Confused About the Charge Nurse Role? You’re Not Alone

Charge nurses—as is often the case, there’s the ideal and the reality. Consider a recent blog post at the nursing blog At Your Cervix, which expresses some honest reservations about acting as a charge nurse—both about the challenges involved, and the lack of compensation for the added duties. Here’s an excerpt:

I’m really not so sure about this charge nurse thing. I was told when I arrived on a recent shift that I was to be in charge. I think I’ve done charge (maybe?) three times. Those times were only because there was no one available who did charge, and I was the most likely choice to do it. I haven’t been trained or oriented to do charge. It was kind of a “toss her in there and do it” situation.

If you read the entire post, you’ll learn that this blogger isn’t so sure she wants to take this role on again anytime soon. As it happens, AJN published a CE article back in September of last year (our clinical editor, Christine Moffa, wrote this post about it at the time) on an initiative which took place at the highly respected New York-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center. Its goal was to figure out this charge nurse thing in a more systematic and sensible way.

Like so many roles in so many professions, there may […]

2016-11-21T13:14:08-05:00February 3rd, 2011|nursing research|1 Comment
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Saving ‘Mimi’: How Nurses Can Combat Human Trafficking in the USA

By Sylvia Foley, AJN senior editor

Picture this: “Mimi,” an 18-year-old Brazilian girl who speaks little English, arrives in your ED with injuries sustained in a beating. She’s accompanied by an older man who refuses to leave her side and who intercepts and answers questions directed at Mimi. The ED physicians and nurses treat Mimi’s injuries and release her back to this man’s care. Maybe you feel uneasy, but what can you do? Maybe the man really is her uncle; maybe he’s just being overprotective.

In fact, Mimi is a victim of human trafficking, and the man who brought her to the hospital is both her pimp and her trafficker. And you and your colleagues just missed a chance to intervene on her behalf. Unfortunately, you’re not alone. In “The Role of the Nurse in Combating Human Trafficking,” a February CE feature, author Donna Sabella notes that clinicians who encounter victims of human trafficking often don’t realize it, and many such chances to intervene are lost. Sabella, a nursing professor active in helping such victims, hopes to change this. […]

2016-11-21T13:14:09-05:00February 1st, 2011|students|1 Comment
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Back to (a New Kind of) School at FIU

By Maureen ‘Shawn’ Kennedy, AJN editor-in-chief

Florida International University (FIU) is only a short drive from downtown Miami. Since I was going to be in town for two conferences (see my previous post on the CNL conference), I thought I would schedule a visit with Divina Grossman, an AJN editorial board member who is the vice president for engagement at FIU (that is, she’s responsible for developing and expanding community partnerships). Unfortunately, Dr. Grossman, formerly the dean of the College of Nursing and Health Sciences (CNHS), was out of town, but I accepted an invitation to visit the school and meet with the interim dean and faculty members.  […]

2016-11-21T13:14:10-05:00January 28th, 2011|students|0 Comments
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True Believers at the 2011 Clinical Nurse Leader Summit

By Maureen ‘Shawn’ Kennedy, AJN’s editor-in-chief, who is in Florida this week attending meetings and visiting local schools

It’s January and I’m in Miami (I know, I know). I just finished attending the CNL 2011 Summit (CNL = clinical nurse leader). It was a relatively small meeting, as nursing meetings go, with about 350 attendees who were CNLs, faculty or students in CNL programs, or chief nursing officers from clinical facilities employing CNLs. They were all believers in the value the role brings to clinical practice. There was an energy, an atmosphere of being in on a new and growing phenomenon.

Some background: the CNL is a relatively new role in nursing, first formally proposed by the American Association of Colleges of Nursing in 2003 after several meetings with other nursing groups concerned with nurses’ “education for practice” (see the white paper on the development of the role). CNLs function at the unit level, coordinating care, working with staff, focusing on improving outcomes.

Described as “master’s-prepared advanced generalists,” CNLs now number about 1,300, according to Mary Stachowiak (see photo), president of the Clinical Nurse Leader Association (CNLA). There are currently about 100 institutions with master’s programs preparing CNLs and about 1,800 CNLs in programs.

AJN carried a short news article back in October 2004 noting the creation of the […]

2016-11-21T13:14:15-05:00January 26th, 2011|career|1 Comment
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Neither Dragons nor Angels — Just Imperfect, Like Everybody Else

By Gail Pfeifer, MA, RN, AJN news director

I’m not a history buff, but my husband is. So I nicely went along on a recent trip with him to Virginia, visiting historic sites like Montpelier, Jamestown, Yorktown, and Appomattox. It was more fun than I’d anticipated and it really did open a door for me, showing me how much, and how little, has changed, especially in political behavior: When Cornwallis had to surrender to Washington, for example, he feigned illness and sent his second in command, General O’Hara, to do so. Washington, in return, would not accept the sword from O’Hara, directing him to his own second in command. Tit for tat.

One of the things I least expected from the National Park Service was a specific acknowledgment of nurses or nursing (except for maybe Clara Barton, who established the American branch of the International Red Cross). Yet there it was at one of our Civil War site stops: a note that Dorothea Dix had visited to review care of the Union soldiers.

Although she is best known for her work improving care for the mentally ill, Dix became Superintendent of Female Nurses for the Union during the Civil War, serving for the entire duration without pay. At that time, biographers say (variably) that she was 59 or 60 years old, a strong, unmarried woman of her times. Dix was a social […]

2016-11-21T13:14:16-05:00January 21st, 2011|nursing perspective|1 Comment
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