A Place for Faith: Despite Chronic Illness, a Return to Bedside Nursing

flickr creative commons/by krassy can do it

Relearning the Details of Clinical Nursing

After being away from bedside nursing for over 11 years, I recently returned to this role on the same medical-surgical floor I’d worked on 11 years earlier. The impetus behind such a drastic transition was, in part, my return to nursing education as a clinical nursing instructor. As an educator, I felt the need to update my own clinical skills as I instructed young nurses eager to enter my profession.

The other reason for returning to clinical nursing had to do with a spiritual pull I felt in my heart, a hope that I’d be able to to show patients the compassion, empathy, and patience they all deserved. I’d come to realize that I’d sometimes lacked these qualities when I was a younger bedside nurse. Now I felt that God was giving me a kind of ‘do-over’—and I had to at least try to live up to this expectation.

Within the first week of orientation, I quickly realized how different things had become in the nursing world. The last time I’d worked as a clinical nurse on this very unit in 2005, the hospital was still using paper documentation, private community physicians still rounded on their patients, and there were no ‘computers on […]

2017-03-08T11:17:02-05:00March 6th, 2017|career, Nursing, patient experience|5 Comments
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Just a Nurse, or a Bedside Leader? Mental Models Can Be Changed

If you haven’t read the Viewpoint column in the March issue of AJN, “Just a Nurse, or a Bedside Leader?“, we recommend it. The author, Amy Constanzo, director of nursing administration at University of Cincinnati Medical Center, puts into eloquent words one of the central “unthought knowns” in the daily experience of many nurses. Constanzo writes:

“Despite the Institute of Medicine’s Future of Nursing report that calls for nurses to be ‘full partners, with physicians and other health professionals, in redesigning health care in the United States,’ the mental model of ‘just a nurse’ is still out there, inhibiting potential.”

But she’s not pessimistic. She believes “just a nurse” is a mental model like any other, and mental models can be changed—but only if you make it your quest to do so. Constanzo proposes an alternative mental model for nurses: “I am a nurse.” On the surface, it’s a simple statement, but it’s also, she believes, a statement of both strength and possibility:

“When you say ‘I am a nurse,’ you are claiming the values of nursing and your contribution to assisting patients in achieving their best level of health. To do so requires a clear vision of nursing as a profession and of nurses’ contribution to the health care team.”

How do you describe your work as a nurse—to yourself, and to others?

2017-03-03T13:18:26-05:00March 3rd, 2017|Nursing, nursing perspective|2 Comments
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ANA’s Cipriano, AARP’s Reinhard Comment on ACA’s Undoing

President Obama signing the ACA in 2010/via Wikimedia Commons

Nurses and the Undoing of the ACA

Many in the nursing community supported the Affordable Care Act (ACA) when it was first introduced. This is understandable, given our firsthand experience of patients who didn’t seek care until they were gravely ill because they lacked health insurance. We know how disease management can change outcomes for those with chronic illness and how preventive care can make the difference between having a treatable cancer or a metastasis.

In the years since, as both supporters and detractors continued to argue over the law and its need to be improved (or scrapped, depending on your viewpoint), over 20 million people gained health insurance and access to care.

Now as Congress moves to repeal and replace the ACA with a yet-to-be-determined plan, many are concerned that major gains will be lost and once again it will be the poor and vulnerable who will suffer. (I touched on some of the concerns in my March editorial.)

To get a little more insight, I spoke with two very policy-smart nurses about what might happen and what they feel should happen.

What ANA president Pam Cipriano said:

I asked ANA president Pam Cipriano what she thought was the most critical aspect of the gains from […]

2017-03-01T10:17:14-05:00March 1st, 2017|health care policy, Nursing, nursing perspective|1 Comment
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AJN in March: CKD Complications and Treatment, Writing Tips for Nurses, Acute Pain Management, More

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

CE Feature: Improving Outcomes for Patients with Chronic Kidney Disease: Part 2

The second installment of this two-part article addresses chronic kidney disease complications and treatment of kidney failure. Part 1, which appeared last month, offered an overview of the disease, describing identification and etiology, and discussed ways to slow disease progression.

CE Feature: Defining and Understanding Pilot and Other Feasibility Studies

Nurses are becoming increasingly involved in conducting clinical research in which feasibility studies are often the first steps. This article provides an overview of feasibility studies, including pilot studies, and explains the type of preliminary data they seek to provide in order to make larger, future studies more efficient and successful.

Original Research: How to Create a Poster That Attracts an Audience

Nurses developing a poster presentation for the first time who look for guidance in the literature will find many articles offering recommendations on format and style, but these are based on opinion rather than evidence. This study identifies the design principles and content-specific attributes of a poster that improve the chance that […]

2017-03-06T14:48:04-05:00February 27th, 2017|Nursing|0 Comments
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Baby Boxes: Gifts Intended to Educate New Parents About Safe Sleeping

A Gift for Every New N.J. Parent

When I had my first child in New Jersey more than a decade ago, the hospital sent me home with a bag of product samples, including a few diapers, a package of wipes, two cans of formula, and an assortment of coupons. These items were helpful to varying extents—I was breastfeeding and unlikely to buy the products featured on the coupons, but the wipes and diapers certainly came in handy. So did the little hat a nurse put on my son’s head soon after birth. With its horizontal pink and blue stripes, this soft beanie that actually stayed in place was ever present during his first few weeks. It was the most useful and well-loved relic of our hospital stay.

The parents of infants in New Jersey are now given an even more practical item, one that also has the potential to reduce infant mortality rates: a baby box. This laminated, nontoxic cardboard box is packed with items that are essential during the early days of parenthood—including diapers, wipes, clothing, and breast pads—but it’s also a bed. The box, which includes a mattress and sheet, provides a safe place for infants to sleep during their first year. It’s free to all new and expectant parents in the state who watch a 20-minute educational video and take a quiz online. Upon completion, they receive a certificate that allows them to pick up the box at a local distribution center or order it by […]

2017-07-27T11:45:04-04:00February 24th, 2017|Nursing, Public health|1 Comment
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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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