Imagery: A Safe, Simple Practice Available to All Nurses

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

by Ramon Peco/via Flickr by Ramon Peco/via Flickr

“In our quest to keep up with the latest medical advances, we often forget that the healing art of imagery is available to each of us,” writes nurse practitioner Laurie Kubes in this month’s AJN. In “Imagery for Self-Healing and Integrative Nursing Practice,” Kubes explores some of the evidence supporting this technique and illustrates how it can enhance both patient care and our own self-care.

Imagery builds upon the quiet reassurance and support that we routinely provide to patients in our efforts to make them comfortable and relaxed. The more deliberate practice of imagery engages the power of imagination for deeper relaxation and a potentially more healing experience. And all we need in order to do this, as Kubes notes, is an open mind, a basic knowledge of the practice, and time to dedicate to it.
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2016-11-21T13:01:43-05:00November 23rd, 2015|Nursing, nursing perspective, patient engagement, Patients|1 Comment
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No Longer Alone: Nurses Supporting Family Caregivers

By Susan C. Reinhard, PhD, RN, FAAN, senior vice president and director, AARP Public Policy Institute, chief strategist, Center to Champion Nursing in America; Elaine Ryan, MPA, vice president of state advocacy and strategy integration, AARP government affairs; and Trish O’Keefe, PhD, RN, NE-BC, interim president, Morristown Medical Center, New Jersey

Teaching a daughter to help her mother with range-of-motion exercises. Teaching a daughter to help her mother with range-of-motion exercises

The public trusts nurses to care for them and to teach them how to care for themselves and for those they love. But a 2012 AARP/United Hospital Fund report funded by the John A. Hartford Foundation, Home Alone: Family Caregivers Providing Complex Chronic Care, shows there is a big disconnect. In this first nationally representative study of families providing complex care activities, almost half reported that they had provided medical/nursing treatments, including injections, wound care, administering multiple medications, managing colostomies, and giving tube feedings and nebulizer treatments—among many other tasks that nursing students find daunting when they are first learning how to do them.

Family caregivers are expected to step right in, with little to no instruction or support. Most (nearly 7 out of 10) of those they cared for did not get a home visit by a health care professional, despite multiple encounters […]

2016-11-21T13:01:47-05:00November 13th, 2015|Nursing, patient engagement, Patients, Public health|3 Comments
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Preventing Newborn Falls

Photo by Joseph Sacchetti. Photo by Joseph Sacchetti.

An acquaintance of mine once admitted to dropping her newborn baby while feeding her in the middle of the night. At the time I inwardly scoffed—how can someone be that tired, I thought judgmentally. Fast-forward to a few years later when I can now speak as a new mother—and to being that tired.

Sleep deprivation is no joke. And it doesn’t necessarily begin when the baby is born. The last few months of pregnancy and the discomfort that comes with it make for difficult sleep preceding the birth.

Many maternity units now promote “rooming in,” where a newborn baby stays in the mother’s room rather than with the nurses in the nursery. This makes newborn fall prevention an important issue. Take poor sleep in the last months of pregnancy and the physical and mental exhaustion of labor and add pain and limited mobility from the birth itself, especially a C-section birth; large rails on hospital beds making the transfer of one’s baby from bassinet to the mother’s bed difficult; and possible pain meds for mom, and the recipe could spell disaster.

In my case, with an emergency C-section and limited mobility, I found it very hard to pick my baby up from his bassinet and bring him into my hospital bed for a feeding. Luckily my husband […]

2016-11-21T13:01:48-05:00November 4th, 2015|Nursing, patient engagement|0 Comments
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Final Connection: An ICU Nurse Revises Her Feelings About Cell Phones

Illustration by Denny Bond. All rights reserved. Illustration by Denny Bond. All rights reserved.

Many of us have a love-hate relationship to smartphones, and each person (and generation) draws the line in the sand between invasiveness and usefulness in a different place. Cynthia Stock, the critical care nurse who wrote the Reflections essay in the November issue of AJN, “Final Connection,” starts her brief and moving story with honesty about such matters:

On Monday, if you had asked me how I feel about cell phones, I would have come up with this: I hate to listen to the drone of conversation coming from the person next to me on the treadmill at the gym. I don’t care about trouble with the HOA. I don’t care about a son who can’t decide on a career as a director or an actor. I work out to smooth the kinks in my soul from a job that requires me to navigate a relationship with life and death.

Today, ask me how I feel about cell phones. . . .

A good essay or story often centers around a reversal of some sort. What the protagonist believed may not be so true after all, or may be more complicated than first thought. As you can probably guess, in the […]

2016-11-21T13:01:49-05:00November 2nd, 2015|narratives, Nursing, nursing perspective, patient engagement, Patients|1 Comment
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The Present: What This Visiting Nurse Has to Give

Illustration by Barbara Hranilovich for AJN. Illustration by Barbara Hranilovich for AJN.

It can be daunting for a visiting nurse to enter a patient’s home, especially if the patient seems less than receptive to the nurse’s efforts. In this month’s Reflections essay, “The Present,” Pia Wolcowitz describes one of her first assignments as a visiting nurse. She’s sent to assess a woman newly diagnosed with lung cancer. Here’s an excerpt:

I rang the bell and heard a voice, but couldn’t make out what she said. I rang again. This time I heard her loud and clear. “If you wanna come in, come in! Door’s open!” Entering, I found a woman in her mid-60s sitting hunched at her kitchen table, surrounded by bottles of medication and a bowl of cereal. It was way past noon.

She had cropped blue-black hair with accents of white. She studied me a moment, then her gray eyes examined my ID. “So, you’re the nurse?”

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2016-11-21T13:02:10-05:00August 10th, 2015|narratives, Nursing, nursing perspective, patient engagement, Patients|1 Comment
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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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