What Advice Would You Give a New Nursing Student? Our Readers Respond…

KarenRoushBy Karen Roush, MSN, RN, FNP-C, AJN clinical managing editor

My daughter Kim is starting nursing school next month, so last week I asked AJN’s Facebook followers for the best piece of advice I could give her. The response was overwhelming: over 600 people offered wisdom, encouragement, and tips for success. I went through and read them all and the following is an attempt to synthesize the advice.

Of course, with so many responses, there were many valuable pieces of advice I had to leave out, from the practical to the profound, such as:

sit in the front of class, stick to your principles, invest in good shoes, choose clinicals that push you out of your comfort zone, be early for everything, celebrate the small victories, get a really good stethoscope up front, believe in yourself, pick the hardest patient you can at clinical, audiorecord the lectures, be truthful and committed to your work, eat healthy, get to know your instructors, coffee and chocolate!

And finally: look into the eyes of your patients and be sure they know you care. Every patient, every time.

(Oh, and not to leave out the lighthearted—Don’t hold your nose in clinicals. The teachers frown on that.)

Below are five areas of advice that stood out:

1) “Take a good […]

2016-11-21T13:05:03-05:00April 9th, 2014|career, healthcare social media, nursing perspective, students|8 Comments
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The Blame Game

By Jacob Molyneux, senior editor

TheBlameGameIllustrationThe Reflections essay in the April issue of AJN is called “The Blame Game.” It’s by a nurse who finds herself visiting a family member in the hospital during her shift break at the same hospital. In her distress, she gets little relief or reassurance from the harshly judgmental nurse she encounters.

The vividly told episode raises the question: can the act of casting judgment on another person diminish our ability to see these people as complete human beings, whatever their failings? And also this question: what is the proper attitude of nurses toward their patients?

Please give it a read and see what you think. Is this nurse’s attitude an exception, or more common than it should be, as the author suggests? Here’s a brief quote from near the end:

There seems to be a dangerous epidemic of clinicians blaming patients for their health issues. As a nursing student, I saw more and more of this attitude. The health care profession seems to have evolved a culture of accusation and attack against patients, a group we should be empowering and protecting.

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2016-11-21T13:05:03-05:00April 7th, 2014|nursing perspective|7 Comments
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Recent Nurse Blog Posts of Interest, Inhaled Insulin, a Note on Top Blogs Lists

By Jacob Molyneux, AJN senior editor/blog editor

Here you will find some links to nursing blog posts, a look at this week’s Affordable Care Act health exchange enrollment numbers, and a couple of items of interest about new treatments or studies, plus a note on blogs that award other blogs badges. A grab bag, so bear with me…

crocus shoots, early spring, I think/ via Wikimedia Commons crocus shoots, early spring, I think/ via Wikimedia Commons

At the nursing blogs:

RehabRN has a post about a friend who was bullied by a nurse of much higher authority in the same hospital. Such stories, if true, are always upsetting. What can you do but take it when the power differential is so great?

At the INQRI blog (I’m not going to tell you what the initials stand for except that it has something to with quality, research, and nursing), there’s a post about why stroke survivors need a team approach to palliative care.

Megen Duffy (aka Not Nurse Ratched) has a really very good post at a site she sometimes blogs for. I already shared it via a tweet yesterday, but it deserves more. It’s called “Nursing Will Change You.”

At Infusion Nurse Blog, there’s a post addressing IV solution shortages (now happening on top of shortages of […]

2016-11-21T13:05:04-05:00April 4th, 2014|healthcare social media, nursing perspective|0 Comments
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The Power of Imagination: Helping Kids with Sickle Cell Disease to Cope with Pain

By Sylvia Foley, AJN senior editor

Many people with sickle cell disease suffer from both acute and chronic pain, which can be severe. Although the exact mechanism isn’t known, the pain is believed to result when sickled erythrocytes occlude the vascular beds, causing tissue ischemia. Such pain, which often begins in early childhood, arises unpredictably. Although some pain crises may require ED visits, hos­pitalization, opioid treatment, or a combination of these, most are managed at home. Yet little is known about at-home pain management in people with sickle cell disease, especially children.

Table 2. Changes in Self-Efficacy, Imaging Ability, and Pain Perception in School-Age Children After Guided Imagery Training Table 2. Changes in Self-Efficacy, Imaging Ability, and Pain Perception in School-Age Children After Guided Imagery Training

Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) has shown promise in helping patients with other chronic illnesses to cope with pain. Cassandra Elaine Dobson and Mary Woods Byrne decided to test guided imagery, a form of CBT, among children enrolled at one sickle cell treatment clinic in New York City. They report on their findings in this month’s original research CE, “Using Guided Imagery to Manage Pain in Young Children with Sickle Cell Disease.” The abstract below offers a quick overview; if you click the image above, you’ll see an enlarged view of one table showing key results.

Objectives: The purposes of this study were to test the effects of guided imagery training on school-age children who had been diagnosed with […]

2017-07-27T14:47:16-04:00April 2nd, 2014|nursing research, pain management, patient engagement|0 Comments
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AJN’s April Issue: Sickle Cell Anemia, Telehealth, Systematic Reviews, FOAMed, More

AJN0414.Cover.OnlineAJN‘s April issue is now available on our Web site. Here’s a selection of what not to miss, including two continuing education (CE) articles that you can access for free.

Coping with pain in sickle cell anemia. Our April cover features a painting of red flowers in a vase. But on closer inspection, you might notice that the flowers are actually red blood cells, painted by a young girl who suffers from sickle cell anemia. Afflicting about 90,000 to 100,000 people in the United States, sickle cell disease often causes acute and chronic pain syndromes described as being on par with cancer-related pain. Cognitive behavioral therapies, such as the use of guided imagery, have shown promise in changing pain perception and coping patterns in people with chronic illnesses. April’s original research CE article, “Using Guided Imagery to Manage Pain in Young Children with Sickle Cell Disease,” suggests that this technique can be effective for managing pain in school-age children with the disease.

Implementing advances in telehealth. New technologies such as remote monitoring and videoconferencing often emerge before a facility is ready to efficiently integrate them. Sometimes referred to as disruptive innovations, these technologies, while convenient and easy to use, may not be readily accepted. “Telehealth: A Case Study in Disruptive Innovation” discusses the many applications of telehealth, a means of delivering care that is likely […]

2016-11-21T13:05:06-05:00March 28th, 2014|nursing perspective, nursing research|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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