Antipsychotics: Understanding These Increasingly Prescribed Medications

As AJN‘s June issue CE article on antipsychotic medications makes clear, the history of the treatment of mental illness provides many cautionary tales:

Theories about the causes of mental illness have included the belief that a person is possessed by spirits, demons, or the devil; that she or he has a weakness of character; or that the person had a “refrigerator” mother, someone whose coldness led to the child developing insanity. Those with mental health issues were treated with . . . therapies that are now considered to be questionable and inhumane: being chained . . . in institutions . . . and put into insulin-induced comas; having a lobotomy; being subjected to malarial therapy, exorcism, and prayer; being placed into ice water baths . . .

Images courtesy of the estate of Bryan Charnley. Full image caption below.

In the past century, as our understanding of various aspects of mental illness has increased (there’s still a long way to go), so has the range of available treatments, from psychotherapy to a constantly expanding arsenal of first- and later-generation drugs, many with substantial adverse effect […]

2017-07-27T11:30:53-04:00June 5th, 2017|Nursing|0 Comments
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AJN Facebook Readers on Influences, Public Attitudes to Nursing, Practices of Yesterday

We loved readers’ contributions to AJN’s celebration of Nurses Week.  For those who missed our Nurses Week Questions of the Day on Facebook, here are some highlighted responses to some of the questions:

What nurse has most influenced your nursing career?

There were many shout-outs to mentors by name, lauded for their grace, commitment, integrity, vast knowledge, and patience, or described as nurses who “role-modeled intelligence, compassion, and professionalism.”

Moms, grandmothers, and wives were often mentioned, as were instructors in both RN and LPN schools, and charge nurses. One nurse described being mentored by a paramedic, who “showed me how to remain caring in a system that so many times does not have time for the small things.” Another cited “every nurse I’ve ever worked beside” as a mentor, because other nurses model both the best and worst of nursing practice.

What do you think the general public doesn’t understand about nurses and nursing?

The number one frustration expressed in these answers was that we are often thought of as caring but not intelligent—that “we don’t know what to do until a doctor tells us.” But as one nurse succinctly put it, “We know what’s going on with you before you or the doctors […]

2017-05-31T15:49:58-04:00May 31st, 2017|Nursing, nursing perspective|2 Comments
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June Issue Highlights: Understanding Antipsychotics, Talking to Pregnant Smokers, IBS Basics

The June issue of AJN is now live. Here are some articles we’d like to bring to your attention.

CE Feature: Mental Health Matters: Antipsychotic Medications

In recent years, more adults—and teenagers—are taking at least one type of psychotropic medication, the majority of which are prescribed by primary care and family physicians. This first article in a series on commonly used psychotropic medications for the treatment of mental illness reviews the mechanisms of action, adverse effects, and contraindications of first-generation typical and second-generation atypical antipsychotics.

CE Feature: Original Research: The Experiences of Pregnant Smokers and Their Providers

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 10.7% of women nationwide reported smoking during their last trimester. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ initiative Healthy People 2020 targets tobacco use, including smoking during pregnancy, as a continuing major health concern in this country. Yet bringing the U.S. Public Health Service’s 2008 clinical practice guideline, Treating Tobacco Use and Dependence, into routine prenatal care remains challenging.  The authors of this study conducted focus groups of pregnant smokers and their providers, most of whom were RNs, to better understand their experiences and to gain insights to help providers best deliver the stop-smoking message.

Clinical Feature: 

2017-05-30T11:44:24-04:00May 30th, 2017|Nursing|0 Comments
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Remembering an Air Force Nurse Killed in a Vietnam War Airlift

This Memorial Day weekend, as we remember all nurses who have served in the U.S. military, we spotlight one, Air Force Captain Mary Klinker, who died in a plane crash outside Saigon during the final days of the Vietnam War. She was the only member of the U.S. Air Force Nurse Corps—and the last military nurse—to die in that war.

Capt. Klinker had volunteered to work aboard the first flight of a mission, Operation Babylift, ordered by President Gerald Ford’s administration in the weeks before the fall of Saigon (now called Ho Chi Minh City). The aim was to move 2,000 South Vietnamese orphans and displaced children to the Philippines and then the United States for adoption.

In addition to Capt. Klinker, more than 300 passengers, including Air Force personnel, Defense Attaché Office employees, and about 250 children, filled the troop compartment and cargo area of the C-5 cargo plane on April 4, 1975. Children were placed together in seats and cardboard boxes. Soon after leaving the airport near Saigon, a substantial malfunction in the rear of the plane led to a forced landing in a field. About 130 passengers, many of whom were in the cargo area, died. Capt. Klinker was caring for children in […]

2017-05-26T13:22:46-04:00May 26th, 2017|Nursing, nursing history|0 Comments
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What Types of Articles Do Journal Editors Want to Read?

Writing is time-consuming and difficult to do—the last thing you want is to spend time working on a manuscript that has little chance of being published. There are many strategies you can use to enhance the likelihood of publication, which we discuss throughout this series, but the first and most important is writing the type of article that journal editors want to publish.

Those opening sentences from “What Types of Articles to Write,” the third in AJN‘s ongoing Writing for Publication: Step by Step series by Karen Roush, PhD, RN, FNP, speak directly to the uncertainty that besets many would-be nurse writers (and in fact, all writers). Form is intimately tied to content. Ideally, the two should support each other, but first they have to be a good fit.

What type of article should you write?

What types of articles will get journal editors’ attention? And what will hold their attention once they open your manuscript? […]

2017-05-25T11:07:23-04:00May 25th, 2017|Nursing, writing|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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