AJN: Holding the Line on Quality in 2016

In the midst of the day-to-day demands of our lives and the constant multitasking, it’s often hard to step back and think about where the time went. Days and events seem to blur together. During the last week of the year, I like to review my calendar. I find that this exercise helps me put the year in perspective and revisit what I’ve done and who I’ve done it with.

My December editorial, “Taking Care of Business,” addresses how we can sometimes overlook colleagues who go about doing their jobs with little drama or complaint: the volunteers who give their time to free clinics, those who serve in the military or public service, the quietly competent colleagues we work with every day. They can easily become part of the blur of passing days because they show up, do their work, and move on to the next thing that needs to be done.

In the editorial, I briefly mentioned my colleagues here at AJN in that category. The staff works diligently to ensure that all manuscripts are fact-checked for accuracy and are edited to present the content in the best light and form. After a first round of editing, the articles are then copyedited. They’re laid out in page proofs and go through additional proofreading by a copy editor, nurse editors, and the article’s author(s). The process can be painstaking and repetitive, but accuracy and quality don’t happen without careful attention.

While AJN has […]

Home for Christmas: Flight Nursing and the Symbols of Hope

The Helm of Awe /courtesy of the author

As nurses, we all have patients who stick with us. I’ve thought of Henry many times since we transferred him six months ago from Dublin to an American hospital to undergo groundbreaking treatment or acute lymphocytic leukemia.

His prognosis was poor—a fact he was well aware of. He’d told his father he wanted to “be done.” He’d had enough of hospitals and the medicine that didn’t cure him and only made him feel worse. He was ambulatory and stable from a medical standpoint, but had the drawn and haggard look of the chronically ill. Most disturbing was his reticence. There was none of the enthusiasm I’d expect from a 12-year-old riding across the Atlantic in a Learjet—he couldn’t even be coaxed to lean into the cockpit.

The only time he perked up was when we landed for fuel in Keflavik, Iceland. He sat up and gazed out the window on our approach, looking interested in his surroundings for the first time.  I found out from his dad that he’d missed a school trip to the island due to his cancer, and I started telling him all I knew of Iceland, which wasn’t much. At that time, I had never […]

Speaking Publicly ‘As a Nurse’: Case in Canada Highlights Risks, Responsibilities

Douglas P. Olsen, PhD, RN, associate professor, College of Nursing, Michigan State University, writes about ethical issues for AJN.

Recently, a disciplinary committee in Canada found a nurse in breach of the Canadian Nurses Association’s Code of Ethics for Registered Nurses for posting negative comments on Facebook and Twitter about the care given to her grandfather in a long-term care facility before his death. The nurse was accused of violating her grandfather’s confidentiality, not using proper processes for noting complaints about his care, and potentially harming the institution’s reputation. She was found guilty of professional misconduct but not guilty of violating his privacy. The ethical breach was based on her public declarations about the nursing care.

Key to the Saskatchewan Registered Nurses’ Association decision to find the nurse guilty appears to have been the fact that the nurse prefaced remarks with the phrase, “As a nurse . . . ” Adding this phrase to one’s communications confers the authority of scientific and experiential expertise. It further implies that one is versed in the proper procedure and standards for evaluating accuracy and relevance of clinical information and that one’s conclusions are communicated honestly for constructive purposes. The credibility added by identifying the nursing credential is deserved—and therefore carries responsibilities.

What are the conditions for an ethical response when speaking publicly ‘as a […]

2016-12-20T15:09:59-05:00December 16th, 2016|Ethics, healthcare social media, Nursing|2 Comments

Nursing Voices: The 10 Most-Read AJN Blog Posts of 2016

flickr creative commons/by you me

As the editor of this blog, I’m often amazed by the originality, honesty, and quality of the writing that comes to us from people who are, in many cases, not writers by trade. AJN Off the Charts publishes articles about professional issues, health policy and research, and clinical topics, as well as many nurse and patient stories. Here are ten popular posts from 2016 that you might have missed. Some of the authors of the posts listed here are regular contributors, some are AJN editors, some are first-time contributors; some are established scholars, some are new to the nursing profession.

If you like these posts, please consider subscribing to the blog (see the right sidebar) to receive new updates by email. It takes just a second, and all content at this blog is free.

The 10 most-read posts we published in 2016.*

What a Nurse Really Wants
“I just want some support. I just want to take care of my patients, and maybe get a lunch break on any given day. I just want to be heard.”

CDC Opioid-Prescribing Guideline for Chronic Pain: Concerns and Contexts
“These new guidelines cast a very wide net. Many patients with chronic pain will find themselves facing new […]

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