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Why I Like Nurses Week

Safety Plan/Plougmann/via Flickr

By Shawn Kennedy, AJN editor-in-chief

Here’s why I like Nurses Week. I’m sure some folks groan over the idea that for only one week out of the year, health care administrators actually think about all that nurses do and show their appreciation. My perspective is that at least we have one solid week with the spotlight on nursing, when we can toot our horns and make sure that people know the critical role of nursing in health care.

Sure, there are some people who will never “get” what nurses do beyond the old stereotype that nurses are doctors’ helpers. I’m always flabbergasted, though, when physicians—after so much time working alongside nurses as medical students, interns, and residents—still don’t have a more nuanced view of nursing.

In this month’s editorial, I address the American Nurses Association Nurses Week theme, “Culture of Safety: It Starts with You.” How many times, in the dead of night, have nurses called physicians to alert them to a critical change—or questioned an inappropriately ordered medication that, if given as ordered, could have had dire consequences? I also addressed this issue in a 2014 blog post about Arnold Relman, now deceased but […]

Shawn Kennedy, MA, RN, FAAN, editor-in-chief (emerita)2016-11-21T13:01:13-05:00May 11th, 2016|Nursing, nursing perspective, patient safety|1 Comment

The Nurses Week Prizes We Really Need

Amanda Anderson, formerly a graduate intern at AJN, is now a contributing editor

My first Nurses Week as a nurse, my mother sent me a card and a small gift. When I opened it, I was surprised by its message—no one had ever given me anything for Nurses Week during nursing school. I had no idea that the holiday even existed.

As an English Literature major–turned nursing student, I was pretty clueless about the world of nursing when I launched my career. I spent most of my first year fumbling around in the dark, looking for Florence’s light.

As years passed, I learned more about nursing, claimed it as my own, and became versed in the industry secrets. I started to take pride in Nurses Week, seeing it as a venue for speaking out about nursing.

One year, for the thirty days preceding the holiday, I wrote to Google about 30 living nurse legends, in hopes that they would post a nursing-themed Google Doodle for our week. On another, I penned (and never sent) a scathing letter to a hospital president who had sent a kitschy card I took offense to.

[…]

Amanda Anderson, MPA, MSN, RN2023-01-30T10:51:51-05:00May 5th, 2016|career, Nursing, nursing perspective, patient safety|0 Comments

A Nurses’ Week Visit with Theresa Brown

Nurse and author Theresa Brown

By Shawn Kennedy, AJN editor-in-chief

Last week, I had the pleasure of chatting with nurse Theresa Brown (you can listen to our conversation here). Brown writes AJN’s quarterly What I’m Reading column. (This month, she writes about Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead, by Sheryl Sandberg, the chief operating officer of Facebook.)

Theresa Brown also blogs for the New York Times and is the author of The Shift: One Nurse, Twelve Hours, Four Patients’ Lives, which I first wrote about when it was released last July. As I noted then, it’s probably the first book I’ve read that really captures certain elements of nurses’ work:

Anyone who wants to know what it’s like to be a nurse in a hospital today should read this book. Patients, families, and non-nurse colleagues tend to see nurses as ever-present yet often in the background, quietly moving from room to room, attending to patients, and distributing medications or charting at computers.

But what they don’t understand about what nurses do is what Brown so deftly describes—the cognitive multitasking and constant reordering of priorities that occur in the course of one shift as Brown manages the needs of four very different patients (she was working in a stem cell transplant unit at the time); completes admissions and discharges; and communicates […]

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Shawn Kennedy, MA, RN, FAAN, editor-in-chief (emerita)2016-11-21T13:01:14-05:00May 4th, 2016|Nursing, nursing perspective, nursing stories, patient experience|2 Comments

Throwing a Rope Down The Hole of Despair: Early Referral to Palliative Care

Julianna Paradisi, RN, OCN, is an oncology nurse navigator and writes a monthly post for this blog. Illustration by the author: River, Mountain, Sky – detail of Polar Bear’s Last Song. Watercolor, inkjet collage, 2016.

Nervously, I adjust the Bluetooth earpiece I’m wearing before dialing the phone number. I’ve rehearsed my greeting. On the other end, the patient answers, “Hello?”

I tell her it’s her nurse navigator and I’ve called to find out how she’s doing. Her oncologist recently informed her the cancer has returned—further treatment will only ease symptoms, not cure the cancer.

“I haven’t left the house since I got the news,” she tells me. “Sometimes I just sit on the sofa all day. I don’t know what to do.”

It’s a common response from patients in similar circumstances. The realization they will not survive can become emotionally paralyzing, rendering a person unable to find purpose or a reason to keep going. Pain, fatigue from surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation therapy, contribute to feelings of hopelessness, hampering the ability to consider their choices.

“Did your doctor mention a palliative care referral?”

Many health care providers […]

Julianna Paradisi, RN, OCN2016-11-21T13:01:14-05:00May 2nd, 2016|Nursing, Patients|2 Comments

A Room with A View: Physical Environments and Healing

By Betsy Todd, clinical editor, MPH, RN, CIC

Computers, alarms, automated drug dispensing, complex medical protocols—the ways in which we provide care have changed a lot over the past 30 years. Has forced multitasking made us forget that, buried beneath the printouts and data, there is a human being in need of support?

In this month’s AJN, author Joy Washburn shares the story of David, a man with advanced Parkinson’s disease whose medical condition results in his transfer from a cheerful rehab setting to a long-term care bed in the same facility. While his old room in rehab overlooked gardens and a children’s play area, the new room faces a parking lot. To make matters worse, no one seems to have prepared David for the move, and many nurses erroneously assume that his advanced physical disability means that he is also cognitively impaired. […]

Betsy Todd, MPH, RN2016-11-21T13:01:18-05:00April 13th, 2016|Nursing, nursing perspective, nursing stories, nursing students, patient engagement, Patients|1 Comment