Off the Charts

Bringing the Faces of Addiction—and Recovery—to Schools

Nancy Labov, RN, CADC. Photos courtesy of Nancy Labov.

A nurse speaks from experience.

In nursing school, Nancy Labov felt a kinship with the patients she encountered during a rotation on a rehabilitation unit. She realized that she wanted to spend her career caring for patients like them. Their struggles with addiction struck a chord: alcoholism ran in her family, and she, too, had a substance abuse problem, though she was in denial about it at the time.

In her mid-20s, Labov got sober; she has maintained her sobriety ever since. She’s also persisted in her mission to help people recover from addiction. As an RN and a certified alcohol and drug counselor, she has spent the past three decades working on rehab and detox units across the country.

Labov is also the founder of Alumni in Recovery (AIR)—a nonprofit through which young adults in recovery give talks at schools in the communities they grew up in. As she discusses in the July Profile in AJN, “Helping Students See the Realities of Addiction and Recovery,” the New Jersey-based volunteer organization fights stigma by opening a dialogue about addiction and showing teens a young, local, and relatable face of recovery.

A peer-to-peer approach is key.

“How do […]

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Diane Szulecki, editor2019-07-11T08:55:16-04:00July 11th, 2019|Nursing, nursing stories, Public health|2 Comments

Are You Checking for Ticks?

” . . . cases of tick-borne diseases [in the U.S.] increased more than twofold between 2004 and 2017. . . .Tick-borne diseases now make up more than three-quarters of all vector-borne disease reports.”

I live in a small town dotted with grassy and wooded areas, brush, and plenty of mammalian wildlife, so the possibility of contact with ticks is present even on a walk to the compost bin or train station.

I’ve become really good at tick identification and removal, but I can’t claim any special expertise in recognizing the early signs of tick-borne diseases.

CDC warns of tick-borne rickettsial disease increase.

For that information, we have help this month from Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) staff, who steer readers to new resources in the Update from the CDC column in AJN’s July issue, “Increase in Reports of Tick-Borne Rickettsial Diseases in the United States.”

Alison Binder and Paige Armstrong tell us about the CDC’s new online training toolkit and learning module, both designed to raise awareness about tick-borne rickettsial diseases. […]

Betsy Todd, MPH, RN2019-07-08T09:03:50-04:00July 8th, 2019|environmental health, infectious diseases, Nursing, Public health|2 Comments

‘Batman Has No Superpowers’: Inspiring Nurses as Leaders and Healers

“Leadership is about inviting people on a mission to do something extraordinary together.”

by Augustin Ruiz, via Flickr

This year’s Quality and Innovations Conference, presented by the American Nurses Association in April, included an offbeat presentation on ‘Superhero Leadership: How Everyday People Can Have an Extraordinary Impact.’ At this opening session, filmmaker Brett Culp shared a short film, stories, and advice, offering a perspective on leadership that managed to be both inspiring and poignant.

Using everyday skills as forces for good.

Culp may be best known for his 2013 documentary, Legends of the Knight (www.WeAreBatman.com), in which he relates the true stories of children and adults “who were inspired to become real-life heroes because of their love of Batman.” Batman has no superpowers, and therefore he can inspire others to use their own everyday skills and strengths as forces for good. The filmmaker suggests that nurses, too, should “embrace [our] inner superhero” when needed.

Culp emphasized that in his many travels he has seen that “the world is filled with good people,” and that most people want to make a difference at work and for their communities.

Leaders ‘hold space’ for what could be.

Culp believes that a pivotal role in the process of change is the person who steps up first, “creating space” for others to join them in their efforts.

This is a central job of leaders, he says—to […]

Betsy Todd, MPH, RN2019-08-01T09:56:36-04:00July 5th, 2019|career, Nursing|0 Comments

In Health Care, We All Have Biases

Everyone involved in health care is likely aware of the disparities that exist in the system, from private patients who get fast-tracked and admitted to private rooms (all hospitals seem to have a “VIP” floor) to individuals who must wait until they are very ill and then can be treated as an emergency. And even though our ethics dictate otherwise, we know that, often unconsciously, we treat some patients differently.

Awakening to our preconceived notions and preferences.

“Addressing Implicit Bias in Nursing: A Review,” written by Mary Curry Narayan and published in our July issue, discusses how preconceived notions and instinctive preferences can interfere with relationships and change how we treat patients.

Are you as comfortable walking into a room full of people similar to yourself as you are into a room full of people who speak a different language or are from a different background? Do you feel and act the same way towards a private patient with an MI who has a stable job and family as you would towards an unemployed person who has a substance abuse disorder? Will you spend the same amount of time speaking with them?

Recall conversations with colleagues at change-of-shift reports—in my experience, discussions there often color how we feel about patients before we even meet them.

Biases: we all have them.

Narayan points out that the first step in managing our biases is to acknowledge that we all have them—they’re part of our past experiences and are […]

Shawn Kennedy, MA, RN, FAAN, editor-in-chief (emerita)2019-08-01T09:48:19-04:00July 3rd, 2019|Nursing, Patients|0 Comments

A Health Care Proxy and an Act of Moral Imagination

“What would Joanna have wanted?” the ICU fellow (Dr. Smith) asked Sam, Joanna’s nephew and health care proxy, for the second time this week. Sam considered the question, furrowed his brow, and said, “I still don’t know, doc.”

The human costs of indecision.

Uncertainty can at times be better than false certainty. This may even be so, up to a point, when a loved one is on life-support and subject to invasive and painful procedures. It takes time to absorb the reality of a situation.

But any nurse can tell you that, at some point, indecision becomes a decision in itself, one that can lead to many unwished-for consequences.

Seemingly unanswerable questions.It

The quotation at the start of this post is from this month’s Reflections essay, “What Joanna Would Have Wanted” (free until July 15). The story, by nurse Jennifer Chicca, MS, RN, evokes the overwhelming sense of responsibility faced by a thoughtful young man in the role of health care proxy to a beloved aunt.

How is possible to be sure what someone would want, or not want, when their end-of-life wishes have not been clearly spelled out ahead of time? […]

Jacob Molyneux, senior editor/blog editor2019-07-01T15:50:47-04:00July 1st, 2019|Nursing, nursing stories, patient experience|1 Comment