career Archives - Page 48 of 68

Laundry

I remember feeling just as wide-eyed and excited as she looked. And I like having students with me, especially ones who are so teachable that they soak up everything around them like a giant sponge. My student’s willingness to do “everything” served her well, as far as learning experiences go, and she approached tasks without trepidation. She was elated with success (insertion of a nasogastric tube) and mortified with failure (insertion of a rectal tube; she actually vomited). There were moments of fascination (touring the ICU and helping settle in a trauma admission) and boredom (attending a pain management process improvement meeting). There was also frustration; at the end of the day, she ruined her new scrub top with a spill of dark orange rifaximin.

Marcy Phipps, BSN, RN, CCRN, CFRN2016-11-21T13:13:52-05:00March 10th, 2011|career, students|6 Comments

Workplace Violence: Whose Problem Is It?

By Julianna Paradisi, RN

Once upon a time, I was the assured quality (AQ) representative for a nursing unit. I attended monthly AQ committee meetings with members from medicine, pharmacy, laboratory, and respiratory therapy to review incident reports. We developed processes for improving patient safety and work flow. Agenda items changed monthly, except for the paper towel dispenser problem.

The unit had a paper towel dispenser, which operated by a lever. It was noisy, disturbing the patients. It did not hold enough paper towels for 24 hours. Since housekeeping did not staff to fill paper towel holders on night shift, physicians and nurses entering the room found them empty after washing their hands in the morning. This angered everyone, so it went on the AQ committee’s agenda.

The unit needed new towel dispensers. However, the committee could not determine whose job it was to research replacements. No one knew which department was responsible for ordering new dispensers, or whose budget would pay for them. Since there were other agenda items to discuss, every month the towel dispenser problem was “parked” for the next meeting. This continued for the entire time I served on AQ. The problem remained unresolved when I moved on.

Workplace violence toward nurses feels like the “irresolvable dilemma” of the paper towel dispenser. Over the years, statistics […]

Julianna Paradisi, RN, OCN2016-11-21T13:13:58-05:00February 28th, 2011|career, Nursing|1 Comment

When Patient Safety Trumps All: Conversations With the Texas Whistleblower Nurses

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You may not remember February 11, 2010, all that well, but it’s a date nurse Anne Mitchell will never forget. It was the date she was acquitted of all criminal charges in a case that garnered widespread coverage not only in the nursing world (see our October 2009 report) but in the general media (see the New York Times article). Mitchell was the Texas nurse criminally prosecuted for filing a complaint with the Texas Medical Board against a physician for unsafe and substandard practices (that board did agree with her). She and a colleague found themselves embroiled in a nightmare in which they were fired, arrested, and indicted. (Charges were eventually dismissed against Vicki Galle and only Mitchell went to trial.)

The case raised questions about a nurse’s professional and legal duty to safeguard patients—and about the strength of whistleblower protections (Texas has a whistleblower protection law).

In a “what goes around comes around” scenario, this past February those who pressed the charges—the sheriff (who was a patient, friend, and business partner of the physician); the Winkler County attorney; the former hospital administrator; and the physician—were all indicted by a grand jury. Ironically, the indictment was partially for misuse of official information, the same charge they had brought against the nurses.

On February 18, I interviewed Mitchell, Galle, and another colleague, Naomi Warren, who also wrote a […]

Shawn Kennedy, MA, RN, FAAN, editor-in-chief (emerita)2018-03-13T10:43:04-04:00February 25th, 2011|career, nursing perspective|1 Comment

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 […]

Jacob Molyneux, senior editor/blog editor2016-11-21T13:14:15-05:00January 26th, 2011|career|1 Comment

Nurses, Hospitals, and Social Media: It Depends What Business You’re In

Hospitals with social media policies are not necessarily squelching their employees' right to freedom of speech. They don't want to spend time and money in court defending their public image. They already spend lots of money on marketing. They are in the business of patient care, not entertainment. So hospitals with social media polices take the position that you can post or tweet to your heart's content, but should keep in mind the following:

Julianna Paradisi, RN, OCN2016-11-21T13:14:17-05:00January 19th, 2011|career, healthcare social media, Nursing, Patients|2 Comments