Suicide Among Nurses: Poorly Documented and Unacknowledged

Photo © Wavebreakmedia Ltd UC25/ Alamy Stock Photo

When we all worked eight-hour shifts, “my” shift was evenings. Most nights I reported off to the same night nurse, a woman about my age who was an excellent nurse and also simply a nice person to be with. One evening I came to work to learn that my new friend would not be at work for a while. She had tried to kill herself.

A surprising lack of suicide data for nurses.

Did you know that there are national data on the suicide rates of physicians, teachers, police officers, firefighters, and military personnel, but none pertaining to suicides of nurses? Or that many hospitals have long offered screening for suicide risk to medical staff and medical students, but not to nurses? The lead news story in this month’s AJN, “Suicide Among Nurses,” highlights these and other findings of a recent National Academy of Medicine discussion paper, “Nurse Suicide: Breaking the Silence.”

Many reasons for this silence.

Judy Davidson, a nurse scientist at the University of California San Diego and the lead author of this paper, points out that there are many reasons for the silence around this issue. She notes that suicide data in […]

2018-08-20T09:32:01-04:00August 20th, 2018|Nursing|2 Comments
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A Day in the Emergency Room for a Nurse Who Loves Her Job

Another day begins.

nursing shoes, always left in the car

It’s hard to explain how I feel after yesterday . . .

I wake up and head to work with a smile. I’m wearing my normal attire, blue scrubs. The color is rather ironic. I put my shoes on in the car like always. The shoes never go inside, as they bear remnants of the day before.

I walk in to meet my tribe. We laugh off the previous day’s challenges as we start over. Patients come in and are greeted with the warm Southern welcome of this community emergency room.

Coughs, chest pain, leg injuries, moms, dads, babies, grandmas. A patient with my story who is fighting battles that I fought years ago. My heart aches. I give her hope. She is optimistic. I’m soaring, feeling high on life.

A girl who lost a baby. My heart aches. Why does this happen? What do I say? How do I comfort her? I pray for her. I make a funny joke, at which she has a two-second reprieve from grief and we share a laugh. I feel peace.

A boy is vomiting and writhing in pain. He is scared as he gets his first IV. It’s in and he’s proud of himself for […]

2018-08-16T10:20:32-04:00August 16th, 2018|Nursing|2 Comments
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Is This Child in Pain?

When the child is nonverbal.

Nurses regularly assess patients’ pain. It’s a much more difficult task when the patient is unable to articulate what they’re feeling or even where they hurt. How much more difficult is it when the patient is a nonverbal child with a complex medical history?

In this month’s AJN, Brenna Quinn and colleagues share their research on pain in these children. They define “children with medical complexity” as “those having a cognitive-chronological age mismatch, profound developmental delays, limited or no verbal abilities, and multisystem diagnoses, and who are completely dependent on others for care.” These kids tend to experience pain more frequently (often, daily or weekly), and are more likely to be hospitalized than are neurotypical children.

A ‘wide range of pain-associated behaviors.’

While it is often harder to assess pain in children than in adults, most children have a narrow range of “pain behaviors” that are easily identifiable. This isn’t true of children with medical complexity; some may even seem, from their expressions, to be laughing when they are in pain.

“More than 40 pain assessment tools have been developed for use in infants and children who cannot provide self-report. Despite the availability of these tools, the evaluation of pain in children with medical complexity remains challenging, […]

2018-08-13T08:09:58-04:00August 13th, 2018|family caregiving, Nursing, Patients, pediatrics|0 Comments
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Nurses Retiring from Nursing–or Not

Many of my nursing school classmates are retiring. A few said they were “done” with nursing and health care and with working, and stopped as soon as they were able to afford not working. They keep busy traveling, babysitting grandchildren, or just taking it easy. Some are trying their hand at something totally different—becoming a docent in a museum, for example, or taking courses to be a travel agent.

Keeping a connection to nursing.

Retired nurse Diane McCarthy volunteers in the neonatal ICU at OhioHealth Riverside Methodist Hospital in Columbus. Millennial nurses such as Erin Bergmann (left) say they benefit from having more experienced nurses like McCarthy on the unit. Photo by Kyle Robertson.

Most people I know, however, still want to keep a connection with nursing and have transitioned into part-time or consulting roles. After fulfilling and demanding careers, many older nurses still have a lot to offer and are not ready to completely retire from nursing. As one colleague has aptly termed it, “preferment”—doing what you prefer, when you prefer, and […]

2018-08-09T11:10:56-04:00August 9th, 2018|Nursing, nursing career|2 Comments
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Multi-Drug-Resistant Organisms and Contact Precautions

When MRSA was new on the scene, strict isolation precautions were the norm.

Photo by Rick Sforza, Redlands Daily Facts / SCNG.

Years ago, when we first started to see patients with methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) infections at the hospital where I worked, we kept them in what was then called “strict isolation.” These patients were kept on one unit and cohorted in two rooms at the end of the hall. Staff wore gowns, gloves, masks, and hair covering. How we hated having to put on all that gear!

The current challenge of MDROs.

Today, we understand more about transmission, and isolation precautions are better tailored to the epidemiology of each drug-resistant organism. Unfortunately, though, since that time antibiotic resistance has rapidly increased, and we now find ourselves not only with a lot more MRSA to contend with, but with patients whose infections are susceptible to only one or two antibiotics (and occasionally, to none).

Some of these multi-drug-resistant organisms (MDROs) seem to be persistent colonizers—that is, the organism “takes up residence” on or in the body without causing infection, and can still be transmitted to others. In some cases these patients will need to be on isolation precautions every time they are admitted […]

2018-08-06T09:07:11-04:00August 6th, 2018|infection control, Nursing, Public health|0 Comments
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