Stillness and Violence: The Dog Days

By Marcy Phipps, RN, whose essay, “The Soul on the Head of a Pin,” was published in the May 2010 issue of AJN. She’s a frequent writer  for this blog.

If I had a crystal ball, I might have called in sick. Or at least gotten more sleep.

They brought the patient up at the start of our shift, and he was a ‘train wreck.’ He’d been shot many times and he was bleeding out before our eyes. I don’t know how much blood we gave him—I can only say it seemed endless . . . blood and fresh frozen plasma and platelets, volume expanders and fluids. The room was packed with trauma surgeons and nurses and jammed with equipment: the rapid transfuser, ventilator, Bair Hugger, pressure bags, pumps and coolers.

Our tech must have covered miles, running to the blood bank for one cooler after another full of blood products.

From the outside, the melee must have looked like chaos. But it was actually a calculated and very effective frenzy, for a while. Amidst the rushing and crowding, the shouting and alarms, amongst people and equipment, spills and blood splatters, we were staying ahead of the game. He was perfusing and his blood pressure was adequate. But it wasn’t long before his pressure was barely adequate, and he was just barely maintaining, and then, despite our urgency and expertise, despite science and wings and prayers, we were losing. His blood pressure was dropping, no matter what we did. […]

2016-11-21T13:12:33-05:00June 24th, 2011|Nursing|5 Comments
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It’s Nice to Be Recognized: The 2011 Magnum Opus Awards


We can’t help but crow a little and share our good news. AJN has been recognized by the 2011 Magnum Opus Awards for custom-publishing editorial excellence—sponsored by ContentWise and the Content Marketing Institute and judged by professors from the Missouri School of Journalism and leading custom-publishing professionals—in the following three categories:

Gold – Best Blog Entry
“No Country for Old Women”
Amy M. Collins, September 22, 2010

Silver – Best Signed Editorial or Essay
“No Time for Complacency in AIDS Prevention”
Shawn Kennedy, March 2010

Honorable Mention – Best Sidebar
“Men Get Breast Cancer, Too”
Amy M. Collins, October 2010

The AJN staff works hard to produce editorial content that will inspire, engage, and inform our readers. Our mission is to promote excellence in nursing and health care through the dissemination of evidence-based, peer-reviewed clinical information and original research, discussion of relevant and controversial professional issues, adherence to the standards of journalistic integrity and excellence, and promotion of nursing perspectives to the health care community and the public.

The Magnum Opus awards focus on publications in many different industries, not just health care. Competing against other industries and being recognized as winners in an award like this fuels us to work even harder. We appreciate the acknowledgment and thank everyone involved in creating and delivering such excellent work. The work doesn’t stop here!—Amanda Geer, administrative coordinator

2016-11-21T13:12:34-05:00June 22nd, 2011|Nursing|1 Comment
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Making Homes Safer

By Shawn Kennedy, AJN editor-in-chief—The Canadian Partnership for Children’s Health and Environment suggests five actions for parents to follow to reduce their children’s exposure to environmental hazards at home. While the recommendations are not really new, it’s worth reminding parents of young children and women who are pregnant or contemplating pregnancy to be mindful of potential hazards from common household substances. Here are the recommendations (you can download the free brochure):

  1. Minimize dust in the air (which may contain minute lead particles) by frequent vacuuming and by using a damp cloth when cleaning.
  1. Use nontoxic cleaners (baking soda or vinegar and water are recommended as ‘green’ cleaners, and a number of commercial products without harmful chemicals are now available) and avoid antibacterial soap and items with added fragrances to minimize exposure to chemicals.
  1. Seal off areas undergoing renovation to avoid dust and fumes. Caution women who are pregnant and young children to avoid the area.
  1. Minimize exposure to plastic to avoid exposures to bisphenol A (BPA) and polyvinyl chloride (PVC). Avoid storing food in plastic (glass or ceramics are recommended) or microwaving food that’s in plastic containers or covered with plastic wrap; discard soft plastic toys that contain vinyl or PVC that might be used by or come into contact with infants and children.
  1. To minimize exposure to mercury, be mindful of the kind of fish you eat and how often you eat it.

Also, see “Best Practices in Environmental Health” in our June 2009 issue.

2016-11-21T13:12:39-05:00June 20th, 2011|Nursing|1 Comment
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So What? An Invitation to Nurses To Tell Us How They’re Translating Research into Practice

By Inge B. Corless, PhD, RN, FAAN, professor at the MGH Institute of Health Professions, Boston, and Brian Goodroad, DNP, RN, AACRN, nurse practitioner and associate professor at Metropolitan State University in Minneapolis–St. Paul, Minnesota

by centralasian/via Flickr

Crossing the Quality Chasm, an Institute of Medicine report from 2001, bemoans the chasm between our current research knowledge and the current state of care. Back in 2003, Don Berwick, now the Administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, provided the following pithy codification of the problem in a JAMA article called “Disseminating Innovations in Health Care” (subscription required; click here for the abstract): “Failing to use available science is costly and harmful; it leads to overuse of unhelpful care, underuse of effective care, and errors in execution.” Berwick pondered the slow pace of innovation adoption and attributed it to three factors:

  • the characteristics of the innovation
  • the characteristics of the potential adopters
  • contextual factors

Berwick also made this observation about innovations that do get adopted: “Health care is rich in evidence-based innovations, yet even when such innovations are implemented successfully in one location, they often disseminate slowly—if at all.”

Given these obstacles, what can be done to facilitate the integration of research findings into practice? What can be done to change this situation, and what would this entail?

One step is to […]

2017-05-27T10:28:00-04:00June 17th, 2011|nursing perspective, nursing research|1 Comment
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Year of the Nurse? ‘Don’t Get Mad, Get Elected’

By Maureen Shawn Kennedy, AJN editor-in-chief—Comparing the increase of nurses in Congress in the 2010 midterm elections to the near doubling of the number of women in Congress back in 1992, an article in a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation electronic newsletter last week suggested that perhaps 2010 could be called ‘The Year of the Nurse.’ The article noted that there are now seven nurses in the U.S. House of Representatives—four Democrats and three Republicans—up from three in the previous Congress. This is certainly progress, but we’ve yet to gain a nurse in the U.S. Senate.

Nurses see the results of failed social policies every day. We do tremendous work providing restorative care, teaching self-care practices, and promoting behaviors that will maximize health. But how many of us seriously think of engaging in the politics of health care? Instead of promoting health and changing lives on a case-by-case basis, when you hold political office you can affect the health of an entire population. Nursing education provides us with an incredible set of skills: critical thinking, creative problem solving, people skills, time management, the ability to set priorities and to constantly reevaluate their order—to say nothing of multitasking. […]

2016-11-21T13:12:42-05:00June 15th, 2011|career, nursing perspective|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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