Off the Charts

‘A New Antibiotic’: What Restores a Patient’s Will to Recover?

A little bit of levity when writing of serious topics can be good medicine. This month’s Reflections essay, “A New Antibiotic,” reminds us of how important it can be for hospitalized patients to be kept in touch with their lives and loves beyond hospital walls. In this story, author Judith Reishtein, a retired critical care nurse and nursing professor, finds herself willing to bend the rules a little for one patient. Here’s how it starts:

Sally had been a patient on the step-down unit all winter. After her open heart surgery, she developed an infection in her chest. The infection required another surgery and four more weeks of ventilator support as her open chest healed. Because she was not moving enough, she developed clots in her legs. Because of the DVTs, she had activity restrictions, which led to another bout of pneumonia. One complication led to another, with more medications that had to be carefully balanced. We tried not to do anything that would create a new problem while curing an existing one. Another dangerous surgery is getting breast implants, I always suggest to get a good surgeon to do it, you can find the best at http://utbreastaugmentation.com, I highly recommend it.

Now she was finally getting better, but her energy lagged behind. Did she still have the […]

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Jacob Molyneux, senior editor/blog editor2017-06-02T12:12:14-04:00February 5th, 2016|narratives, nursing perspective, patient engagement|0 Comments

Hospital Shootings: Unacknowledged Job Hazard?

Julianna Paradisi, RN, OCN, is an oncology nurse navigator and writes a monthly post for this blog. Illustration by the author.

Recently, while preparing for work, I received the following text from a coworker already at the hospital:

We’re on lockdown
Armed gunman
Stay home, they announced “active shooter now outside building”

Shocked, barely able to comprehend the message, I texted back:

WTF?
Are you safe?

She texted back that she and others were in lockdown in the cafeteria. Numbly, I switched on the TV, looking for more information, but found nothing. Not a single report of the event on any station. Turning to the Internet, I found a single tweet referring to an event in progress. Feeling helpless, I texted my husband and daughter and then called my mom, letting them know I was at home, safe, just in case they heard something. Then I waited.

Within an hour, the same coworker texted again:

All clear!

I stared at my phone, not knowing what to do. I went to work.

The resolution of the shooting situation was heartbreaking. However, no patients or hospital staff were harmed. The outcome could have been much worse.

That evening, local media coverage of the crisis remained scant to the point I nearly felt I’d imagined it. It was as though it never happened.

We were lucky. Our shooting occurred outside, on the hospital grounds—as do 41% of hospital shootings, according […]

Julianna Paradisi, RN, OCN2016-11-21T13:01:30-05:00February 3rd, 2016|career, Ethics, Nursing, nursing perspective|1 Comment

Rightness: A Flight Nurse Taps Into the Universal Language of Nursing

“Immersed in a nursing role that I didn’t even know existed when I entered the profession, I find there to be a common language—one rooted in science but strongest in humanity and compassion, transcending culture, geography, and words.”

By Marcy Phipps, BSN, RN, CCRN, chief flight nurse at Global Jetcare

I’m standing in the doorway of our plane, watching our patient sleep and eyeing the monitor. The monitor’s beeps keep steady time and mix with the sounds of the pounding waves that batter the atoll.

We’ve stopped for fuel on this narrow runway that stretches down a spit of land in the Pacific. As the sun rises we snack on cold gyudon, a Japanese dish we picked up in Guam. It’s not the best breakfast, but somehow feels right—like a lot of other aspects of this job lately.

We’d started our mission in eastern Asia, picking up an American citizen who’d fallen ill in a city that didn’t cater to tourists and where almost no one spoke English.

While there, our crew’s handler—someone whose job it is to facilitate our lodging, transportation, and generally ease our way—had taken us to a dimly lit restaurant on a back street and treated us to a myriad of local delicacies, some of which I recognized, many of which I didn’t. My usual morning run had led me through parks and a street market crowded […]

Marcy Phipps, BSN, RN, CCRN, CFRN2016-11-21T13:01:31-05:00February 1st, 2016|nursing perspective|4 Comments

AJN in February: Latino RNs in the U.S., Nurse Bullying, Hypoglycemia in Older Adults, More

On this month’s cover, nurse Sarah Carruth comforts a young patient at Children’s National Medical Center in Washington, DC. This photo is the second-place winner of AJN’s 2015 Faces of Caring: Nurses at Work photo contest, in which readers worldwide submitted candid photos of nurses on the job.

When the child’s parents had to leave the room and he became unsettled, Carruth held him and comforted him with a stuffed toy. She says the photo captures the important type of quiet moment that often gets lost in the bustle: “It can be so busy that you forget about the times when you get to show that you care.”

Having worked as a pediatric nurse for 15 years, Carruth knows that meeting the emotional needs of children is a crucial aspect of caring for them. “It’s not just about giving medicine and assessing vital signs,” she says. “They need the time to be loved.”

Some articles of note in the February issue:

Original Research: “Latino Nurses in the United States: An Overview of Three Decades (1980–2010).” Latinos are underrepresented in the nursing workforce. The authors of this article find that while the overall number of Latinos has grown dramatically in the U.S. over the 30-year study period, the number of Latino nurses has not. As the Latino population in the U.S. continues to increase, nursing education programs and institutions will need to do more to […]

Diane Szulecki, editor2016-11-21T13:01:31-05:00January 29th, 2016|Nursing, nursing research|0 Comments

Neither Snow, Sleet, Hail, nor Major Blizzard: Business as Usual for Nurses

By Shawn Kennedy, AJN editor-in-chief

The snowbanks in the New York area are already starting to melt, but it’s worth noting that this past weekend’s massive storm was business as usual for nurses. The New York Daily News carried a story earlier this week of a practical nurse who got a babysitter for her daughter and then walked through the height of a recent blizzard to get to her job at a nursing home.

Chantelle Diabate, who works at the Hebrew Home in Riverdale, New York, walked a mile in the snow and wind to get to work. She has been working there for six months as an LPN and said she knew they’d need her because many staff would be unable to get there. She stayed through the weekend.

by doortoriver, via Flickr

AJN’s publisher, Anne Woods, works every Saturday as a cardiothoracic NP in a hospital near Philadelphia. With the imminent arrival of the storm on Friday afternoon, Woods went to the hospital that afternoon and spent the next 36 hours there as the only NP on duty […]

Shawn Kennedy, MA, RN, FAAN, editor-in-chief (emerita)2016-11-21T13:01:31-05:00January 28th, 2016|career, Nursing, nursing perspective, Patients|0 Comments