Off the Charts

On the Phone: Punctuation for a Parent’s Decline

Illustration by Elizabeth Sayles for AJN. All rights reserved.

“It’s ridiculous. I’m deciding the rest of my mother’s life based on research I did on the Internet,” I tell him.

“You’re really good at that. Research, I mean,” he says, hope in his voice.

I want to scream that I don’t think an undergraduate degree in biology and a long relationship with Google qualify me as a medical professional.

Many of us don’t use the phone as often as we used to, but there are times of strangeness and loss when it may still assume the central role it played in an earlier era. The passage above is from “On the Phone,” the August Reflections essay, which finds a novel way to talk about the strains and strangeness of finding oneself a family caregiver—the gradual withdrawal of a once vibrant parent (or spouse or sibling) from the home that had once seemed to be defined by their presence, the isolation, the learning curve when faced with medical emergencies and the need to make crucial decisions that can’t wait, the reliance on the advice and interventions of nurses and physicians.

All Reflections essays are free and can be read in just a few minutes. This month’s is about an experience, family caregiving, that more and more of us are having in one form or another, whether we find a way to tell about it […]

Jacob Molyneux, senior editor/blog editor2016-11-21T13:04:04-05:00August 15th, 2014|narratives, Nursing, Patients|1 Comment

The Gaza Conflict, Through the Lens of Nursing

By Jacob Molyneux, AJN senior editor

In 2005, AJN published an article looking at the experiences of nurses in Israel and in the Palestinian territories (free until September 15; choose ‘full text’ or ‘PDF’ in upper-right of the article landing page). Here’s an excerpt:

” [N]urses in the region have many of the same problems American nurses have: disparate educational levels, struggles for professional recognition and workplace representation. The nurses I met came into the profession for diverse reasons and are working in a remarkable variety of settings, carrying on in the face of political, professional, economic, military, and personal difficulties. Yet I was amazed at the things these nurses have in common with each other—and with us. As I listened to them describe their motivations and aspirations and watched them work, the seemingly impenetrable barrier created by the ongoing military and political conflict melted away.”

Photos and captions from 2005 AJN article. Courtesy of Constance Romilly. Click to expand image.

The current conflict between Israel and those living in the Palestinian territories is another chapter in a long story. Our focus at AJN is not on the politics of the situation or the rhetoric of blame coming from supporters […]

Jacob Molyneux, senior editor/blog editor2016-11-21T13:04:05-05:00August 13th, 2014|Nursing, nursing perspective|0 Comments

Some Essential AJN Resources on Care of Older Adults, Family Caregivers, More

By Shawn Kennedy, AJN editor-in-chief

August is one of my favorite months. Many people take time off, so the commute into AJN‘s Manhattan office is fairly easy. People’s pace seems to be a little bit slower; there seems to be less immediacy around responses to email. It’s a good time to catch up on reading manuscripts and other work I’ve had piled up.

If you’ve gone through your beach reading, here are a few useful collections on perennially important topics from our back pages:

If you’re just getting started in a nursing career, you might want to read a three-part series of articles, “Protecting Your License,” written by AJN contributing editor Edie Brous, who is a nurse and an attorney and writes on legal matters for the journal. Her series describes common myths about licensure and what steps to take to protect yourself if you are sued or brought up on charges by your state board of nursing. […]

Jacob Molyneux, senior editor/blog editor2016-11-21T13:04:07-05:00August 11th, 2014|infectious diseases, Nursing, nursing perspective|1 Comment

How a Busy Hospital Reduced Its Rate of Hospital-Acquired Pressure Ulcers to Zero

By Sylvia Foley, AJN senior editor

A skin lesion monitoring form accompanies a patient. Photo courtesy of NHCH.

In 2009, when one of the world’s largest cardiac care hospitals experienced a spike in the number of surgeries performed and a corresponding rise in hospital-acquired pressure ulcers, many people were concerned. The hospital—Narayana Hrudayalaya Cardiac Hospital (NHCH) in Bangalore, India—soon initiated a program to address the problem, and nursing superintendent Rohini Paul was tasked with designing and implementing effective preventive strategies. In this month’s CE feature, “Sustaining Pressure Ulcer Best Practices in a High-Volume Cardiac Care Environment,” Paul and colleagues describe what happened next. Here’s a brief overview.

Baseline data showed that, over the five-month observation period, an average of 6% of all adult and pediatric surgical patients experienced a pressure ulcer while recovering in the NHCH intensive therapy unit (ITU). Phase 1 implementation efforts, which began in January 2010, focused on four areas: raising awareness, increasing education, improving documentation and communication, and implementing various preventive practices. Phase 2 implementation efforts, which began the following month, focused on changing operating room practices. The primary outcome measure was the weekly percentage of ITU patients with pressure ulcers.
By July 2010, that percentage was reduced to zero; as of April 1, 2014, the hospital has maintained this result. Elements that contributed significantly to the program’s success and sustainability include strong leadership, nurse and physician involvement, an […]

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