July Issue: Ketamine Analgesia During Burn Care, Breast Cancer Screening Update, Difficult IV Access, More

“How powerful would it be if every nurse took one action today to improve her or his community’s health?” —Barry Ross, MPH, MBA, BSN, RN, author of this month’s Viewpoint

The July issue of AJN is now live. Here are some of the articles we’re pleased to have a chance to publish this month.

CE: Original Research: The Efficacy and Safety of an RN-Driven Ketamine Protocol for Adjunctive Analgesia During Burn Wound Care

Because of its unique mechanism of action and lack of association with respiratory depression, ketamine may be an ideal agent for adjunctive analgesia in burn patients. The authors of this study evaluated the efficacy and safety of a practice protocol allowing critical care RNs to independently administer IV ketamine for burn wound care.

CE: Breast Cancer Screening: A Review of Current Guidelines

In light of recent changes to national breast cancer screening guidelines, this article reviews the guidelines of the American Cancer Society, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, and the National Comprehensive Cancer Network and provides guidance to nurses as they support and educate patients.

Special Feature: Ethics Champion Programs

The authors, all of whom lead ethics champion programs at their respective institutions, discuss how these programs prepare nurses to function as unit-based ethics resources for colleagues as they face common ethical issues and challenges.

Cultivating Quality: Making It Stick: Developing and Testing the Difficult Intravenous Access (DIVA) Tool

Nurses report on their QI initiative to create a simple evidence-based tool to help novice nurses predict which patients will present peripheral IV access challenges.

There’s much more in our July issue, including:

• An Update from the CDC on reducing fall risk in older adults.
• An AJN Reports on nurses’ rights and responsibilities regarding taking sick time.
• A Teaching for Practice column on nursing instructor incivility toward students.

Click here to browse the table of contents and explore the issue on our website.

A note on the cover:

This month’s cover photo shows cancer of the breast—a disease that afflicts approximately one in eight U.S. women during her lifetime. Screening is crucial for the early detection of breast cancer in its most treatable stages. However, as discussed in the aforementioned CE, recent changes to screening guidelines from three of the nation’s leading organizations have led to uncertainty among health care providers and patients about which guidelines to follow.