Nurses Week: A Time to Reflect on the Incredible Work Nurses Do

The Nurses Week theme this year as set by the ANA, “4 Million Reasons to Celebrate,” points to our numbers. I appreciate the concept, but I’m not in love with this theme—I don’t think our numbers are what make us worth celebrating.

What really matters.

What we should celebrate is nurses’ continued commitment, day after day, to making people’s lives better. Sometimes, that takes effort that goes above and beyond. That’s the focus of my May editorial, “The Unwavering Courage of Nurses.” It’s also depicted in the May issue cover photo (for background, read “On the Cover“): nurses literally running for their lives and the lives of their patient, just ahead of flames from the deadliest fire in California’s history. And it’s what makes some Red Cross nurses so special: see this article by Debby Dailey and Linda MacIntyre (listen to the podcast of my conversation with the authors, too).

I think Nurses Week is important, not so much for the public who, judging by their votes in the most recent Gallup poll, already think highly of us (a good reminder for nurses’ employers […]

2019-05-03T08:39:55-04:00May 3rd, 2019|Nursing, nursing career|0 Comments
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Daughter or Nurse? Caught Between Roles When a Father Is Hospitalized

“Word moves quickly that a patient on the unit has a daughter who is an RN.”

That’s from this month’s Reflections essay, “The Other Side,” in which a nurse struggles with her own mounting helplessness as her father’s hospital stay following surgery is unexpectedly prolonged.

On the other side.

The author finds herself in an uncomfortable in-between position, one that may be familiar to other nurses who have had family members in the hospital.

“I am an outsider, a family member on the other side. I know there is information not shared with me, information the health care team keeps to themselves. These conversations take place in whispered voices outside the room—conversations I have been a part of in the recent past, on my unit.”

[…]

2019-05-02T10:59:38-04:00May 1st, 2019|family experience, narratives, Nursing, nursing perspective, writing|0 Comments
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May Issue: Assessing a Child’s Pain, Handling Work-Related Stress, Stop the Bleed, More

“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 […]

2019-04-29T08:16:17-04:00April 29th, 2019|Nursing|1 Comment
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In Nursing, ‘Joy’ and ‘Work’ Are Not Mutually Exclusive

No shortage of workplace pressures.

Photo by Mark Thomas/Science Photo Library.

In virtually any health care setting today, nurses are under pressure to increase efficiencies, improve quality, and cut costs. The nonstop pressure to always do better comes in the midst of staff shortages, repeated changes in clinical protocols, struggles with EHRs that are incompatible with our workflow, and even concerns for our own physical safety. It’s no surprise that nursing turnover rates are increasing.

With all of this raining down on our heads, is it really possible to experience joy at work?

In “Finding Joy in the Workplace” in this month’s issue (free until May 7), Rose Sherman and Cynthia Blum tell us that it is. And, they argue, the work experience of nurses influences the quality of their interactions with patients:

If clinicians don’t feel hope, confidence, and psychological safety in their work, they can’t in turn offer these to their patients.

An evidence-based framework for improving joy.

The Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) is known to most of us as an organization that focuses on patient safety issues like CLABSIs, surgical site infections, falls, and medication errors. But increasingly concerned about clinician burnout (which is, after all, a patient safety issue), in 2017 […]

2019-04-24T09:26:18-04:00April 24th, 2019|career, Nursing, wellness|0 Comments
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Nurses Recognizing the Importance of Earth Day

Happy Earth Day!

In the midst of this climate crisis it is important to take some moments to celebrate the earth. I like to do so by hiking in the Camden Hills on the coast of Maine. Over the last year, many cities and states have taken the lead in addressing climate change. I know this firsthand, as I serve as mayor of a small city in Maine. In the last year, our city has installed free public electric vehicle chargers, turned on our third solar array and are now powering almost 90% of our municipal electricity with solar, and created a city climate change committee to study the effects of climate on our community.

The most pressing public health challenge of this century.

As nurses we intimately know the communities that we serve and are aware of the potential physical and mental health effects of environmental factors. As the most trusted health profession, our voice is important in communication related to health and climate change.

As the nation moves towards a transition to renewable energy, nurses can join the conversation to ensure that all people are supported and included. Nurses know the importance of considering health in policy making. This includes ensuring that the communities who have been historically left out of environmental policy conversations […]

2019-04-22T08:22:51-04:00April 22nd, 2019|Nursing|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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