If You Like Nursing History…

Pediatric NP, circa 1965

By Maureen Shawn Kennedy, AJN editor-in-chief

If you enjoy reading about nursing in the days of yore like I do, then there are a few resources I want to point out to you.

The first is Nursing History & Health Care, a Web site of the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing. The site was funded through several government and foundation grants and all the information is freely accessible, so this is a valuable resource. (In the interest of transparency: some years ago, Lippincott Williams and Wilkins, AJN’s publisher, donated many of AJN’s historical holdings to this institution.)

Last month, we published “Key Ideas in Nursing’s First Century,” by Ellen Davison Baer, professor emerita at the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing, Philadelphia, and cofounder and former associate director of the university’s Barbara Bates Center for the Study of the History of Nursing. It’s a concise review of the early days of American nursing’s development and organization. You can also listen to the author and me discussing the article and nursing history in general in a podcast.

And I would be remiss not to mention AJN’s own archives, which go back to the very first issue in October 1900. Access to these archives does require a subscription, but if you ask me (and I freely admit I’m biased), it’s worth it to have access to the classic articles that have shaped the profession. As an example, […]

2016-11-21T13:09:54-05:00June 14th, 2012|nursing history|3 Comments
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When Your Child Has a Scary Chronic Illness

By Jacob Molyneux, senior editor

It may be easier to live with a chronic illness than to have a child who has one. The June Reflections essay, “Seized,” is by a mother who eloquently evokes her struggle to accept her daughter’s epilepsy. She honestly confronts her own resistance to letting her daughter be a normal child—despite the terrifying episodes, the sense of helplessness she feels as a parent, the wish that she could always protect her daughter.

Here’s how it begins, but I hope you’ll click the link and read the entire essay.

It begins with a gurgle from deep in Daney’s throat: low, primal, guttural. In the next few seconds, her back will arch and her palms will turn up. Her 10-year-old self will twitch, then tremble, like she’s being electrocuted—and in a way, she is.


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2016-11-21T13:09:55-05:00June 13th, 2012|nursing perspective|0 Comments
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When It’s Not Just Heavy Menses: A Nurse’s Guide to Recognizing von Willebrand Disease

By Sylvia Foley, AJN senior editor

Blood red sky by Micky Zlimen, via Flickr

Quick, what’s the most common inherited bleeding disorder? As you might have guessed from the giveaway title, it’s not hemophilia. It’s von Willebrand disease, and it affects about 1.3% of the U.S. population.

Yet many nurses and other clinicians, as well as the public, are unaware of this disease, its symptoms, and the associated risks. Sequelae can include complications during pregnancy and childbirth, chronic joint disease, even death. In girls and women, menorrhagia is the most common symptom; while the disease is equally prevalent in both sexes, it can be more problematic for menstruating females. In our June CE article, “Just Heavy Menses or Something More? Raising Awareness of von Willebrand Disease,” author Josie Weiss seeks to improve the odds that nurses will know when to suspect that a patient has the disorder and what to do once diagnosis is confirmed.

Simply put, von Willebrand disease is caused by “genetic defects in the concentration, structure, or function of von Willebrand factor,” which is a protein essential to blood clotting. These defects result in episodes of excessive or prolonged bleeding, which can be mild to severe in intensity. Weiss describes the three main types of […]

2016-11-21T13:09:56-05:00June 11th, 2012|Nursing|0 Comments
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A ‘Ruined Generation of Men,’ Plus a New Class Divide? Digital Adverse Effects in the News

By Michael Fergenson, AJN senior editorial coordinator

LAN Party NW, 2009/Chase N., via Flickr

There continue to be questions raised about the harmful effects of the excessive use of digital devices, mostly in the young but also in adults. Such ills as ADHD, violence, poor school performance, social isolation, and bullying have been attributed to the overuse of gaming, the Internet, and social media Web sites.

A ruined generation of men? Psychologist Phillip Zimbardo, well known for his ethically borderline 1971 Stanford Prison Experiment, contends that video games and digital media do have a detrimental effect on today’s youth, especially males. His recent article, “The Demise of Guys: How Video Games and Porn Are Ruining a Generation,” argues that addiction to video games and online porn “is creating a generation of risk-averse guys who are unable (and unwilling) to navigate the complexities and risks inherent to real-life relationships, school and employment.”

He refers to stories such as a South Korean man who went into cardiac arrest after playing a video game for 50 hours straight, a man whose wife kicked him out because he couldn’t stop watching porn, and a mass murder suspect who claims to have used video games to prepare for his crime of shooting 77 people. Zimbardo argues there may be a link between violent video games and real-life aggression.

Causation is hard to prove, but many studies have pointed to negative physiologic and psychosocial effects of such games over […]

2017-03-27T12:15:49-04:00June 8th, 2012|Nursing|0 Comments
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A Decidedly Female Focus: June Highlights

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

This month’s issue of AJN has a decidedly female focus, from the cover to the last page.

On the cover, we used an illustration of ancient Roman mosaics depicting women exercising.

The editorial focuses on the politicization of women’s health issues. (Read it and see if you agree—we’ve already received both pro and con letters.)

AJN Reports discusses safety issues connected with the often unregulated sharing of breast milk among women via Internet-enabled sale or donation.

The two CE offerings focus on women’s health: “Managing Menopausal Symptoms” is the third in our series on women’s health and provides an overview of managing a few of the more common and troublesome menopausal “changes”—for the sake of historical perspective, we included an archival piece from 1910, “Dangers of the Menopause” (abstract only; archival articles require a subscription).

The other CE, “Just Heavy Menses or Something More? Raising Awareness of von Willebrand Disease,” takes a detailed look at an inherited bleeding disorder that afflicts equal numbers of men and women. While much of the article’s information on the disorder and its recognition and management is relevant for both sexes, the article draws particular attention to women who are often not diagnosed because the disorder may present through symptoms associated with a woman’s menstruation pattern.

Lastly, “Seized,” our moving Reflections essay this month, tells the story of a mother’s  feeling of powerlessness in the face of her daughter’s […]

2016-11-21T13:09:57-05:00June 6th, 2012|Nursing|0 Comments
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