My Supporting Role

In nursing as in acting, connecting is key.

The Actor, by Picasso/Wikimedia Commons

When I graduated from nursing school, I was given a pen, stethoscope, tape, and scissors. In my current practice as a pediatric nurse in acute care, I’ve found that it’s all too easy to let technology with all its conveniences and safety measures take center stage. I have a bedside computer, cell phone, and cardiac monitor, among many other technical tools.

Yet the importance of creating a therapeutic milieu for patients and families has remained unchanged. Now the challenge I have is how best to use technology as a prop and a backdrop and not as the main event, how to prevent data collection from creating a barrier between me and my patient.

Of course technology has many advantages. In the past, I had to spend long stretches of time away from the bedside, creating written medications sheets and care plans. I remember spending hours looking up each medication dose and side effects in reference books. Transcribing written doctor’s orders and medication information was an art form. Now we obtain the most current doctor’s order and medication information in seconds with a click of a button.

Making technology an asset, not an obstacle.

While these conveniences have given me more […]

2020-02-07T11:15:00-05:00September 16th, 2013|digital health, nursing perspective, patient engagement, Patients|3 Comments
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Delirium at the Hands of Nurses

by Augustin Ruiz, via Flickr by Augustin Ruiz, via Flickr

Amanda Anderson, BSN, RN, CCRN, works as a nurse in New York City and is pursuing a master’s in administration from Hunter-Bellevue Scahool of Nursing at Hunter College. Her last post for this blog was “A Hurricane Sandy Bed Bath.”

Leo is young but I’ve cared for him in the ICU many times. It’s late, but he’s awake, talking, in a voice like Kermit the Frog’s. My eyes traverse the path between his, the patch of hair beneath his moving lips, and the newly healed trach site on his neck. He is too long for the bed frame that supports him—we’ve taken off the footboard, and his big feet stick out from the white blanket over his legs.

Tonight, Leo is stable, but this hasn’t always been the case; I’ve known him since the beginning, months and months ago. A long and nasty alcohol addiction led to a bad case of pancreatitis and multiple interventions to save his life. The saving is what I’m most familiar with—the sedated, unstable, intubated, tenuous Leo, not this chatty, relaxed, stable Leo.

Leo is my only patient tonight, a rarity in a busy urban hospital. The unit is empty and slow, not much care to give, nothing requiring immediate attention. So, I sit with him and talk about […]

2016-11-21T13:06:35-05:00September 11th, 2013|nursing perspective, Patients|2 Comments
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House of Death, House of Life: Reflections of a Hospice Volunteer

Perhaps the fundamental requirement for hospice volunteers is an open mind. Assumptions and first impressions rarely predict reality. I met a soft-spoken woman who was once a nun, then later became a theme park belly dancer. I met an ex-Marine officer and small-town police chief, a self-described “soldier by nature,” who denounced all wars after 1945 as senseless bloodbaths. I met a former civil rights activist upset that minorities were moving into his neighborhood.

lllustration by McClain Moore. All rights reserved. lllustration by McClain Moore. All rights reserved.

That’s from the August Reflections essay in AJN, “House of Death, House of Life.” The author, Ezra Ochshorn, explores the moments of tragedy and levity he encounters in his work as a hospice volunteer, the powerful impression made on him by people who are either at peace or full of “bitterness and regrets” as they approach death, his realization that his most important task is to be in the “here and now” with each person—and then to do his best to take this lesson back into his own life.

But why not read the entire short essay, since it’s free? Just click the link above.—JM, senior editor

2016-11-21T13:06:47-05:00August 9th, 2013|patient engagement|1 Comment
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Something Like Grace

By Marcy Phipps, RN, a regular contributor to this blog. Her essay “The Love Song of Frank” was published in the May (2012) issue of AJN.

ViewFromPlaneWindowMark was in town to be the best man in an old friend’s wedding—on a vacation, of sorts—when the unthinkable happened and he was involved in a horrendous traffic accident. He was ejected from his rental car. His injuries were severe and life threatening.

Mark’s family was halfway across the country. Getting to Mark quickly seemed impossible. But this is where the story takes a turn:

Mark’s family found a flight leaving that morning from their local airport, with the exact number of available seats that they needed. As they bought the tickets, they explained the nature of their emergency. They got to the airport in the nick of time. While checking in, they were approached by an airline employee who asked if they’d already arranged a rental car. They told him that they hadn’t—they hadn’t even stopped to get their clothes.

They didn’t know it at the time, but the employee who’d approached them was the pilot of the plane. He’d learned of the family emergency and held the plane for them. He knew how serious Mark’s accident had been, as he’d happened to drive right past the accident scene on his way to the airport before the first leg of the flight.

When the plane landed, the pilot requested that Mark’s family […]

2016-11-21T13:06:57-05:00July 22nd, 2013|nursing perspective, Patients|4 Comments
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Who Will Watch the Watchers? Consider Nurses

Julianna Paradisi, RN, OCN, writes a monthly post for this blog and works as an infusion nurse in outpatient oncology.

Sometimes my surgical mask feels like a gag/by Julianna Paradisi Sometimes my surgical mask feels like a gag/by Julianna Paradisi

Does anyone else find it ironic that, while the National Security Agency (NSA) is seeking to extradite and prosecute the contractor who revealed the agency’s alleged widespread spying on ordinary Americans and visitors from other countries, nurses can get fired for far more local breaches of privacy?

When the government gives 500,000 private contractors access to data hoards compiled from the electronic and phone conversations of U.S. citizens, is HIPAA still relevant?

Two years ago, the nurse blogosphere raged over the expulsion of three nursing students for posting the photo of a placenta on Facebook. Today, in light of the NSA’s potentially far-reaching privacy violations, the decidedly insensitive exploits of those students seem a bit less newsworthy.

More famously, the ordeal of Vickilyn Galle and Anne Mitchell, nurses who were fired after they blew the whistle on medical malpractice while exposing a conflict of interest affecting patient safety within the hospital, illustrates the high accountability placed upon nurses to protect patient privacy. […]

2016-11-21T13:06:59-05:00July 17th, 2013|Ethics, Nursing, Patients|2 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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