At the Terminus of Romantic Dreams, an ICU

It was early. The sun had yet to rise, but already the ICU was filled with stark fluorescence and beeping alarms. My patient sat alone and aphasic, helpless amidst the bustle of the unit. The day stretched long ahead of us.

The circumstances of Frank’s admission were unusual. The nursing report (conveyed with a snicker) was that, while vacationing in our coastal city with his mistress, he’d slipped away and visited yet another lady friend. While engaged in an “intimate” act, he’d hit his head on the coffee table and been knocked unconscious.

The paramedic’s report backed up that version of events, but Frank’s admission CT scans of the brain weren’t consistent with head trauma. Instead, a vascular abnormality was found. He’d suffered two seizures since admission to the hospital.

That’s the start of “The Love Song of Frank,” the Reflections essay in the May issue of AJN. Click on its title to read the entire essay (and, once there, perhaps click through to the PDF version for the best read). 

Those of you who know the T. S. Eliot poem “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” (beautifully spun, and a favorite of bookish adolescents for its highly quotable and world-weary take on conventional society) will recognize the irony in the title.

But the essay, by ICU nurse and regular AJN blogger Marcy Phipps, stands on its own in its sympathetic but unsentimental description of a nurse’s encounter with a man who’s reached the limits of […]

2016-11-21T13:10:15-05:00April 26th, 2012|nursing perspective|3 Comments
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Books or e-Books: How Do You Read?

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

I just finished reading a report, released earlier this month from the Pew Research Center, on the rise of e-reading—whether on e-book readers like Kindles and Nooks; tablet devices like iPads; cell phones; or computers. The report details the results of surveys of nearly 3,000 adults ages 16 years and older conducted in December, 2011, and then again in February, 2012, about their reading habits.

Prior to the 2011 holiday season, approximately 17% of adults had read an e-book in the previous year, but in the post-holiday survey early the next year, following holiday gift giving, that number had jumped to 21%. While printed books still dominate (in December, 2011, 72% of Americans reported that they had read a printed book in the past 12 months), e-reading is growing more popular. And it seems that those who read e-books are spending more time reading “since the advent of e-content”: in particular, 41% of tablet owners and 35% of e-reading device owners say they are reading more now.

Format follows function. One question asked in the December 2011 survey was which format was better for a variety of reading situations. E-books scored slightly higher than print books for reading in bed (45% vs 43%), but considerably higher for reading while traveling or commuting (73% vs 19%), availability of broad selection of content (53% vs 35%), and “being able to get […]

2016-11-21T13:10:15-05:00April 24th, 2012|Nursing|3 Comments
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The ‘Inexhaustible Well’: Notes from a Trauma Nurse on Mortality

By Marcy Phipps, RN, a regular contributor to this blog. Her essay, “The Love Song of Frank,” will be published in the May issue of AJN.

Years ago, long before I was a nurse, I read The Sheltering Sky, by Paul Bowles. He speaks of the tendency of people to take life for granted, and says that in the unpredictability of death there lies a presumption that everything is limitless:

“Because we don’t know when we will die, we get to think of life as an inexhaustible well. Yet everything happens only a certain number of times, and a very small number really. How many more times will you remember a certain afternoon of your childhood, an afternoon that is so deeply a part of your being that you can’t even conceive of your life without it? Perhaps four, five times more, perhaps not even that. How many more times will you watch the full moon rise? Perhaps 20. And yet it all seems limitless.” 

Lately, especially at work, that quote has edged forward and lingered with me. The ICU I work in is primarily devoted to trauma, but there’s been a recent shift in patient demographics. Last week I took care of only one trauma patient—an athlete who’d […]

2016-11-21T13:10:16-05:00April 19th, 2012|Nursing, Patients|7 Comments
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Future Nurses Have Their Say

By Maureen Shawn Kennedy, AJN editor-in-chief

I spent part of last week in Pittsburgh, attending the National Student Nurses Association (NSNA) annual meeting. This one was special—the 60th anniversary of the organization.

Despite the celebratory air (not only because of the anniversary, but because the organization had exceeded its membership goal of 60,000 members), the 2,700 attendees seemed very serious about the work of the organization and about learning skills to help them in their careers—there were few slackers in this crowd.

The approximately 500 students who represented their states in the house of delegates dealt with some 40 resolutions, on such diverse topics as increasing awareness of the effects of third-hand smoke on children to supporting the “BSN-in-10” movement (a push for legislation requiring all new nurses to get bachelor’s degrees within 10 years).

For me, the best part is meeting future nurses and speaking with them about career plans. I met many students in the exhibit hall, where I was demonstrating AJN’s new iPad app. Unlike last year, when jobs seemed to be scarce, many of the seniors I spoke with this time around had already secured jobs—and those who hadn’t seemed confident they would.

Finish this sentence . . . I asked several of those about to start their nursing careers to finish the following sentence: “I’m excited about starting my nursing career because . . .” You can listen to their comments in this short podcast.

 

2018-03-28T10:37:45-04:00April 17th, 2012|career, students|0 Comments
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Emergency Contraception: Why It Matters and How Nurses Can Improve Access

By Sylvia Foley, AJN senior editor

Unintended pregnancy can, in some circumstances, be detrimental to the health of both the women who become pregnant and the children born as a result. And such pregnancies happen far more often than you might think, accounting for nearly half of all pregnancies in this country, with even higher rates among women ages 18 to 24 and low-income women. Yet we have had the means to safely prevent such pregnancies for decades, through emergency contraception. Why isn’t emergency contraception used more often?

That’s a question author Kit Devine explores in “The Underutilization of Emergency Contraception,” one of April’s CE features. First, Devine describes the four methods currently available: conventional oral contraceptives and the copper intrauterine device (IUD)—both are used for birth control and can also be used to prevent pregnancy after intercourse has occurred—and the agents levonorgestrel and ulipristal acetate, which are FDA-approved for emergency contraception. Effectiveness ranges from 51% to 62% (for conventional oral contraceptives) to as high as 99% (for IUDs).

Known and likely barriers to their use include […]

2016-11-21T13:10:18-05:00April 16th, 2012|Nursing|1 Comment
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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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