Nursing Archives - Page 259 of 406

How Military Service Affects Veterans’ Health: What All Nurses Need to Know

By Sylvia Foley, AJN senior editor

Photo (c) Associated Press

“The war tried to kill us in the spring,” says John Bartle, the narrator of The Yellow Birds, Kevin Powers’s acclaimed novel about two U.S. soldiers serving in Iraq. “I know now that everything that will ever matter in my life began then.” The same might be said by many war veterans. The effects of military service, especially on veterans’ health, vary greatly and can be lasting. And with most veterans seeking care through non-VA channels, it’s imperative that civilian nurses have some knowledge of the health issues veterans face.

In this month’s CE, “Enhancing Veteran-Centered Care: A Guide for Nurses in Non-VA Settings,” authors Barbara Johnson and colleagues describe a wide range of veterans’ health concerns and provide guidance for civilian nurses caring for these patients.

Overview: There are currently 22.5 million living U.S. military veterans, and this number is expected to increase dramatically as military personnel return from Iraq and Afghanistan. Although honorably discharged veterans may qualify for health care through the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), only about 25% of all veterans take advantage of this benefit; a majority seek services in non-VA settings. It’s imperative for nurses in all civilian care settings […]

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Guest Author2016-11-21T13:07:05-05:00July 3rd, 2013|Nursing|1 Comment

Realistic Expectations, Readiness, and Staff Wellness: Crucial Reminders for Potential Red Cross Nurse Volunteers

May 24, 2013. Moore, Oklahoma. One of 41 American Red Cross emergency response vehicles roams through a neighborhood affected by the storm. The Red Cross volunteers deliver food, water, and relief supplies to […]

Guest Author2016-11-21T13:07:06-05:00July 1st, 2013|nursing perspective|0 Comments

AJN’s July Issue: Caring for Veterans, Managing IBS, Reducing Readmission Rates, More

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

On our cover this month, U.S. Air Force first lieutenant Georganne Hassell is photographed during a presence patrol in Qalat City in southern Afghanistan. According to a 2011 U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs report, America’s Women Veterans: Military Service History and VA Benefit Utilization Statistics, by 2035, women will make up 15% of all living U.S. veterans. For more on the health issues of women troops and women veterans, see this month’s editorial.

And for an overview of how to recognize and assess veterans’ unique health care issues, such as posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), military sexual trauma, chronic pain, and traumatic brain injury, see our continuing education (CE) feature “Enhancing Veteran-Centered Care: A Guide for Nurses in Non-VA Settings.” This article, which also lists useful resources offering tools, educational materials, and veteran services, can earn you 3.1 CE credits. If you’re reading AJN on your iPad, you can listen to a podcast interview with the authors by clicking on the podcast icon on the first page of the article. The podcast is also available on our Web site.

The prevalence of irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) is estimated to be around 5% to 10% in North American, and it is diagnosed more often in people under the age of 50. No single drug effectively relieves all IBS symptoms. “Managing […]

Amy M. Collins, managing editor2016-11-21T13:07:07-05:00June 28th, 2013|nursing perspective|0 Comments

Fictional Nurses, Intractable Conditions, Nonspecific Symptoms, Frustrating Patients, More

Dept. of Bad Ideas..

By Jacob Molyneux, senior editor

Keeping up with the Web-sters. If you happen to use a Web reader of any sort to collect updates (feeds) from all your favorite nursing blogs and health care news sources in one place—we ran an article on using RSS feeds a while back, “RSS for the Uninitiated,” which will be free for the next month—you may know that Google Reader, long a convenient choice, will soon no longer exist. Here are 10 alternative readers you might want consider as replacements (and if you don’t use a reader already, you might want to try it).

A new kind of nursing blog. Nurse, artist, blogger Julianna Paradisi, who writes a monthly post for this blog, has just launched a new blog that will be narrated by a fictional nurse called Niki. This sounds like a really great idea that could go in a lot of potential directions.

Lyme disease continues to grow as a health threat in leafy environments further and further afield. It’s insidious, can attack the body in multiple ways, and there’s a huge amount of controversy about whether conventional short-term antibiotic treatments actually wipe it out or not. Many argue that it can be chronic, and that it’s often missed by the tests most often used to detect its presence. This article in the New Yorker gives a really good overview […]

Jacob Molyneux, senior editor/blog editor2016-11-21T13:07:08-05:00June 27th, 2013|nursing perspective|0 Comments

Retired ER Nurse Not Taking It Easy as Red Cross Volunteer

By Diane St. Denis, a retired ER nurse and a Red Cross Services advisor for the state of California. These are a number of brief excerpts from e-mails she sent to colleagues and friends and family as she was deployed to Oklahoma. They have been very lightly edited to capture the experience involved in having to rapidly respond to a disaster: exhaustion, people converging from all over, what it takes to bring order out of chaos and then be interrupted by a fresh onslaught of damaging and dangerous tornadoes; meeting with both gratitude as well as distrust of outside help from very independent local people, condoling those who have lost everything. For other posts in this series by Red Cross volunteers in the Oklahoma City area where the tornadoes struck in May, please click here.

May 22: I was called up to go to Oklahoma. I slept thru my alarm . . . and rushed to get to my plane, empty stomach, no coffee or tea. We landed about 10 minutes late, so I ran from terminal C to terminal B in Salt Lake City. I ran into some other Red Crossers in Salt Lake City as we were boarding the plane.