Nurses Week: Time to Celebrate (Not Denigrate) Nursing’s Worth

shawnkennedyBy Maureen Shawn Kennedy, AJN editor-in-chief

So, on the cusp of Nurses Week, the week when Americans are encouraged to think about the value that nurses bring to health care, readers of the New York Times were treated to an op-ed written by physician Sandeep Jauhar. According to the byline, Jauhar is a cardiologist and the author of an upcoming memoir about his disillusionment as a physician. The title of the piece was “Nurses Are Not Doctors.” While the author makes sure to reassure us that he thinks nurse practitioners (NPs) have a valuable role to play in health care, he makes the usual charge that NPs are not qualified to practice primary care without physician supervision.

Jauhar conveniently ignores the many studies that have refuted this argument, while basing his case largely on weak anecdotes and one study from 1999 that showed NPs ordered more diagnostic tests. His conclusion: the NPs in the study ordered too many expensive tests because they lack the experience and knowledge of physicians (he concedes in passing that “there are many reasons the NPs may have ordered more tests”). I can’t help thinking that this piece’s publication was purposely timed to take some of the shine off Nurses Week.

I’m surprised that the Times published such a weak letter. First, along […]

2018-03-28T10:24:54-04:00May 5th, 2014|career, nursing perspective, nursing research|4 Comments
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Naloxone Saves Lives, But Not Every State Is Promoting Its Use

Joy Jacobson, a freelance writer and the former managing editor of AJN, wrote “Heroin: Life, Death, and Politics” for the May issue of the journal. She is a senior fellow at the Center for Health, Media, and Policy at Hunter College in New York City, where she teaches writing to nurses and nursing students.

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2018-03-28T10:26:36-04:00May 2nd, 2014|Nursing|2 Comments
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Compelled by Professionalism

Julianna Paradisi, RN, OCN, writes a monthly post for this blog and works as an infusion nurse in outpatient oncology.

ParadisiThanksIllustration“Ah, Julianna.”

This greeting from a physician marked my arrival at work. I assumed he was about to give me information or an order about one of our patients. I prepared myself for the forthcoming shift—”Ready or not, here it comes.”

Instead, he did something completely unexpected. Quickly retreating to his office, he reappeared, extending towards me a bright blue envelope with my name neatly written on the back.

It contained a greeting card. Not the generic kind hospitals provide managers in bulk for staff recognition. Not the “You’ve Been Caught Doing Something Fabulous!” quarter page–sized certificates available in the staff lounge for coworkers to fill out in recognition of their peers. This was a genuine, bona fide greeting card, the kind you have to go to a store and select from a rack and purchase. Inside, he’d addressed it to me again, with a personal note in handwriting, shattering the long-held belief that physicians cannot write legibly in cursive.

Being thanked by a physician for an act of nursing I had provided for his patient isn’t what caught me off guard. During my years of practice, many physicians have verbally expressed appreciation for my nursing skills. A half-dozen have even apologized for disagreeing with an assessment of mine (only to find out later […]

2016-11-21T13:04:52-05:00April 30th, 2014|career, nursing perspective|1 Comment
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If You Really Want to Get That Letter Published

By Karen Roush, PhD, RN, FNP, AJN clinical managing editor

via Wikimedia Commons via Wikimedia Commons

We love getting letters to the editor . . . really . . . whether it’s to agree or disagree, applaud or admonish. With some articles we actually feel a sense of excited anticipation—this should get some letters!—not because we like to create controversy (though we don’t shy away from it either when there’s something important at stake), but because we want to create dialogue among our readers.

That’s what the Letters to the Editor column is for: to add to the conversation by pointing out nuances, adding support from personal experience, expressing a dissenting view of a topic, or offering corrections or clarifications.

A good letter to the editor contains:

• a point of view
• a sense of the writer and why they were moved to write a letter
• additional information that clarifies, corrects, or enhances the original text (and the evidence backing it up)
OR:
• a reasoned, respectful argument (and the evidence to back it up) against some aspect of the original text
OR:
• a narrative that gives a clearer sense of the human implications of the original text

These are the main criteria we look for in the letters we receive.

We are glad when you enjoy an article or are pleased to see the topic […]

2016-11-21T13:04:53-05:00April 28th, 2014|career, nursing research|0 Comments
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AJN’s May Issue: Intimate Partner Violence, What Clinical Nursing Instructors Do, Containing Cholera, Noise in the ICU, More

AJN0514.Cover.OnlineAJN’s May issue is now available on our Web site. And in honor of Nurses Week, we are offering free access to the entire issue for the whole week (May 6-12). Here’s a selection of what not to miss.

Intimate partner violence. A major health care issue, intimate partner violence (IPV) affects almost 6% of U.S. women annually. And while prevalence rates of IPV are similar in rural and nonrural areas, rural survivors face distinct barriers in accessing care. “Intimate Partner Violence in Rural Areas: What Every Nurse Should Know” describes the unique aspects of IPV in rural populations and provides nurses with tools and information crucial to effective intervention. This CE feature offers 2.5 CE credits to those who take the test that follows the article. And don’t miss a podcast interview with one of the authors (this and other podcasts are accessible via the Behind the Article page on our Web site or, if you’re in our iPad app, by tapping the icon on the first page of the article).

Containing cholera. While still recovering from a magnitude-7 earthquake, Haiti confronted a second disaster: a rapidly growing cholera epidemic. The authors of “Responding to the Cholera Epidemic in Haiti,” part of a nongovernmental relief organization team sent to Haiti, describe how they managed more than 23,000 cases of cholera and prevented […]

2016-11-21T13:04:55-05:00April 25th, 2014|Nursing|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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