“Nursing takes a steely courage that many people don’t possess. We deal with raw emotions on a daily basis, taking in the grief and loss and pain and hopelessness of patients and families who look to us to make them feel better.”—AJN editor-in-chief Shawn Kennedy in her May editorial

The May issue of AJN is now live. Here are some highlights.

CE: Original Research: Work-Related Stress and Positive Thinking Among Acute Care Nurses: A Cross-Sectional Survey

In the first U.S. study to evaluate acute care nurses’ use of positive thinking in managing work-related stress, the authors found that positive thinking skills are being used to cope with such stress, and that nurses’ use of these skills can be improved through training.

CE: Assessing a Child’s Pain

This article discusses the factors that can influence a child’s report of pain, describes components of a comprehensive pediatric pain assessment, and reviews appropriate pain assessment scales for children of different ages and levels of cognitive development.

Nursing and the Sustainable Development Goals: From Nightingale to Now

The authors explore how nurses can contextualize the United Nations 17 Sustainable Development Goals within their daily practice and create holistic plans of care for patients, families, communities, and nations.

Leading the Effort to Promote Bleeding Control in Our Communities

This article describes Stop the Bleed, an initiative to educate the public on simple steps to stop or slow life-threatening bleeding and explains how nurses can promote it.

Advocating for Janetta

A Red Cross nurse shares her experience supporting a California woman in the days and months after a fire destroyed her home.

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

  • A profile of congresswoman and RN Lauren Underwood.
  • An AJN Reports on psychiatric advance directives.
  • A Teaching for Practice column on ensuring a successful preceptorship.

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

A note on the cover:

On this month’s cover, a medical team evacuates a patient from the Kaiser Permanente Santa Rosa Medical Center in Santa Rosa, California, during the October 2017 Tubbs Fire. This medical center was one of two in Santa Rosa evacuated because of the wildfire, which killed 22 people.