End-of-Life Discussions and the Uneasy Role of Nurses

Amanda Anderson, BSN, RN, CCRN, is a critical care nurse in New York City and enrolled in the Hunter-Bellevue School of Nursing/Baruch College of Public Affairs dual master’s degree program in nursing administration and public administration. She is currently doing a graduate placement at AJN two days a week, working on a variety of projects. Her personal blog is called This Nurse Wonders.

Evelyn Simak/ via Wikimedia Commons Evelyn Simak/ via Wikimedia Commons

Nurse and writer Theresa Brown wrote a piece for this past Sunday’s New York Times on the dilemmas physicians face when their patients want to stop aggressive treatment (the latest installment of Brown’s quarterly column, What I’m Reading, is in the September issue of AJN [paywall]).

Brown’s Times column talks about physicians who have trouble letting patients go and instead push for more unnecessary and often unwanted treatment. She describes a case in which—after palliative care has been decided upon by the patient’s family members, the palliative care team, and even the heartbroken oncologist—the patient’s primary care physician intervenes and pushes for still more futile treatment. (Much of the article delves into the broader issue of palliative care and the benefits it has for patients in many stages of chronic illness.)

Have you ever […]

2016-11-21T13:03:57-05:00September 11th, 2014|career, Ethics, Nursing, nursing perspective, patient engagement, Patients|1 Comment
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How Much Was Your Last Blood Test?

By Shawn Kennedy, AJN editor-in-chief

500px-Vraagteken.svgWe all know that prices for medical procedures often vary without rhyme or reason. But an article on Vox.com brought home just how ridiculous this price variation really is. The article describes the findings of a new study published in BMJOpen, the open access arm of the British Medical Journal.

The study evaluated costs charged for 10 common blood tests at more than 100 general acute-care California hospitals. Most were not-for-profit, urban, non-teaching hospitals with under 300 beds and an average of 25% Medicaid patients and 41% Medicare patients. The results were astounding:

“We found significant variation in charges for 10 common outpatient blood tests performed at California hospitals. For example, hospitals charged a median of US$214 for a basic metabolic panel, but the charges ranged from US$35 to US$7303. A lipid panel generated a median charge of US$220 at California hospitals, but the maximum charge of US$10, 169 was over a thousand times the minimum charge of US$10.”

It seems incredible: $10 vs. $10,000 for a lipid panel. As the authors conclude: […]

2016-11-21T13:04:04-05:00August 18th, 2014|patient engagement, Patients|0 Comments
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Diabetes and Puberty – How Nurses Can Help Teens and Their Parents Manage Blood Glucose

Trenton Jantzi replaces his insulin pump infusion site during a break at school. The high-school senior must change his infusion site every three days. Photo by Mark Ylen / Democrat-Herald. Trenton Jantzi replaces his insulin pump infusion site during a break at school. The high-school senior must change his infusion site every three days. Photo by Mark Ylen / Democrat-Herald.

A new article in AJN gives crucial information on the challenges to managing diabetes, both type 1 and type 2, that are faced by teenagers and their parents during the physical and psychosocial changes of puberty.

Any nurse can tell you that it’s not easy to manage diabetes. I got type 1 diabetes when I was 27 years old and it took me more than ten years to really understand how to balance the effects of diet, exercise, insulin intake, and other factors like illness or stress.

There’s a lot at stake, too, in terms of long-term complications linked to poor blood glucose control, including blindness, heart disease, neuropathy, and a host of other unpleasant complications. In addition, there are serious potential short-term risks of diabetes like hypoglycemia or hyperglycemia that can land you in a coma or […]

2016-11-21T13:04:19-05:00July 7th, 2014|Nursing, patient engagement, Patients|1 Comment
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Telehealth as ‘Disruptive Innovation’ in Nursing

A patient uses telehealth equipment to communicate with his nurse. Photo courtesy of Janet Grady. A patient uses telehealth equipment to communicate with his nurse. Photo courtesy of Janet Grady.

“Telehealth: A Case Study in Disruptive Innovation” is a CE article in AJN‘s April issue. The author, Janet Grady, vice president of academic affairs and chair of the Nursing and Health Sciences Division at the University of Pittsburgh in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, describes the concept of disruptive innovations in nursing and delves into the evolving field of telehealth as a current example.

The article considers the following:

  • uses and potential uses of telehealth in chronic and acute care, home care, and rural medicine, and the evidence supporting its use.
  • obstacles to wider use and acceptance of telehealth, which include cultural resistance within nursing, licensure issues across states, reimbursement challenges, and the need to adapt nursing curriculum to these new ways of delivering care.
  • forces that drive or obstruct disruptive innovations like telehealth.

Here’s the article overview:

Technologic advances in health care have often outpaced our ability to integrate the technology efficiently, establish best practices for its use, and develop policies to regulate and evaluate its effectiveness. However, these may be insufficient reasons to put the brakes on innovation—particularly those “disruptive innovations” that challenge […]

2016-11-21T13:05:00-05:00April 18th, 2014|digital health, Nursing, patient engagement|1 Comment
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The Power of Imagination: Helping Kids with Sickle Cell Disease to Cope with Pain

By Sylvia Foley, AJN senior editor

Many people with sickle cell disease suffer from both acute and chronic pain, which can be severe. Although the exact mechanism isn’t known, the pain is believed to result when sickled erythrocytes occlude the vascular beds, causing tissue ischemia. Such pain, which often begins in early childhood, arises unpredictably. Although some pain crises may require ED visits, hos­pitalization, opioid treatment, or a combination of these, most are managed at home. Yet little is known about at-home pain management in people with sickle cell disease, especially children.

Table 2. Changes in Self-Efficacy, Imaging Ability, and Pain Perception in School-Age Children After Guided Imagery Training Table 2. Changes in Self-Efficacy, Imaging Ability, and Pain Perception in School-Age Children After Guided Imagery Training

Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) has shown promise in helping patients with other chronic illnesses to cope with pain. Cassandra Elaine Dobson and Mary Woods Byrne decided to test guided imagery, a form of CBT, among children enrolled at one sickle cell treatment clinic in New York City. They report on their findings in this month’s original research CE, “Using Guided Imagery to Manage Pain in Young Children with Sickle Cell Disease.” The abstract below offers a quick overview; if you click the image above, you’ll see an enlarged view of one table showing key results.

Objectives: The purposes of this study were to test the effects of guided imagery training on school-age children who had been diagnosed with […]

2017-07-27T14:47:16-04:00April 2nd, 2014|nursing research, pain management, patient engagement|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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