Turkey, Sweet Potatoes, and Living Wills

By Christine Moffa, MS, RN, AJN clinical editor

When I was growing up, my family spent Thanksgiving dinner at my grandmother’s house. She was a star in the kitchen, with cooking and baking skills beyond compare. However, while she made a chocolate cream pie to kill for, her knack for turning every conversation into a newsfeed of various neighbors’ illnesses, symptoms, and near-death experiences, if not actual deaths, stood out more. She did this so much that my brother began referring to her as Grandma Kevorkian.

It turns out that death-and-dying discussions on Thanksgiving might not be such a bad thing, according to Engage with Grace, a nonprofit organization that promotes end-of-life discussions. In 2008 they launched a blog rally timed with Thanksgiving weekend, for bloggers to get the word out about end-of-life discussions. The idea is to have the conversation when most of the family members are together, and the Thanksgiving holiday is a perfect fit. There’s a five-question tool available on the site that can be used as a conversation starter, as well as other resources.

While talking about these topics could potentially clear a room, it’s a lot worse to be sitting at a family member’s bedside in the ICU and not knowing what to choose for them because they didn’t let you know in advance.

For additional information on end-of-life discussions and options, see the AJN articles “Life-Support Interventions at the End of Life: Unintended Consequences,” by […]

2016-11-21T13:14:50-05:00November 24th, 2010|nursing perspective, patient engagement, Public health|2 Comments
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AJN Webnotes: Anatomizing Medical Errors; Insurance Rebates; Social Media and Nurses

The most popular article in last week’s New England Journal of Medicine did not tout the discovery of a novel gene, nor describe a cardiology clinical trial with a clever acronym as its title. Rather, it was the report of a case in which a surgeon at the Massachusetts General Hospital performed the wrong operation on a 65-year-old woman.

So begins a nicely engaging summary post at The Health Care Blog of the main points of an NEJM article describing how a medical error occurred—and yes, nurses play a major role in the story too.

Feel like your insurance company spends too much time trying to weasel you out of your money? Kaiser Health News reports today that the Affordable Care Act may soon result in a little payback, in the form of rebates:

Millions of Americans might be eligible for rebates starting in 2012 under regulations released Monday detailing the health care law’s requirement that insurers spend at least 80 percent of their revenue on direct medical care.


“I have nothing listed under my work experience, yet Facebook somehow knows where I work,” cries Not Nurse Ratched, in a post called “Latest Facebook creepiness rant.” Such surprises are worth considering for anyone who might forget that information has a life of its own on the Web. Speaking of social media and nurses, A Nurse Practitioner’s View gives a quick survey of social media networking platforms […]

2016-11-21T13:14:53-05:00November 22nd, 2010|health care policy, healthcare social media|0 Comments
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Anti-Antibiotics Week

Not only is antibiotic resistance dangerous and expensive, it’s on the rise. Unfortunately cold and flu season can make people so uncomfortable they’ll do anything to feel better, including insisting their health care provider write a prescription for a medication that can’t help them. In an effort to change this, the CDC and FDA have teamed up for the 3rd annual Get Smart about Antibiotics Week (November 15–21).

2016-11-21T13:14:54-05:00November 18th, 2010|patient engagement, Public health|3 Comments
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Harm Reduction or Stigmatization: What’s Your Approach to Drug-Addicted Patients?

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tDZhVnR3HC8]

By Alison Bulman, senior editorial coordinator

How much of your nursing education focused on how to handle drug addicts and substance abuse? Probably not much, according to speakers at a recent event I attended with my colleague Christine Moffa, AJN’s clinical editor, at the Center for Health, Media, and Policy at Hunter College.

The event was focused around a clip (longer than the one above) from “Bevel Up: Drugs, Users and Outreach Nursing,” an award-winning film by Canadian documentary filmmaker Nettie Wild. (A photo of a street nurse from the program appeared on AJN’s cover in July 2009, along with an article about the program.) Fiona Gold, BA, RN, and Juanita Maginley, MA, BSN, RN, whose work in Vancouver is the subject of the film, spoke on the panel about the value of harm reduction and about the systemic flaws and tendency to stigmatize drug addicts that prevent health care from reaching this population.

The powerful clip showed street nurses searching the city’s alleys and housing complexes for drug addicts, dealers, and sex workers. They carry bags full of syringes, condoms, and crack pipe mouthpieces which they deliver to those willing to take them. They ask street patients whether they might be pregnant, have unsafe sex, may have a disease, and if they want to have the nurses draw blood for testing.

The outreach project started in response to Vancouver’s alarming increase in HIV infections. Medical services were not reaching the most vulnerable people, so nurses devised a plan to […]

2017-06-28T15:00:01-04:00November 1st, 2010|nursing perspective, patient engagement, Public health|23 Comments
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Enough with the Scare Tactics: Some Follow-Up on the IOM Report on the Future of Nursing

Shawn Kennedy, AJN’s interim editor-in-chief, already posted here about the importance of the recently released Institute of Medicine Report on the Future of Nursing. Its implications are particularly profound at a time when we have a scarcity of primary care providers—and also at a time when the Affordable Care Act (i.e., health care reform) has designated more resources to nursing education and to generally making better use of nurses’ expertise. A number of bloggers have written about the IOM report, several of them expressing chagrin about the predictably naysaying American Medical Association response. Rebutting the AMA, the Center for Health Media and Policy at Hunter College had this to say. One working NP who weighed in on this topic is Stephen Ferrara, who noted (almost two weeks ago, in fact, though we missed it until now) the real world implications of the current situation for NPs in New York State, in a succinct post on his blog, A Nurse Practitioner’s View:

The bottom line is (at least in NY where I practice), without a collaborating physician on record, the 14,000 or so NPs are unemployed and can’t legally do anything that we were trained or educated to do. It is time to remove these non-evidence based barriers and retrospective reviews and allow us to function as true partners on the health care team. Collaboration among providers would still continue to happen and I promise pigs wouldn’t start to fly. Fourteen states have already transitioned to to an […]
2016-11-21T13:15:10-05:00October 21st, 2010|career, health care policy, nursing perspective|0 Comments
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