Off the Charts

Telehealth as ‘Disruptive Innovation’ in Nursing

A patient uses telehealth equipment to communicate with his nurse. Photo courtesy of Janet Grady.

“Telehealth: A Case Study in Disruptive Innovation” is a CE article in AJN‘s April issue. The author, Janet Grady, vice president of academic affairs and chair of the Nursing and Health Sciences Division at the University of Pittsburgh in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, describes the concept of disruptive innovations in nursing and delves into the evolving field of telehealth as a current example.

The article considers the following:

uses and potential uses of telehealth in chronic and acute care, home care, and rural medicine, and the evidence supporting its use.
obstacles to wider use and acceptance of telehealth, which include cultural resistance within nursing, licensure issues across states, reimbursement challenges, and the need to adapt nursing curriculum to these new ways of delivering care.
forces that drive or obstruct disruptive innovations like telehealth.

Here’s the article overview:

Technologic advances in health care have often outpaced our ability to integrate the technology efficiently, establish best practices for its use, and develop policies to regulate and evaluate its effectiveness. However, these may be insufficient reasons to put the brakes on innovation—particularly those “disruptive innovations” that challenge the […]

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Jacob Molyneux, senior editor/blog editor2016-11-21T13:05:00-05:00April 18th, 2014|digital health, Nursing, patient engagement|1 Comment

Anxiety Apps: New Fad or Worth the Download?

By Amy M. Collins, editor

Today there’s an app for everything. There are find-your-keys apps, map-the-stars apps, even an app to help you hone your stapling skills. And apps exist to help patients with every kind of health care need, from managing diabetes to prenatal care. Usually, in an attempt to keep my smartphone use to a minimum, I avoid jumping on the trendy app bandwagon. But recently I came across an article touting an app to reduce anxiety. As a long-term, mostly recovered sufferer of chronic anxiety and panic, this article piqued my interest (and my skepticism).

While certainly not the first app developed to reduce stress, this particular app—called Personal Zen—has been tested by researchers who found that participants with relatively high scores on an anxiety survey showed less nervous behavior after using the app than those in a placebo group, according to a study published in Clinical Psychological Science. Developed by psychologist Tracy Dennis, a professor at Hunter College in New York City (and, it should probably be noted, one of the study’s lead authors), the app incorporates the concept of cognitive bias modification to get the user to shift their focus from a threatening stimulus to a nonthreatening one. More studies are needed to see if such an app would have the same success in those with clinically diagnosed anxiety.

And there are literally […]

Amy M. Collins, managing editor2016-11-21T13:05:01-05:00April 16th, 2014|Nursing|4 Comments

Nursing Students and Then Some – In Opryland, Revisiting AJN’s Long Connection With NSNA

Revisiting AJN’s long connection with this vibrant student nursing association.

By Maureen Shawn Kennedy, MA, RN, editor-in-chief

Opryland critters

I’ve said it a number of times over the years, most recently in my editorial in the April issue of AJN: the National Student Nurses Association (NSNA) is a vibrant organization and produces one of the most well-organized annual meetings in nursing. This year, it broke attendance records, drawing approximately 3,200 students and faculty advisors to the Opryland Hotel in Nashville, where I spent part of last week.*

Supporting NSNA since its founding. The American Journal of Nursing has been a supporter and and sponsor of the NSNA since the organization began in 1952. The NSNA offices used to be part of the AJN offices at one time, and before NSNA had its own publication (Imprint), AJN published “The Student Pages.” We sponsor Project InTouch, an award given to the student who recruits the most new members for the organization. This year, winner Joanna Laufer from East Carolina University, Greenville, North Carolina, recruited 130 new members; overall, this initiative brought in over 1,600 new members this year. Impressive.

Impressive, and sharp dressers too! The students I met—mostly junior and senior nursing students—were also impressive. They were enthusiastic, eager to learn, and professional. I have to say this group […]

Shawn Kennedy, MA, RN, FAAN, editor-in-chief (emerita)2016-11-21T13:05:02-05:00April 14th, 2014|students|1 Comment

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

By 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 […]

Guest Author2016-11-21T13:05:03-05:00April 9th, 2014|career, healthcare social media, nursing perspective, students|8 Comments

The Blame Game

By Jacob Molyneux, senior editor

The 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.

Jacob Molyneux, senior editor/blog editor2016-11-21T13:05:03-05:00April 7th, 2014|nursing perspective|7 Comments