Former Pediatric ICU Nurse: Where Are the Smart Guns?

Stars for the dead.

On the afternoon of Thursday, November 14, 2019, I visited our local art museum to see a retrospective exhibit by a conceptual artist. Walking into the museum gallery, the first piece you encounter is an installation of several dark blue banners suspended from the ceiling. On their blue fields are embroidered white stars; lots of white stars, 14,718 in all. Each star represents a person killed in the United States by another person with a gun in 2018.

It’s a sobering statistic, but what caught my attention was the half-dozen high school students seated cross-legged on the museum floor inside the circle created by the hanging banners. They faced each other silently. None of them was texting or taking selfies, which was remarkable in itself.

I hadn’t yet heard that earlier in the day two high school students died, and several more were injured in another school shooting, this one at Saugus High School in Santa Clarita, California. Later the shooter, a student, died of self-inflicted gunshot wounds.

As seen in the pediatric ICU.

As a former pediatric intensive care nurse, I have personally cared for several child gunshot victims. They were nice children from nice families who happened to have loaded guns in their homes.

Forgive […]

2019-11-20T10:13:03-05:00November 20th, 2019|Nursing, Public health|1 Comment
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Informing Policy, Driving Change: No Longer Optional for Nurses

Nurses have the knowledge, skills, and obligation.

Rep. Lauren Underwood, left, with AAN president Karen Cox

The American Academy of Nursing (AAN) kicked off its annual policy conference last week by honoring Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson, (D-TX), the first registered nurse elected to Congress, and hearing from the nurse most recently elected to the House, Rep. Lauren Underwood, (D-IL). Their presence underscored a viewpoint that is gaining traction in prominent circles, from the World Health Organization to the National Academy of Medicine: Nurses have the knowledge, skills, and obligation to inform policy and drive change.

During her talk, Underwood laid out her policy priorities and expressed her fervent belief that for nurses, “engaging in policy is not optional.”

Underwood serves on three House committees—Veterans’ Affairs, Homeland Security, and Education and Labor—and within those on subcommittees dealing with emergency preparedness, disability assistance, and other topics where she uses her health expertise to influence policy on a range of issues. These include gun violence prevention, black maternal health, infant mortality, drug pricing, and suicide among veterans.

A data-driven approach.

Underwood’s approach to policymaking is data driven. Prompted by research on medication adherence, she sponsored a bill to allow veterans to receive a full-year’s supply of contraceptives rather than having to refill their prescriptions every three months.

When […]

2019-10-29T15:50:34-04:00October 29th, 2019|Nursing, nursing perspective, nursing roles, Public health|0 Comments
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Revising Protocols in the Midst of Disaster Response

Refining an unsuccessful triage process.

Health care moves at such a rapid pace these days that quality improvement (QI) seems to be never-ending. We know these projects can help us to better our care, but it sure does become tiring when yet another new protocol or data responsibility falls on our shoulders. What if you were tasked with an urgent QI project in the midst of responding to a disaster?

Considering our own repeated scrambles to squeeze QI into ordinary workdays, imagine what it would be like to manage QI in a setting of extremely limited resources, where many people were desperate for emergency services—and you had to “get it right,” ASAP.

In “Implementing a Fast-Track Team Triage Approach in Response to Hurricane Maria” (free until November 15), Brittany Parak and colleagues describe their efforts to improve emergency services after their mobile military hospital was deployed to Puerto Rico, just 16 days after Hurricane Maria devastated the island.

“We soon discovered it would be necessary to refine our triage process, as our initial strategy resulted in limited access to care, prolonged wait times, many people leaving without being seen, and patients with acute problems not being cared for in a timely manner.”

[…]

2019-10-24T10:04:30-04:00October 24th, 2019|Nursing, Public health|0 Comments
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What Can We Do About Vaccine Misinformation?

“ . . . schools reported immunization rates ranging from 19% to 100%, with an average of 91%. . . . Alarmingly, one school reported that none of its students had been vaccinated.”

This year’s measles and mumps outbreaks are a reminder that many of us still think of vaccination as only a personal health practice. We forget that it is also something we do as a member of a community. When a vaccine-preventable disease starts to circulate, every vaccinated or otherwise immune person is a transmission dead end. It’s as though the virus skids to a stop in front of us, unable to pass through the closed door of our immunity to continue to replicate and spread disease.

In “Countering Vaccine Misinformation” in this month’s AJN, Lindsey Danielson and colleagues discuss vaccines, health literacy, and the ease with which misinformation can proliferate on social media. They emphasize the importance of understanding different kinds of opposition to vaccination:

“Vaccine hesitant describes a person who is hesitant about vaccines but still receptive to scientific evidence, while vaccine denier refers to a person who is against vaccination, denies scientific evidence, and uses rhetorical arguments to give the false appearance of legitimate debate.”

[…]

2019-10-21T07:57:26-04:00October 21st, 2019|infectious diseases, Nursing, nursing roles, Public health|1 Comment
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During Domestic Violence Awareness Month, Two Articles Examine Actions Nurses Can Take

Two articles in this month’s issue will increase nurses’ awareness of the realities of domestic violence and point to ways they can respond.

A school nurse and women’s advocate.

“Every year, I have mothers of students who are experiencing domestic violence. I see parents and children who are affected by this issue. It’s our job as nurses to see problems and to try to identify causes, trends, and possible solutions.”

The above quote is from Dawn Wilcox, BSN, RN, who was speaking in her capacity as an elementary school nurse, noting that violence against women is a preventable public health issue, one she regularly encounters in her nursing practice.

Wilcox, who I interviewed for this month’s Profile, is also the creator of the United States Femicide Database, accessible on the website of her organization, Women Count USA. It’s the only such catalog of vital details about the women and girls killed by men and boys each year in the United States.

In the article, Wilcox provides practical tips for nurses who are unsure of how to address discrimination, harassment, and violence toward women and girls. For additional information, listen to our discussion on AJN’s Behind the Article podcast.

Asking questions.

In “When ‘Love’ = Death,” which […]

2019-10-16T11:43:24-04:00October 16th, 2019|Nursing, Public health|0 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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