Back to School: Team Sports and Concussions

By Shawn Kennedy, AJN interim editor-in-chief

Concussions among young athletes are on the rise—are parents and coaches taking them too lightly?

My sons played ice hockey and football in their high school years, what my husband and I referred to as “collision sports.” The unmistakable sound of helmet-hitting-helmet always made me cringe, especially in hockey where a good skater can generate considerable speed (and therefore force) before impact. I’ve witnessed many players being helped off the ice. The coach, who knew I was a nurse, would sometimes signal to me to come to the bench and check out a player. Most of the time, the player was fine; but there were a few times when it was clear that the player was a bit more than just shaken up.

I recall one 12-year-old who had nystagmus and ringing in his ears and kept asking the same question in a slow, sleepy voice. The coach wanted to put him back out on the ice (“He just saw a few stars, right?”), but instead I sent him with his parents to the ED for evaluation. After an overnight stay in the hospital he was released, but was cautioned not to play hockey for two weeks because he’d suffered a concussion. So he waited two weeks and […]

2016-11-21T13:15:56-05:00September 1st, 2010|nursing perspective|0 Comments
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Fighting HIV–AIDS with Public Health Billboards: September ‘Art of Nursing’

By Sylvia Foley, AJN senior editor

On a recent trip to the capital of Guinea­-Bissau, Dawn Starin noticed numerous public health billboards urging people to get tested for HIV or to practice safer sex by wearing condoms. One of the six poorest countries in the world, according to the Central Intelligence Agency’s World Factbook, Guinea-Bissau faces an ongoing epidemic of HIV and AIDS. Prevalence is especially high in urban areas and among pregnant women and sex workers. Starin, a writer and a research associate in the department of anthropology at University College London, UK, was struck by the bright colors and larger-than-life figures in the billboards, and photographed several, including the one featured in the September Art of Nursing.

Are the billboards effective?  Starin writes, “Although the billboards are fabulous to look at, many health professionals I spoke with thought they exemplified time and money wasted, in part because of the high nationwide illiteracy rate.” One health worker emphasized the need for more culture-specific studies on sexual practices and tradition, so that appropriate education programs could be developed.

Starin has also photographed public art by Thongleum Damviengkum, a mixed-media artist whose work appeared in the April Art of Nursing. Damviengkum’s often witty pieces, intended to raise public awareness about HIV and AIDS and address the stigma associated with having the disease, are on display at a restaurant in Bangkok, Thailand. “Humor is important if you want people to listen,” […]

2016-11-21T13:15:57-05:00August 30th, 2010|Nursing|5 Comments
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Neither Crime Nor Demeanor

By Marcy Phipps. Marcy is an RN in St. Petersburg, Florida. Her essay, “The Soul on the Head of a Pin,” appeared in the May issue of AJN, and she has contributed several thoughtful posts to this blog in recent months (here’s the previous one).

My patient’s ICU stay was short, as his injuries were fairly unremarkable. Far more striking were the circumstances of his admission; he’d been injured while committing an appalling act of grisly violence. An armed police officer stood sentry at his bedside, and the nature of his crimes gave him a sinister notoriety among the medical staff.

“Alleged” crimes, I should say.

But it was difficult to give him the benefit of the doubt. I’d read the paper and seen the crime scene photos on the news.  The media’s case against him made his innocence hard to fathom, and as a police officer’s daughter I found myself inclined to prejudice. I not only planned on, but also counted on disliking him, at least on some level. Although I would certainly provide care to this man, I exempted myself from caring about him as an individual.

I was surprised to find his demeanor dramatically different than my expectations. He was soft-spoken and retiring, exceedingly polite and appreciative.

I don’t mean to imply that we chatted. Our conversations were limited to his physical condition and general plan of care. He never acknowledged the officer at the bedside or spoke of his alleged crimes, and neither did I.

It’s possible […]

2016-11-21T13:15:59-05:00August 25th, 2010|Nursing, nursing stories|2 Comments
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On the Nurses Walk

By Shawn Kennedy, AJN interim editor-in-chief

As some of you may have seen by my tweets over the last week or so, I was in Australia attending a meeting, the International Academy of Nurse Editors gathering in Coolum (August 11 to 14). We discussed editorial and publishing matters—interesting if you’re “in the biz,” but I imagine most nurses would roll their eyes if I discussed it here.

(Side note, to those interested: there was much discussion about the use and misuse of journal rankings and impact factors and the sustainability of society and clinical practice journals if journal rankings are to be the primary factor in deciding where one should publish one’s work. As long as faculty tenure and promotion are tied to publishing in higher-ranked research and “scholarly” academic journals—and for a thought-provoking discussion on how one defines “scholarly,” see this 2006 editorial (click through to the PDF version) by AJN’s editor-in-chief emeritus, Diana Mason—researchers and scholars will seek to publish in those places, as opposed to in clinical journals that are more widely read by practicing nurses. You’ll hear more from us soon on that discussion.)

Sydney: a proving ground for nurses. So, as long as I was halfway around the world, I took some […]

2016-11-21T13:16:01-05:00August 23rd, 2010|Nursing|0 Comments
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When Timely Nurse Removal of Urinary Catheters Reduces UTI Rate

By Christine Moffa, MS, RN, AJN clinical editor

Ever since we started the Cultivating Quality column at AJN, manuscripts featuring evidence-based quality improvement projects have been pouring in. There is a lot of great work being done at the bedside by practicing nurses, and this column provides the opportunity to share their ideas with others.

This month’s Cultivating Quality installment, Reducing Rates of Catheter-Associated Urinary Tract Infection, comes from Joyce Wenger, MS, RN, the infection control performance improvement coordinator at Lancaster General Hospital, Lancaster, PA. According to the CDC, urinary tract infections (UTIs) account for more than 30% of hospital-associated infections, and almost all are “caused by instrumentation of the urinary tract.” Nursing staff were able to reduce catheter-associated urinary tract infection (CAUTI) rates using a three-pronged approach “beginning with education, progressing to tests of new and better products, and ending with the nurse-driven protocol for catheter removal.”

That last part is my favorite. In most facilities a doctor or nurse practitioner has to write an order before a Foley catheter can be removed from a patient. Patients may end up spending several days at increased risk for UTI because of an unnecessary urinary catheter in place. This hospital came up with a plan to give nurses the autonomy to remove them—which makes sense, since they’re the ones checking the patient daily. The team at Lancaster General created the following list of criteria that patients need to meet in order to maintain […]

2017-02-24T14:36:31-05:00August 19th, 2010|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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