Virtual Nursing, AFib Update, and More June Issue Highlights

The June issue of AJN is now live.

Here are some highlights. Some articles are open access or temporarily free; others will require log-in for access.

How do hospitalized patients feel about the use of virtual nurses for tasks like admissions, discharges, patient education, and answering questions? In their Original Research article in this issue, “Patients’ Experiences of a Virtual Nursing Model in an Acute Care Setting: A Mixed-Methods Study,” Tajudaullah Bhaloo and colleagues explore patients’ perspectives on a co-caring virtual nursing model as part of their care in a medical–surgical acute care unit.

This month’s CE article, “Updates on the Management of Atrial Fibrillation,” (free to access) reviews the latest guidelines from the American College of Cardiology, American Heart Association, American College of Clinical Pharmacy, and Heart Rhythm Society, highlighting three core components: anticoagulation in nonvalvular AF, rate control, and rhythm control.

The newest installment of our Evidence-Based Decision-Making (EBDM) series, “Evaluation for Clinical Practice Change,” explores evaluation within EBDM and clinical practice–focused projects (EBP, QI, and EBQI), presenting practical QI tools to support clinical practice change. A commentary, “Positioning DNPs to Lead,” accompanies the article.

An open-access Quality Improvement article, “Reducing Blood Culture Contamination Rates in the ED,” […]

2026-05-21T09:53:36-04:00May 21st, 2026|Nursing|0 Comments
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Helping Patients Live Inside Changing Realities

Why earlier palliative care conversations matter in oncology nursing

Image of oncology nurse and a patient discussing palliative care options in a warm and supportive settingOne patient I still think about came in frequently for supportive care visits. Technically, the appointments were straightforward. She was there for things like IV fluids or symptom management. But her visits were rarely simple. She had questions about labs, treatment side effects, fatigue, and what different changes in her body meant. Over time, our conversations expanded beyond the immediate medical task in front of us.

She talked about how much harder everyday life had become. She tired easily. Walking longer distances became difficult. She was losing independence in ways that frightened her. Eventually, we began talking about mobility aids. She did not want a walker or wheelchair. To her, they represented loss.

I remember trying to reframe the conversation. I told her that using a walker did not mean she had stopped living fully. If being outdoors mattered to her, then the goal was not preserving the image of how she used to move through the world. The goal was helping her continue participating in the parts of life she still loved. A wheelchair might allow her to […]

2026-05-19T12:02:50-04:00May 19th, 2026|Nursing, Oncology nursing, Palliative care|0 Comments
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Nurses Know Safety Can’t Depend on Assumptions

In health care, we are trained not to rely on assumptions. We build systems that anticipate risk, standardize response, and make the next step clear before it is needed. When something goes wrong, we do not improvise. We follow a plan that already exists.

This is why it is so striking to encounter environments where safety depends almost entirely on assumption.

The tragic example of AED accessibility.

I began thinking about this outside of health care. I came to this through someone I know, John Ellsessar, whose life has been shaped by loss. His son, Michael, died at 16 after suffering sudden cardiac arrest on a high school football field where an AED was not immediately accessible.

That experience changed what he did next. It also changed how I think about a question that often goes unasked: What is the plan when something goes wrong?

Consider sudden cardiac arrest. It is one of the few situations in medicine where the response is both straightforward and time-dependent.

When John explained it to me, he put it simply: A heart attack is a plumbing problem, a blocked artery.
Sudden cardiac arrest is an electrical problem. The heart’s rhythm stops. […]

2026-05-15T13:18:43-04:00April 27th, 2026|Nursing, Public health|0 Comments
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TAVR Review, Skin Tone Representation in Nursing Texts, and Other May Issue Highlights

The May issue of AJN is now live.

Here are some highlights. Some articles are open access or temporarily free; others will require log-in for access.

AJN senior clinical editor Christine Moffa’s guest editorial (free to read) addresses the 2026 Nurses Week theme—The Power of Nurses. “If there is a message to carry into this Nurses Week, it may be that the vigilance we practice at the bedside can guide us as a profession,” she writes. “Noticing what is subtle, identifying what is shifting, and acting before harm takes hold, these are skills we already possess.”

Over the past decade, transcatheter aortic valve replacement (TAVR) has become a transformative intervention for patients with aortic stenosis (AS). This month’s CE article, “The Evolution of Transcatheter Aortic Valve Replacement: From Novel to Normal,” (also free to access) reviews current approaches to evaluation, diagnosis, and management of AS before and after TAVR, as well as the evolving role of TAVR in the treatment of AS.

In their original research article, “Dark Skin Tone Representation in Foundational Nursing Textbooks: A Quantitative Image Analysis,” Eleonor Pusey-Reid and John Wong evaluate how prelicensure nursing texts visually represent clinical conditions across diverse skin tones, with a focus on the extent to which dark […]

2026-05-04T09:47:31-04:00April 23rd, 2026|Nursing|0 Comments
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What’s in the Air? Rethinking Airflow and Infection Risk in Health Care

Image generated using Google’s Nano Banana 2, 4/20/26.

For nurses, environmental infection prevention is often framed around visible conditions such as high-touch surfaces, shared equipment, and visible dirt. In my experience, airflow and ventilation are not topics that receive significant emphasis in nursing education or orientation. While this may vary by setting, many nurses are left to learn these concepts in practice rather than through formal training.

With the recent COVID-19 and measles outbreaks, there has been more focused attention placed on contaminated air as a risk to patient safety. In my work with health care teams across settings, I’ve found that while nurses are highly attuned to cleaning and disinfection practices, airflow and ventilation are often assumed to be “handled” by the facility operations staff. In reality, these systems depend heavily on how the environment is used at the bedside. Small, routine actions—like leaving a door open or introducing a fan—can unintentionally disrupt carefully designed controls.

This gap in awareness among clinical staff matters. While the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention continues to report progress in reducing health care-associated infections (HAIs), these infections remain at a persistent risk for patients. Expanding the nurse’s focus on the environment […]

2026-04-22T12:32:28-04:00April 21st, 2026|infection control, infectious diseases, Nursing, Public health|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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