What Is Long COVID?

There are still many unknowns, but the need for comprehensive care is clear.

“There are days I don’t have any issues. Then I have terrible palpitations, or I’m short of breath when I walk. I think there’ll be long-term effects, I’m just not 100% sure what they’ll be.”

This is how one nurse with long COVID describes her symptoms—more than two years after initially contracting the virus—and the uncertainty that goes along with it. Her experience is highlighted in the July AJN Reports, “Long COVID: What We Know Now.”

Few definitive answers.

Photo by engin akyurt on Unsplash

Each wave of COVID infections results in more people not fully recovering from the acute illness. Instead, they experience a range of ongoing and new symptoms that vary in severity and duration.

Whether their symptoms are called long COVID, postacute sequelae of SARS-CoV-2, or post-COVID conditions, the reality is the same: there are few definitive answers about long COVID’s risk factors, causes, and effects.

Multidisciplinary care.

What is known, as the article discusses, is that it’s beneficial for patients to access a post-COVID care program in which a multidisciplinary team provides ongoing clinical evaluation, individualized treatment, and support services.

“The best thing you can do for a patient is get them […]

2022-07-20T10:11:25-04:00July 20th, 2022|Nursing|0 Comments
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Recent Supreme Court Decisions and Public Health Consequences

The overturn of Roe v Wade wasn’t the only decision with health effects.

Photo by Anna Sullivan/Unsplash

In the December 2021 issue of AJN, Caroline Dorsen and colleagues wrote a Viewpoint, “Why Nurses Should Care About the Supreme Court.” In it, they note:

“The court decides cases every year that have direct implications for our patients, our role as health care providers, and our profession. They decide cases that speak to our common humanity and affect the systems that influence health disparities. And we should all care about that.”

This certainly rang true for decisions recently handed down by the Supreme Court.

Other health consequences of the Dobbs case.

While much of the attention on the recent Supreme Court rulings has focused on the overturn of Roe v. Wade (in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization) and the effects that it will have for millions of women on their access to and choice of reproductive health care, we are starting to see many other potential effects of that decision.

An article at MedPage Today describes concerns that physicians may not choose obstetrics as a career because of worries over prosecution—what if a court doesn’t agree with their management of miscarriages or disagrees with their judgment that a mother’s life was in danger? Nurse midwives […]

2022-07-18T10:19:50-04:00July 18th, 2022|environmental health, Nursing|0 Comments
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The 12-Hour Nursing Shift: Preferred by Staff, but Good for Patients?

A new study finds reduced communication skills after consecutive shifts but no clinical deficits.

Twelve-hour shifts have been a mainstay of nursing schedules since they began as a staffing strategy in the 1970s, but debate continues about their effect on nurses’ health and ability to safely care for patients.

Studies have examined both aspects of the issue. Regarding staffing, researchers have found that a majority of nurses and hospital administrators prefer 12-hour shifts as a means to achieve continuity of care, ease of scheduling, and for nurses, work–life balance. Regarding patient care quality, research has shown an association between longer consecutive shifts and more clinical errors.

The latest findings. 

A recent study from Washington State University aimed to test the latter. The research team recruited 94 RNs working consecutive 12-hour shifts to examine the cumulative effect of shift work–related changes on sustained attention, cognitive effectiveness, and subjective sleepiness. Participants were evaluated in two 20-minute simulated care situations by other RNs trained to assess performance. Nurses working day and night shifts were randomized across fatigued and rested conditions, defined respectively as having worked three consecutive 12-hour shifts or having three consecutive days off.

[…]

2022-07-15T10:14:05-04:00July 14th, 2022|Nursing|0 Comments
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Looking Beyond Nursing Education Offerings Can Open Doors

In a world where time efficiency is supreme, nurses often seek educational opportunities only within their area of nursing expertise. After all, further expertise in my specialty area will directly apply to work, right? It may seem counterintuitive to look for learning opportunities outside nursing, but the results may surprise you.

I am a nursing PhD student, and the PhD program contains only one “independent study” elective course. One chance for me to choose my own topic. Most students choose to research background literature for their dissertation, but I chose . . . to audit a law course. My future research project involves children with special needs, and I discovered a local special education law course. School education is vitally important for families with special needs children, but the rules surrounding education are poorly understood by parents—and nurses.

Since I don’t have a law degree, I wasn’t certain how much I would understand or use the material covered in the class, but auditing the class turned out to be the best decision I could have made, yielding immediate benefits and opening doors of future opportunity.

Outside the educational comfort zone.

Initially, I felt excitement tinged with trepidation and self-consciousness. To audit a course, I needed to obtain permission […]

2022-07-08T13:00:07-04:00July 8th, 2022|career, Nursing|1 Comment
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Keeping Current with Cardiac Device Technologies

“If nurses understand the purpose of cardiac devices and the care of patients receiving them, they will be better equipped to teach patients to be confident in their own self-care.”

When I was an RN in the cardiac electrophysiology lab, we frequently performed device implants or procedures for patients with heart failure. When giving report to the telemetry nurses, I often felt I didn’t have enough time to fully explain the background for the procedures we performed.

In my CE feature article in AJN‘s June issue, “Guideline-Directed Cardiac Devices for Patients with Heart Failure,” I share an exemplar of a patient who had one of these procedures—an implanted cardioverter/defibrillator with cardiac resynchronization therapy. If nurses understand the purpose of cardiac devices and the care of patients receiving them, they will be better equipped to teach patients to be confident in their own self-care.

It is challenging to keep up with the advances in health care devices. In the article, I also describe some other recent cardiac technologies. Patients with any these devices may be seen in a variety of inpatient and outpatient settings, and nurses may benefit from a general understanding of their purpose and patient care. […]

2022-07-05T09:28:04-04:00July 5th, 2022|Nursing|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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