patient experience Archives - Page 14 of 17

Unexplained Deathbed Phenomena: Honoring Patient and Family Experience

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

luke andrew scowen/flickr creative commons

When my dad died, a special little travel clock that he’d given me years before stopped working. It restarted a week after his death, and continued running for years. I have no explanation for this sudden lapse in timekeeping, but it made me feel closer to my dad.

I’ve heard many other stories of unusual events surrounding the death of a loved one. I was therefore delighted to read this month’s Viewpoint column, “Letting Patients and Families Interpret Deathbed Phenomena for Themselves.” In this short essay, Scott Janssen presents some intriguing research findings and a compassionate argument for speaking openly about these occurrences. He writes:

“It’s an open secret among those of us working with the dying – there’s a lot of strange stuff going on for patients, as well as for the clinicians and family members who care for them, that rarely if ever gets talked about: near-death experiences, synchronistic coincidences (stopped clocks at time of death, for example), out-of-body experiences, and visitations from deceased loved ones.”

Janssen, a former hospice social worker and now a psychotherapist, sees such phenomena as part of “the normal continuum of experiences at the end of life.” He calls upon clinicians to create safe contexts in which patients and families can share these experiences without fear that they will be judged, ridiculed, or dismissed by caregivers.

It’s food for […]

Betsy Todd, MPH, RN2016-11-21T13:01:59-05:00September 21st, 2015|Nursing, nursing perspective, patient experience, Patients|0 Comments

The Huddle: A New Mother’s Experience of Discharge Planning

By Amy M. Collins, AJN managing editor

By John Martinez Pavliga/Flickr Creative Commons

Three months ago, I gave birth to my first child under somewhat traumatic circumstances. After a fast and furious labor onset, I was all set to be given an epidural when I was informed the baby’s heart rate had dropped dramatically and I needed to have an emergency C-section. Thankfully, everything turned out okay, and my son was born healthy.

Nurses changed shifts every 12 hours during my four-day hospital stay, and each of them provided excellent care. They spent massive amounts of time with me, helping me to get up and walk around, showing me how to expertly swaddle my baby like a burrito, and even helping me get the hang of feeding my child.

On my last day, two nurses were assigned to get me ready for my discharge. They had tons of printed information for me on postnatal care, wound care, postpartum depression, etc. I was told by one of the nurses that we were going to now have a “mother–child huddle.” She then said to the other nurse, with what I took to be a little irony in her tone, “Are you ready for the mother–child huddle?” Curious, I asked why the emphasis on the word.

“I just think the word ‘huddle’ is silly,” she said, […]

Amy M. Collins, managing editor2016-11-21T13:02:18-05:00July 10th, 2015|Nursing, patient engagement, patient experience, Patients|3 Comments

Nurses Aren’t Just Healers, They’re Teachers Too: A Patient’s View

A teeny red bump had mysteriously appeared on my left index finger. It hurt when I pressed on it. I figured it was nothing. . . .

That’s the start of the June Reflections essay in AJN, “Ms. Lisa and Ms. MRSA,” a patient experience narrative by freelance writer Shannon Harris. As luck would have it, the bump on her finger, it turns out, is not nothing. It’s MRSA.

The diagnosis takes a while. Finally the situation worsens, and surgery is needed. The author takes it all in stride, at least in retrospect:

The third physician stood out to me most. He asked to take a picture of my green and black, staph-infected finger with his iPhone. “Sure. Look at it! I thought this only happened to pirates,” I told him as he snapped away. He glanced at the young, button-nosed nurse standing beside him. “Don’t you want a picture? For your records?” he asked.

She shook her head, squinting and gritting her teeth. “I know. Yuck,” I said. I later shared photos of my infection journey online, to the great wonder and disgust of my friends and family. Before that, though, came surgery.

The author’s tone is light, but the situation […]

Jacob Molyneux, senior editor/blog editor2016-11-21T13:02:27-05:00June 3rd, 2015|Nursing, patient engagement, patient experience, Patients|1 Comment

The Delicate Dance for Stability

By Patricia O’Brien

Loïe Fuller sketched by Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec/via Wikimedia Commons

In college I got a part-time job as a companion to an elderly widow named Fran, driving her around town and assisting with errands: post office, hairdresser, the market, her psychiatrist. The routine was set, and all was well for many months.

But one day, something unusual happened. Fran opened her door with a grand flourish, eyes shining. The television, radio, and blender were blasting. “Shall we go,” I asked, hurrying to turn off the noisy electronics.

“Fran,” I observed, “the blender’s empty.”

“Let’s not bother with tiresome details. I’m out of my head today,” she said, with purposeful excitement. At the pharmacy, this time, I took notice of the medication I picked up for her: lithium.

“What’s lithium for?” I asked, sliding into the car.

“A bipolar disorder. Not to worry. I’ve navigated these choppy seas half my life.”

We did errands. All the while, she acted like she was on the campaign trail for mayor, laughing, waving to friends, and smoking up a storm. At the market she hugged the meat manager, who was arranging Italian sausages. He looked confused, but smiled and told her there was a special on calf’s liver.

“I’ll take it all,” she declared, making […]

Jacob Molyneux, senior editor/blog editor2016-11-21T13:02:57-05:00February 23rd, 2015|Nursing, patient experience, Patients|1 Comment

A Little Levity to Ease the Family Caregiver’s Burden

According to the CDC, almost 21% of households in the U.S. are affected by family caregiving responsibilities. The pressures and costs of this unpaid labor of love have been well documented.

This month’s Reflections essay, “Swabbing Tubby,” is written from the family caregiver perspective rather than that of a nurse. It’s about the wife and two adult daughters of an ailing older man as they are coached in one of the skills they will need to care for him at home.

It’s a tough situation, but one in this case leavened by the ability of these three women to laugh a little at the more absurd aspects of their predicament. Here’s the beginning:

In retrospect, I can’t help feeling sorry for the earnest young woman who tried so hard to show my mother, my sister, and myself how to hook up our brand-new, at-home, IV feeding device. She was all of 25, with the freshly scrubbed look of a young schoolgirl. Her youthful perkiness was no match for the trio of exhausted, crabby women who faced her across the empty hospital bed. Dad was down in X-ray having yet another CT scan, and the three of us were […]

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Jacob Molyneux, senior editor/blog editor2016-11-21T13:03:06-05:00February 2nd, 2015|patient engagement, patient experience, Patients|1 Comment