The Monkey in Room 100

By Karen Gonzol, MSN, RN. Karen is an assistant professor in the division of nursing at Shenandoah University in Virginia. This is her first post for AJN.

I saw him again, just a few days ago. It has been nearly two years since Mother died, but there he was, peering at me from his perch in my sister’s laundry room.

Mother had been placed on hospice care for her congestive heart failure. She settled somewhat reluctantly into the nursing home and waited for the end.

As she discovered that the wait was going to be much longer than she’d planned, she decided to go on with living. Her room was on the first floor, with a window facing out into the courtyard. The staff loved her, and she loved to tease them. She made an effort to learn their names, and when she couldn’t remember she made up nicknames, such as “Bow Lady” for the assistant who always wore a huge bow to tie back her hair. One July day she began asking, “Do you see those monkeys in the tree out there?” […]

2018-03-27T16:36:22-04:00June 2nd, 2011|Nursing, patient engagement|1 Comment
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Health Care Reform Works—If You Work It

Medical Bills

By Gail M. Pfeifer, MA, RN, AJN news director

My husband and I both recently had preventive screening colonoscopies, which are now covered under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) as preventive care for adults over 50. That coverage, if you purchased a new health insurance plan on or after September 23, 2010, which we did, means you do not have to pay a copayment or coinsurance or meet a deductible if you use an in-network provider (here’s a full list of preventive services covered under the new law). You would think that medical office billers and insurance companies would know that by now.

Although some plans have clauses that let them off the hook on this rule, ours does not—these tests should have been covered. Lucky for us, we knew it when the bills came in. To make a long story short, I was billed for the “surgery” and for the anesthesia. So I first called the billing department of the GI specialist’s office and asked them to rebill the procedure correctly, as preventive screening. No further bills from them, for me, but shortly afterward, my husband was billed by the same office for “surgery” occurring months later—same doc, same procedure, same billing office. He’s following up with phone calls as I write.

I next called the anesthesia billing office, which said our insurance company had denied the claim. I called the insurance company, which looked at our plan […]

2016-11-21T13:13:25-05:00April 22nd, 2011|health care policy, nursing perspective, patient engagement|2 Comments
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Bearing Witness: April’s ‘Art of Nursing’ and Cover Art

By Sylvia Foley, AJN senior editor

In “Palm Sunday,” the poem featured in this month’s Art of Nursing, nurse and poet Rachel Betesh evokes the prolonged anguish of those who tend the dying. A man lies “sick and stained” in a bed, leaves his food untouched, and “hardly speaks anymore.” His wife and sons lament “the sin of the too-long moment”; time does not heal, but gapes like an “open wound between sickness and dying.”

A lesser poem might have slipped into sentimentality. But Betesh’s characters are a lively, indomitable bunch. “Pop!” the man’s sons say, visiting; you can feel their vigor. His wife remembers a baked potato he’d once given her, and her response: “You gonna marry me or what?” Indeed, it’s through witnessing, hearing the family’s stories, that the nurses can offer some comfort. They cannot heal the man, but they can “pack the wound, and listen.” (Art of Nursing is always free online—just click through to the PDF file.)

This month’s cover art, a work of embroidery by nurse and fiber artist Paula Giovanini-Morris, explores the concept of memory and illustrates its mechanisms, the neurons and synapses through which the brain registers, encodes, and retrieves events. The piece, titled “Windows and Doors,” was prompted by another kind of witnessing: the artist’s visits to her mother, who was suffering from the early stages of dementia.

AJN senior editorial coordinator Alison Bulman spoke with […]

2016-11-21T13:13:33-05:00April 14th, 2011|nursing perspective, patient engagement, Patients|1 Comment
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You Mean You Want to Talk? A Patient’s Perspective on Speed Psychiatry

With over 2 million U.S. adults living with panic disorder, and twice as many women as men suffering from it, health care providers should ensure they give patients all available options for treatment. Medication may work for some, but there are alternatives. I know because, despite what my psychiatrist said, I did get better.

2016-11-21T13:13:44-05:00March 18th, 2011|patient engagement, patient experience|5 Comments
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Alone, Isolated, At Risk


By Shawn Kennedy, AJN editor-in-chief

I saw the following headline this week: “LA woman dies in her cubicle at work; body is not discovered until the following day.” The article said it was unclear how she had died. I hope it was at the end of the day after everyone had left; I really hope they don’t find out that she died midday, amidst coworkers who were going about their business. Maybe they were so busy that they never noticed the silence from her cubicle.

This story reminded me of two articles I read recently. One was an article that will be published in the Emerging Infections department in our March issue, which goes live at the end of next week on ajnonline.com. “The Contact Precautions Controversy” examines the issues around placing patients on contact precautions and in isolation—an approach that many hospitals use almost routinely for some patients. (We covered this issue in a news piece last July as well.) Recent studies are raising questions about this practice and the risks to these patients, who often have fewer interactions, get less care, and may feel neglected because health care providers limit contact.

The other article is one that’s in the headlines now.  The Boston Globe ran a story […]

2016-11-21T13:14:00-05:00February 17th, 2011|nursing perspective, nursing research, patient engagement|3 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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