‘Go Home, Stay, Good Nurse’: Hospital Staffing Practices Suck the Life Out of Nurses

By Shawn Kennedy, AJN interim editor-in-chief

After I last wrote to you from the NTI (the American Association of Critical-Care Nurses’ annual National Teaching Institute and Critical Care Exposition), I headed back to the exhibit hall to check out the helicopter and the Army’s mobile operating tent. But I didn’t get to either one, because I met a young critical care nurse from a regional hospital in Missouri. We chatted about her workplace, and it was obvious that she was very proud of the work she and her colleagues did. When I asked her, “What’s your biggest issue?”, she said that it was probably staffing. I expected her to cite the shortage and the difficulty of finding qualified critical care nurses. But that wasn’t what she meant—rather she was talking about  bare-bones staffing because of tight budgets. Her hospital routinely switches between two tactics: it sends nurses home when the patient census is low (when this happens, the nurses are paid only $2 an hour to be on call, but must still use a vacation day to retain full-time benefits, a tactic that rapidly depletes their vacation time); or, when the patient census is higher, the hospital imposes mandatory overtime, creating havoc in nurses’ schedules, finances, and personal lives. And people wonder why there’s a nursing shortage! […]

2017-03-28T13:15:48-04:00May 20th, 2010|career, Nursing, nursing perspective, nursing research, safe staffing|34 Comments
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Who You Calling ‘Just a Nurse’?

It makes my blood boil when I hear a nurse say, “I’m just a nurse.” Sure, I’ve heard some nurses say, “I’m a nurse,” and I’ve heard many qualify their position by specifying, “I’m a critical care nurse” or “I’m a dialysis nurse.” But all too often, especially when asked whether they work in a specialty area, I hear nurses say apologetically, “No, I’m just a regular nurse,” or “I’m just a floor nurse.”

So says AJN‘s interim editor-in-chief Shawn Kennedy in her May editorial. Now here at AJN we’d like to reassure you that we don’t believe that anyone’s blood can actually boil. THAT is not an evidence-based statement. But Shawn’s hyperbole is meant to drive home a point: this is a topic that should matter to nurses, whatever their education level or exact job description.

We hope you’ll take a moment to read Shawn’s editorial in full and then let us know here what you think.

Longish sidebar: AJN may be a little uptight and old-fashioned about checking the facts we publish and making sure our editors and copyeditors fix unclear or inaccurate or simply awkward language, structure, and use of sources; ferret out conflicts of interest in our writers; and generally keep the journal a place you know you can trust in a world of shifting sources driven by suspect motivations. But here on our more informal blog, we also really really like (and do not edit!) reader comments, even very casual comments punched out on a tiny smartphone keypad.

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2016-11-21T13:17:41-05:00May 17th, 2010|career, nursing perspective|0 Comments
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New Nurse Keeps Grandma’s Gutsy Resolve, Varied Career in Sights

By Cara Gewolb, BSN. Cara lives in New York City and in January completed an accelerated 15-month BSN program at New York University College of Nursing for those with previous bachelor’s degrees. This longer-than-usual post was passed along to us by Barbara Glickstein, a producer and host of Healthstyles radio show, where Cara recently talked about her grandmother’s career as a public health nurse. We post it today in honor of Nurses’ Week—and also in honor of all the nurses who have recently graduated and are looking for work in a tight market.

My grandmother Frances Reichman Lubin had been the only nurse in her family until I received a BSN in January. As a new nurse I’m a bit unsure of myself, but I’m looking for work and excited to enter my profession. While I’m interested in becoming an ER or ICU nurse, my grandmother’s diverse career reminds me to stay open to opportunity. Her career extended from the 1940s to 1970s and encompassed stints as an army nurse, public health nurse, ICU nurse, teacher, and administrator, as well as time off to raise children and further her nursing education. I keep her example as a funny, gutsy woman who always kept her sense of purpose in my sights as I go forward. She died […]

2016-11-21T13:17:45-05:00May 12th, 2010|career, narratives, Nursing|5 Comments
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Scientist, Healer, Nurse

. . . we’d sliced his chest cavity open during our dissection, rendering his beating heart clearly visible. He was pinned to a small tray and covered with a cheesecloth. I brought him home in a shoe box on a sparsely populated school bus, and placed him carefully on the coffee table in the living room.

If the above excerpt sounds like it’s lifted from the intimate memoirs of a torturer, it’s not. It’s from the May Reflections essay, “The Soul on the Head of a Pin,” which is written by Marcy Phipps (for the nicest version, click through to the PDF once you’ve reached the article at our Website). Marcy is a nurse who uses a simple, elegantly rendered childhood story to explore the sometimes unnerving gap inside every nurse between the roles of objective scientist and compassionate healer. -JM

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2016-11-21T13:17:46-05:00May 10th, 2010|career, nursing perspective|0 Comments
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Turf Wars Aside, How Do NPs and MDs Really Differ?

By Christine Moffa, MS, RN, AJN clinical editor

There’s been a lot of talk lately about turf wars between NP’s and physicians, especially when it comes to the much discussed U.S. shortage of primary care providers. Before going back to school and getting a master’s in nursing education, I batted around the idea of becoming a nurse practitioner. It seemed like the ideal next step for someone who was happy being a clinician but wanted to take on an advanced role.

However, there was something that didn’t sit right with me about becoming an NP—namely, my fear of public perception. I’m not sure most people know exactly what the role of an NP is and how it differs from that of a physician, particularly in primary care. I’ve seen patients call their primary care NP “doctor [insert first name here],” which to me illustrates the confusion.

When people ask me the difference, I myself have a hard time articulating it. How do I respond when someone says something like this: “if entry to medical school and residency is typically more competitive than for advanced degree nursing programs, and if physicians spend a longer time attending tougher programs, how do you justify their doing the same work as NPs?” (For instance, when I was in school we, along with the NP candidates, were only required to take two semesters of pathophysiology!)

Now, I’ve been to an NP as a patient, and I was happy with the care I received. She certainly […]

2016-11-21T13:18:07-05:00April 20th, 2010|career, nursing perspective, students|6 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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