All Saints’ Day Blessing for Health Care Providers

Autumn Angel / photo by Julianna Paradisi 2016 Autumn Angel / photo by Julianna Paradisi 2016

November is the strangest of months. Its days are shorter, darker. It begins with All Saints’ Day, a day of remembering our dead, of loss and grief, followed late in the month by Thanksgiving, America’s celebration of abundance with gratitude.

This year on All Saints’ Day I attended a discussion of health care professionals. The audience included nurses, physicians, pharmacists, social workers, and hospital administrators. The conversation ultimately centered on the emotional difficulties of patient care.

It wasn’t a debriefing as much as collective acknowledgment that, rather than accepting help, some patients or their family members view us as the enemy, sometimes disrupting our best efforts in the name of misguided advocacy.

Nurses spoke of being labeled as “bad” and played against each other by angry patients or family members. Physicians related episodes of verbal abuse from patients or family members demanding inappropriate procedures, medications, or dosing. Some spoke of needing to take refuge to center their thoughts before ordering the appropriate care.

Like most nurses, I’ve experienced similar treatment at the hands of difficult patients, but physicians don’t generally discuss with us how they are treated. Nurses and physicians suffer silently, instead of lending […]

2016-11-21T13:00:49-05:00November 10th, 2016|Nursing, Patients|1 Comment
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AJN November Issue News: Maternal Mortality, Nurses’ Salaries, Double Mastectomy, More

AJN’s monthly news section covers timely and important research and policy stories that are relevant to the nursing world. Here are some of the stories you’ll find in our current issue (news articles in AJN are free access):

Photo by Dennis MacDonald / Alamy Stock Photo. Photo by Dennis MacDonald / Alamy Stock Photo.

Maternal Mortality in U.S. on the Rise

In 48 states and the District of Columbia, the maternal mortality rate increased by 26.6% between 2000 and 2014. (Texas was analyzed separately; its rate doubled between 2010 and 2012.) California–which saw a decline in maternal deaths–was the exception. While there’s no clear cause for the increase, researchers have several ideas about factors that may have prompted it.

Salaries for Nurses Decrease, While NP Salaries Rise

According to a survey of 20,000 health care workers, compensation for nurses decreased 3.1% between 2015 and 2016; NPs reported a 5.3% […]

2016-11-21T13:00:49-05:00November 9th, 2016|Nursing|0 Comments
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Behind the Curtain: A Patient’s Evolving Relationship to Illness

Illustration by Eric Collins/ecol-art.com. All rights reserved. Illustration by Eric Collins/ecol-arts.com. All rights reserved.

Having edited it, I’d like to recommend AJN‘s November Reflections essay, “Behind the Curtain.” In it, author Leigh Pate looks back to an early experience in her own cancer treatment. Sitting in a chemotherapy bay receiving an infusion, she overhears a conversation between a cancer patient and his nurse that she will remember years later.

The central insight of this essay can’t be put into a few words, but it has something to do with the fact that the way we think and feel about an illness changes over time as we ourselves change.

The metaphors we use to talk about an illness change as the years pass. We develop a relationship to the illness that isn’t as simple as it seemed at first. Is it really always a battle? Are there always clear winners and losers? What do we really want? What is it to be strong? […]

2016-11-21T13:00:52-05:00November 4th, 2016|Patients|0 Comments
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Hitting the Nursing Conference Trail: Many Miles, But Much to Inspire

“Nurses are doing such interesting and important work.”

A big part of what we do at AJN is seek out the latest information and compelling stories to bring to readers each month. That often means a lot of traveling. While sometimes it does get a bit much (conferences are mostly clustered in the spring and the fall), I’ve come to enjoy traveling—nurses are doing such interesting and important work!

Here’s a recap of some recent travels:

Nursing Research

2016-11-21T13:00:52-05:00November 2nd, 2016|Nursing|0 Comments
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Dosing Cups, Oral Syringes, or Spoons: A Pediatric Medication Safety Recipe for Disaster?

pediatricdosingA recent article I came across in Pediatrics said that researchers found (during laboratory experiments) that four out of five parents made at least one dosing error when using either a dosing cup or an oral syringe to dispense liquid medication meant for children. As a new parent who has grappled with multiple dosing tools, I can’t say I am surprised.

Growing up, I remember syrupy medicines being doled out by my mother on spoons of varying size—a teaspoon or tablespoon—not a very accurate method when you also factor in that most spoons differ in shape and, probably, actual volume.

After my son had his first round of vaccines, the nurse told me that, in case he had a fever that night, the standard dose of Tylenol for his size and age was 80 mg. He didn’t get a fever in the end, and I didn’t think about what she’d told me until he had his first fever from a cold several months later.

When I went to open my box of Tylenol, I saw that the syringe that came with it did not use the dosage the nurse had told me (in milligrams), but rather, milliliters. I looked on the box for instructions but it only listed the […]

2016-11-21T13:00:52-05:00November 1st, 2016|patient safety, pediatrics|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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