Time Matters, Priorities Change: A Nurse and Cancer Survivor on Living with the Pandemic

Everything is different, and the same.

Michael Himbeault/Wikimedia Commons

It’s going to be a while before things get to normal, if they ever do. It’s more like the future will become the normal.

The only thing in my experience I can liken it to is my cancer survivorship: you start living your life again, but everything is different. Priorities change. Your sense of safety never fully returns, yet because of this you become more purposeful in living: time matters. It’s as though you go on living, but learn a new way to do it.

There’s actually a sense of freedom accompanying the realization that nothing/no one lasts forever.

Finding a middle ground.

After I completed treatment, I watched the Jeff Bridges film Fearless (1993). His character is a survivor of a horrendous airliner crash, and he develops a sense of invincibility as a way of coping. I understood his character really well. You either hide in fear, or you go forward as if you are invincible. Eventually, you discover a middle ground. […]

2020-05-27T10:26:29-04:00May 27th, 2020|infectious diseases, Nursing, patient experience, Public health, wellness|0 Comments
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June Issue Highlights: PPE Shortages, Opioid Use Disorder, More

“Nurses’ work has become powerfully visible.”—editor-in-chief Shawn Kennedy in her June editorial, “Nurses: Courageous, Committed, and Fed Up”

The cover image of our June issue is a watercolor painting, Human, by Ohio artist Jim Leitz. Created in March, the painting is a tribute to the experiences of frontline health care workers during the COVID-19 pandemic. The June issue is now live, and features continuing coverage of COVID-19, plus many articles on other topics in nursing and health care. Here’s what’s new:

Original Research: The Relationship Between Food Insecurity and Cost-Related Medication Nonadherence in Older Adults: A Systematic Review

The authors conducted a comprehensive review of the literature to explore the connection between these two significant public health issues. The evidence suggests a correlation and points to the need for more effective interventions.

Opioid Use Disorder: Pathophysiology, Assessment, and Effective Interventions

A review of the development of opioid use disorder, available screening tools, medical treatments, and behavioral interventions that have demonstrated efficacy in reducing substance use.

Back to Basics: Abnormal Basic Metabolic Panel Findings: Implications for Nursing

In this article in a new series designed to improve acute care nurses’ understanding of laboratory abnormalities, the author discusses important values in the basic metabolic panel, including the electrolytes potassium and chloride as well as […]

2020-05-26T09:23:33-04:00May 26th, 2020|Nursing|0 Comments
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COVID-19: It’s Not Only About Hospital-Based Nurses

‘We all just went charging towards this monster…’

We’ve all seen the photos of nurses in PPE providing care to patients who are obviously very ill with COVID-19. These nurses have justifiably received recognition and accolades for their commitment to duty under the most challenging circumstances and often at great personal risk.

I recently spoke with Megan Brunson, the president of the American Association of Critical-Care Nurses (AACN), who is also a supervisor in the cardiovascular ICU at Medical City Dallas Hospital.

Brunson described her own experiences, but also what she was hearing from her colleagues as they all “just went charging towards this monster called COVID.” She also talked about how the organization was rapidly developing resources, not only for clinical care but to help nurses deal with emotional stress. One initiative is partnering with DearWorld.org to create a collection of portraits and stories from nurses caring for patients with COVID-19.

Disrupting work in many settings.

But it behooves us to realize that this pandemic has not caused stress and critical challenges just for acute care nurses; nurses in many settings have been challenged and have had their work disrupted.

In the last two weeks, I spoke with nurses and nursing leaders of several organizations to learn about how the coronavirus pandemic has changed their work. In […]

2020-05-15T17:09:36-04:00May 15th, 2020|COVID-19, infectious diseases, Nursing, nursing roles|0 Comments
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Addressing Clinician Mental Health and Suicide Risk During the Pandemic

Pandemics are known to cause panic disorder, anxiety, depression, sleep disturbances, and posttraumatic stress. Depression can lead to suicide if not treated, yet is a treatable disease. We have seen nurses die by suicide during this pandemic in Italy.

Past experience suggests that health care workers exposed to the stress of the pandemic will need help long after the pandemic is under control.

I am serving as co-chair of the Strength Through Resilience task force of the American Nurses Association, whose focus was originally to collate resources to reduce suicide among nurses. We quickly shifted gears when the pandemic hit to collate resources to optimize resiliency and mental health among nurses in relation to the projected impact of the pandemic. Curiously, these resources are virtually identical. The ANA has posted initial resources as part of their Healthy Nurse, Healthy Nation campaign and is and building more resources as quickly as possible.

Nurses already at higher suicide risk.

The added stress of the pandemic is particularly problematic because of evidence that emerged before the pandemic that nurses were at higher risk of suicide than the general public. If leaders at health care organizations have not already started proactively screening staff […]

2020-05-12T16:27:31-04:00May 12th, 2020|COVID-19, mental illness, Nursing, Public health|0 Comments
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An Unimaginable Year of the Nurse and the Midwife

This year’s Nurses Week may be remembered for what didn’t happen.

For nursing, this was to be a year of celebration, of bringing attention to the vital role nurses play as the largest group of health professionals, providing most of the health care to the world. There were commemorative events planned for May 12 to mark the 200th birthday of Florence Nightingale and in October an international conference to end a year of highlighting nurses and the nursing profession. In the United States, the American Nurses Association (ANA) changed the annual May Nurses Week to Nurses Month. AJN planned several articles and covers throughout the year, including this issue’s guest editorial on the first-ever State of the World’s Nursing report.

COVID-19 has focused worldwide attention on the vital importance of nursing.

While in-person events have all been canceled because of the COVID-19 pandemic, what has not been lost is the attention to what nurses do and their courage and commitment to provide care to all who need it. And as with colleagues who performed their duties in other pandemics, combat zones, and life-threatening disasters, nurses today have not flinched in the face of great personal risk. I’m in awe of nurses who traveled from around the […]

2020-05-07T10:18:35-04:00May 7th, 2020|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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