Behind Our Ambivalence About Flu Vaccines

By Amy M. Collins, editor

Influenza virus particle/CDC

Tis the season to start thinking about getting the flu vaccination. Every year I consider doing so, but due to my own personal vaccine angst I usually decide to just take my chances (while simultaneously lecturing elderly family members to make sure they get theirs, of course).  Working in Manhattan, with the vaccine available at most pharmacies and even vaccine access through work, gives me very little reason to forgo vaccination. And my theory that I am young and strong and can brave illness gets weaker as I pass the point of being able to comfortably claim youth. Riding the subway every day amid a festival of germs reminds me that I should know better.

The vaccine has caused a stir over the past few years: during the 2009 H1N1 pandemic, people worried about whether or not to get the new combined vaccine, and the question of mandatory vaccination for health care workers remains a hot topic even now.

But a new report, The Compelling Need For Game-Changing Influenza Vaccines, released by scientists at the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, suggests that the flu vaccine may not be as effective as it is touted to be. According to the report, influenza vaccinations provide only modest protection for healthy young and middle-aged adults, and little if any protection for those 65 and older—those who are […]

2016-11-21T13:08:55-05:00November 9th, 2012|Nursing|3 Comments
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Depression in Older Adults: A Nurse’s Guide

By Sylvia Foley, AJN senior editor

‘Mourning Old Man’ by Vincent Van Gogh

“It is a misconception that depression is a normal, inevitable part of aging; it is not,” writes author Cynthia Cahoon in this month’s CE, “Depression in Older Adults.” Depression affects an estimated 15% to 19% of Americans ages 65 and older living in a variety of settings, yet it often goes unrecognized and untreated. Granted, recognition can be challenging, in part because many symptoms of depression are also common to other illnesses seen in older adults. As Cahoon points out, though, there is also “abundant evidence that depression in older adults is treatable, perhaps in as high as 65% to 75% of cases.”

The article provides an overview of depression in older adults and outlines its pathophysiology and disease types. Known risk factors for this population include the following:

  • chronic medical conditions
  • polypharmacy
  • multiple losses
  • functional decline (physical, cognitive, or both)
  • personal or family history of depression
  • social isolation
  • substance abuse or dependence

According to Cahoon, a majority of adults with depression will present for treatment of physical conditions, rather than for a mood disorder. So it’s important to assess each patient’s mood, regardless of presenting symptoms. Several brief, validated screening tools exist, and busy nurses have several options. One tool, the Whooley Depression Screen, takes less than five minutes to administer and asks just two questions:

1. During the past month, have you often been bothered […]

2017-07-27T14:53:25-04:00November 6th, 2012|Nursing|1 Comment
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One of Many Hurricane Sandy Nursing Stories


Margot Condon is an NYU Langone Medical Center neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) nurse whose story “went viral” this past week. She was photographed in her efforts to preserve the life of an eight-hour-old infant, as part of a team that evacuated the child down nine flights of stairs. Click the image above to go to the CNN interview with Condon. Such extreme life-saving tasks may not be in a nurse’s job description, but they go to the heart of the nursing profession and its ethos of caring and commitment.

This is just one story from Hurricane Sandy. We know there are many others we will be hearing about in the coming weeks. Here’s a short description from the CNN page with the video:

In the photo, she’s holding a small baby…and pumping air into its lungs outside the hospital during the emergency evacuation. Backup generators failed during Superstorm Sandy and the medical staff was tasked with safely transferring everyone to other facilities.

It took a team of at least six people to get the fragile patient safely down nine flights of stairs in the dark. They had to coordinate their movements, each with a different job. The doctor was there, the security guard with an oxygen tank, the father and others assisting. The baby’s mother was still hospitalized during the dramatic mission.

Condon, a nurse for 36 years, says she remained focused on each step they needed to take, but has never seen […]

2016-11-21T13:09:00-05:00November 5th, 2012|Nursing|1 Comment
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In Sandy’s Wake, Emerging Nurse Stories and Some Resources for Now and Next Time

By Maureen Shawn Kennedy, MA, RN, AJN editor-in-chief

Whether the National Weather Service officially categorized Sandy as a tropical cyclone or a hurricane, the damage it caused was unprecedented as it made its way through the mid-Atlantic area and up through the Hudson Valley and New England.

I’m one of millions without power, but consider myself lucky, given the horrific damage sustained by many in neighboring areas. The severity of the storm really hit home as I learned about hospital closings—as any nurse or physician will tell you, it’s not something done without a great deal of deliberation, as moving severely ill patients carries its own significant risks.

In Brooklyn, Coney Island Hospital, a city-owned facility, was closed. In Manhattan, New York Downtown Hospital and the Manhattan VA Medical Center moved or discharged patients before the storm hit. And because of storm damage, New York University Langone Medical Center and more recently, Bellevue Hospital Center, the 275-year-old flagship hospital of New York’s municipal hospital system, were evacuated.

Stories are emerging about the heroic efforts of hospital staff who worked through the storm, evacuating patients down many flights of stairs, using plastic sleds as they slid patients down as many as 17 flights in some instances. The stories reminded me of those I heard from nurses at Charity Hospital in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, and from nurses from St John’s Medical Center in Joplin, Missouri, which was hit by a tornado, or […]

2016-11-21T13:09:01-05:00November 2nd, 2012|Nursing|1 Comment
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Calling All Hurricane Sandy Nursing Stories

Hurricane Sandy, October 28/ NASA photo

AJN‘s offices in Manhattan remain closed today, with no subway service and various continuing power outages in many areas where the staff live in New Jersey, Manhattan, and other surrounding areas. We’re all keeping up as well as we can with our production and editing processes. Meanwhile the presidential election, sure to have a substantial impact on health care in the U.S., creeps ever closer. Please let us know in the comments section any stories you have of nurses and their experiences during Hurricane Sandy and its aftermath. Or share photos. We’d love to get a sense of how it went for nurses out there who were affected by the storm, and we hope to provide open access to some of our disaster care and preparedness articles in the next couple days. AJN Oct. cover, detail

The editors

2016-11-21T13:09:02-05:00October 31st, 2012|Nursing|3 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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