, the FDA issued a black box warning last year saying that codeine should not be used because its metabolism rate in one subset of children can cause excessive sedation. Reports of three deaths and a case of nonfatal respiratory depression in children who received appropriate doses prompted the warning. […]

2016-11-21T13:05:19-05:00February 26th, 2014|nursing perspective, pain management|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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