A National Standard to Prevent Health Care Workplace Violence?

National Nurses United joined members of Congress to speak out at a press conference unveiling findings from the Government Accountability Office’s 2016 report on workplace violence prevention in health care. Photo courtesy of National Nurses United.

In 2014, health care and social assistance workers suffered injuries from workplace violence at a rate more than four times higher than that of private sector employees. What can be done to keep health care workers safe on the job?

As we report in an April news article, National Nurses United, AFL–CIO, and other unions have petitioned the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) to create a federal standard for preventing health care workplace violence. OSHA issued a request in December for information on the subject, and held a public hearing in January in which health care workers spoke about their experiences of workplace violence and their ideas for improving safety and protection policies. Through early April, the agency collected comments from the public on a federal standard—but uncertainty surrounds its direction under the Trump administration.

Nine states have enacted measures against workplace violence in health care settings. The toughest of these is California’s Workplace Violence Prevention Health Care standard, which was enacted last year. It requires health care facilities to implement a comprehensive program with multiple components for addressing workplace violence.

See more news stories from our April issue, which are free to access through April 21:

2017-04-14T08:49:22-04:00April 14th, 2017|Nursing|0 Comments
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The Significant and the Superficial

Libby Kurz, BSN, MFA, RN, works as an OR nurse. Formerly a nurse in the U.S. Air Force, she lives in Virginia with her family. Her work has been published in several literary magazines. To read more of her writing, visit www.libbykurz.com. 

I often wonder why the world is the way it is. Why, above all other possibilities, do we have two eyes to see, a mouth that tastes, a body that needs food and fluid to sustain itself, but a mind that can entertain thoughts far beyond the realm of the physical world? The more I think about it, the stranger life seems.

People are odd, too. I’m always blown away by our quirks. There’s a surgeon I work with who has to eat his cereal every morning in the shower. He had a shelf built into his shower just for his cereal bowl. One of my coworkers has a pet scorpion and two snakes, but she hates spiders. An acquaintance of mine eats mayonnaise and peanut butter sandwiches.

Working as a nurse provides an environment where these ironies and oddities of life seem even more pronounced. I work […]

2017-04-13T12:11:56-04:00April 13th, 2017|Nursing, nursing stories|1 Comment
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CDC Draws Attention to Youth Concussion Risks, Offers Training and Resources

This post was contributed to AJN‘s blog by the Traumatic  Brain Injury Team at the CDC Injury Center.

As an A-student and star soccer player, Sarah was used to hard work. However, after she sustained a concussion while playing a varsity soccer game during her freshman year in high school, she found herself challenged in ways she had never expected.

“Recovering from the concussion was harder than recovering from other injuries I’ve had,” Sarah recalls. “When I got a concussion, I expected to sit out some games, but I never realized that it would actually hurt to think. For nearly two months I needed frequent breaks to make it through the school day. I would have to go to the school clinic and rest when I was overcome by headaches from the lights and noise of the classroom.”

Sarah’s story is not unusual. In fact, children and teens have the highest rate of emergency department visits for traumatic brain injury (TBI), including concussion, of all age groups. Fortunately, Sarah made a full recovery after four months and continues to be successful […]

2017-07-27T11:40:44-04:00April 11th, 2017|Public health, school nurses|0 Comments
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‘Blind Spot’: Reflections on Caring for a Severely Disabled Son

 “When I think of the term disability, a huge basket of a term, I think of the duration and breadth of my son’s life.”

The author and Luke

Much is being written these days in both the nursing and general press about the plight of family caregivers. As one myself, I’m well acquainted with the difficulties of maintaining a “normal” life (and meeting other responsibilities) while trying to ensure the safety and survival of a person you love. But what if your caregiving commitment begins at someone’s birth and lasts a lifetime?

In this month’s AJN, nurse Diane Stonecipher writes with grace and clarity about the challenges of lifelong caregiving at home. Even for an RN with committed and loving co-caregivers (her husband, her other sons), the work and worries are daunting.

“If Luke is our job, so to speak, there are also no sick days, holidays, vacation days, or ‘mental health days.’ We have cared for him while ill and injured, or until we simply cannot. By some miraculous grace, we have tag-teamed his entire life.”

The days, weeks, months, and years of those who care for severely disabled family members are probably difficult for others to appreciate, if you are one of those who care you should […]

2017-07-11T12:16:22-04:00April 7th, 2017|Nursing, nursing stories|0 Comments
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Managing Your Patients’ Pain: It’s Not Just about the Opioids

Before Pain Assessment Was the Norm

Some of the most difficult times I experienced as a nurse involved patients in pain. This was before the days of patient-controlled analgesia, when patients in acute pain were mostly managed with “Demerol IM q4h.”

I recall many incidents of paging and telephoning and beeping physicians and residents to get orders for pain medications and trying whatever non-pharma methods I could think of to allay pain. It was awful to see patients suffer needlessly.

Progress, But with a Cost

Then pain became a key part of assessment, as well as of patient satisfaction scoring, and clinicians heeded the need for managing pain. However, there has been too much reliance on the quick fix of strong opioids. A friend who recently had surgery was asked by a nurse to rate his pain. When he replied “eight,” she asked him if he wanted one or two oxycodone pills. His reply, “Well, what do people usually take?”

Revising the Approach to Pain Management

Thankfully, pain management is being revisited, and along with a renewed focus on not prescribing by the numbers (a patient’s pain rating should only be one factor in deciding the intervention), there is a greater understanding of pain and how it can become chronic, and there are more modalities at our disposal to manage it.

To prevent […]

2017-04-05T10:34:01-04:00April 5th, 2017|Nursing, pain management|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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