Is This Teamwork? Learning to Supervise Isn’t Easy

By Sheena Jones, who attends Dutchess Community College and lives in Beacon, NY

So I’m a young nurse, one of the youngest in my facility. I used to be a nurse’s aide; now I’m an LPN in training to be an RN. It’s very difficult when the aides are either the same age as me or old enough to be my grandmother.

What do you tell a 19-year-old aide who just got mandated for a second shift on a Saturday evening and who is texting all shift but getting her work done? Do you tell her to put it away, knowing that you would be doing the same thing if you were still a young aide and had already gone the extra mile to check that all the patients were safe and happy?

What do you tell the 57-year-old aide who is always the last one struggling to finish her assignment because she can’t keep up? She can’t get her two baths done plus get the other eight residents washed and in bed by 10 pm, even though everyone else is done by 8:30 pm. Do you tell her to hurry up and finish? Do you send the frustrated younger aide to finish her assignment, and call it ‘teamwork’? Who wants to do extra work? 

This is the situation I face every couple of weekends. I’ve tried changing the aide assignments to make the older aide’s workload easier, but she just can’t seem to work fast enough no matter what I do. I have a frustrated younger aide who […]

2016-11-21T13:19:01-05:00March 4th, 2010|nursing perspective|17 Comments
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‘Ask Me Three Questions’: Engaging Patients to Promote Safety

By Peggy McDaniel, BSN, RN

Next week, March 7–13, is Patient Safety Awareness Week. The National Patient Safety Foundation (NPSF) has sponsored Patient Safety Awareness Week since 2002 to help promote awareness of patient safety issues among hospital staff, patients, and communities. This year’s campaign focuses on engaging patients in theior own care, and it draws upon the NPSF template “Ask Me Three,” which encourages patients to ask these questions:

  1. What is my main problem?
  2. What do I need to do?
  3. Why is it important for me to do this?

[…]

2018-03-13T10:46:32-04:00March 3rd, 2010|health care policy, Nursing, patient engagement|0 Comments
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Why the ‘Greatest Generation’ Is Bagging Groceries (No, It’s Not Because of Taxes)

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

In surfing the Web Monday, I came across this interesting tidbit on the blog run by Gary Schwitzer, creator of HealthNewsReview.org, a site devoted to assessing the accuracy of health news coverage. He quoted statistics from a report  by the Center for Public Integrity, which claims that “there are eight lobbyists for every member of Congress.” The number of lobbyists went from about 1,400 in the first quarter of 2009 to nearly 3,700 by year’s end. 

I see elderly people in the supermarket bagging groceries—some may like the company, but others are doing it to pay for medical care not covered under plans. My uncle—one of the “greatest generation”—used to cut his pills in half to make them last longer. Does this qualify as “rationing care”? […]

2016-11-21T13:19:04-05:00March 2nd, 2010|health care policy, nursing perspective|5 Comments
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Mississippi Midwifery Law Hoopla: Another Failure in Public Education?

By Gail M. Pfeifer, MA, RN, AJN news director


It seems even when doctors and nurses unite on an issue, there’s controversy. The Mississippi State Board of Medical Licensure and the Mississippi Board of Nursing (MBON) both support state bill No. 695, which would allow only certified nurse-midwives to practice midwifery in the state, according to the December 2009 issue of the state board’s magazine. Melinda Rush, executive director of MBON, wrote that there have been “incidences of death and harm to infants born in situations that were less than safe,” and urged nurses to support the bill.

I wonder though, if the board did its homework on educating the public about their concerns. One objector to the bill wrote a letter to Governor Barbour, asking him to veto the bill if it lands on his desk, because “midwives are more qualified than Drs [sic] to deliver healthy low-risk babies.” And responses to an article on the topic in The Commercial Appeal indicate that consumers think the bill will entirely block women from having home births, literally pushing all deliveries into the hospital. Although the bill was amended to grandfather in professional non-nurse midwives with more than five years of experience, Birth Action Coalition is also urging Mississippi residents to oppose the bill, because it would […]

2016-11-21T13:19:06-05:00March 1st, 2010|Nursing|5 Comments
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Notes from the Web

Here are a few items of interest on today’s Web as these huge wet snowflakes actually start to accumulate on rooftops here in NYC and the horizon (New Jersey, that is, across the thin wedge of the Hudson River you can see from AJN offices) closes steadily in:

Kim at Emergiblog has a nice post dealing with changing her mind about whether or not she wanted to get a BSN.

And this post by Anne Dabrow Woods at In the Round (excerpted below) got our attention for its honesty about the difference between treating a condition in the hospital and treating it at home in a family member—and also because it put a human face on an article we ran in our February issue about ostomy complications and management.

My oldest daughter was diagnosed with ulcerative colitis when she was 7 years old and despite aggressive treatment for her disease; she required a total colectomy, temporary ileostomy, and an ileo-anal anastamosis when she was 12. As a nurse I thought I was equipped to care for her ileostomy; was I ever wrong. I had experience taking care of hospitalized patients with ostomies, but I quickly learned caring for someone who is active is a totally different story.

In his most recent post, Anonymous Doc is as usual thoughtful and honest (except for that anonymity thing, of course . . . which does, whatever its drawbacks, kind of free him up as a writer). He moves from […]

2016-11-21T13:19:09-05:00February 25th, 2010|health care policy, nursing perspective, students|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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