A Plea for Help in Making Nursing Sustainable

by Casey Horner/via Unsplash

My hairdresser made a comment that I hear from a lot of people who are not in health care.

“I don’t know how you do a full 12-hour shift when it’s life-and-death work. I mean, I have long days working too, but cutting and styling hair isn’t life and death. I just can’t understand how you do it.”

I smiled and shrugged, as I usually do.

“Thanks for recognizing that. I don’t know. We get used to it, and we have a certain flow at work, even when it gets crazy. Plus it cuts down on the number of days I have to commute to work since I get so many hours in in one day.”

I had so much more to say, but that wasn’t the place for it. This is.

It’s true that at our core, we nurses are just wired to do this kind of work and we can push through it beyond a standard eight-hour work day. It also works well for consistency in ICU patient care to only have one changeover of the patient’s nurse from one 12-hour day shift to the incoming 12-hour night shift. We have generally found ways to ride the waves of an especially high census mixed with especially sick patients, typically […]

2021-08-19T16:46:41-04:00July 29th, 2021|health care policy, Nursing, nursing career, Public health, safe staffing|5 Comments
Read More

What to Know About the ACA After Third Failed SCOTUS Challenge

As trusted sources of information related to health and health care, nurses should be informed about health care laws that govern access to care.

The issue.

On June 17, 2021, the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) rejected the latest constitutional challenge to the Affordable Care Act (ACA). The ACA lawsuit was linked to the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of late 2017, which “zeroed out” the penalties imposed by the ACA’s controversial individual mandate requiring people to have health insurance. Following this, in February 2018 a coalition of 18 states and two individuals filed a lawsuit challenging the legality of the ACA because the individual mandate was unenforceable.

While most pundits initially dismissed the seriousness of the threat of the lawsuit, this changed in June 2018 when the U.S. Department of Justice under President Trump expressed support for the suit, asking the court to strike down not the entire law but just the ACA’s prohibitions against insurers’ denying coverage to people with preexisting conditions and against charging higher premiums because of health status (the Justice Department later expanded its support of the lawsuit to include repeal of the entire ACA). Historically, it is unusual for the Justice Department to oppose […]

2021-07-07T10:30:18-04:00June 28th, 2021|health care policy, Nursing, Public health|0 Comments
Read More

Pregnancy and COVID: What We Now Know

Meagan Garibay, RN, BSN, CIC, an infection preventionist at Comanche County Memorial Hospital in Lawton, Oklahoma, received the COVID vaccine in December 2020, when she was 35 weeks pregnant. Photo courtesy of WAVE 3 News.

Few aspects of pregnancy and birth have been unaffected by the COVID pandemic. In the past year, pregnant people and their health care providers have had to alter everything from the way they assess risk to the manner in which care is accessed.

Although little information about pregnancy and COVID was available early in the pandemic, emerging evidence is providing a clearer picture. As a result, in the past year recommendations have shifted—sometimes radically so—for both women and their health care providers. Based on the latest available research, this month in AJN Reports we cover what we now know about COVID and maternal health, including guidance about risk and vaccination.

Higher risks for pregnant people with COVID.

As the articles explains, research suggests pregnant people who have COVID are at higher risk of […]

2021-06-03T08:43:24-04:00June 3rd, 2021|COVID-19, infectious diseases, Public health|0 Comments
Read More

Isn’t It Ironic: A Nurse Reflects on Her J&J Vaccination

Irony: a state of affairs or an event that seems deliberately contrary to what one expects and is often amusing as a result. -dictionary.com

Vaccine, by Julianna Paradisi

On a recent Saturday afternoon I received the Johnson and Johnson/Janssen COVID-19 vaccine. The following Tuesday, its further administration was put on pause, “out of an abundance of caution,” after reports that six women between the ages of 18 and 48 developed a rare but serious form of blood clot six to 13 days after receiving the vaccine. One of the six women died.

There is nothing amusing about the irony that people seeking protection from COVID-19 may have developed a life-threatening adverse reaction from the vaccine. For health care providers, and perhaps especially for nurses, such events are heartbreaking.

Lifting the J&J pause.

On Friday, April 23, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the FDA lifted the 10-day pause on the J&J vaccine, without restrictions, instead issuing a fact sheet to medical providers warning them of the potential for the extremely rare but serious blood clots.

When the pause was lifted, over 7 million people had received the vaccine, with additional confirmed cases of blood clots that had been reported bringing the […]

2021-04-26T11:16:05-04:00April 26th, 2021|COVID-19, infectious diseases, Nursing, nursing perspective, Public health|0 Comments
Read More

Celebrating Earth Day: Connecting Health and the Environment

Photo by Fateme Alaie via Unsplash

Earth Day, celebrated on April 22, is an annual event to demonstrate support for environmental protections. First held in 1970, it now includes a wide range of events coordinated in more than 192 countries across the globe. The Earth Day celebration that stands out most for me was the 20th anniversary held in Central Park in New York. The event was estimated to have drawn more than 750,000 people—a big incentive being the free concert, which included a performance by the B-52s (who doesn’t love “Love Shack”?).

This year marks the 41st Earth Day, and amidst a global pandemic, activities will look a lot different. (Click here for more information on the virtual events taking place this year.)

Free articles from our environments and health column.

In honor of Earth Day, AJN would like to offer free access to the below selection of articles from our Environments and Health column until May 15. There’s a lot to unpack in these articles—from steps to reduce waste at the hospital level, to how nurses can get involved in fighting climate change, to how patients’ health can be affected by our environment, particularly the mental health conditions that may arise amid extreme […]

2021-04-22T14:42:23-04:00April 22nd, 2021|climate change, environmental health, environmental health, Nursing|0 Comments
Read More

Comment ground rules

1. Please be respectful.
2. We moderate all comments.

Content disclaimer

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.
Go to Top