Off the Charts

The Best Nurses Day Gift: Enough Time With Patients

What’s Left Behind, oil, graphite, and mixed media on wood panel. 18″ by 18.” Copyright J. Paradisi.

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

I can’t remember which handle on Twitter asked nurses last week for their stories about the best or worst Nurses Day gifts from their employers, so I will tell mine here. It began badly, but became the best.

Nurses Day in May is a cute little rhyme. In Oregon, where I live, May also brings hay fever allergy, which is neither cute nor rhymes, but like Nurses Day, is an annual event.

I woke up on the morning of Nurses Day with a headache and my voice hoarse from allergy. Previously, I had traded shifts to work this day in place of another nurse with an acutely hospitalized family member. If she and I were playing Rock, Paper, Scissors, her need was scissors to my paper.

Calling in sick was not an option. It’s part of the unwritten Nurse’s Code, which is really more of a guideline, but don’t test it. Calling in sick after agreeing to work for a coworker will not garner sympathy from your unit.

When I arrived for work, another nurse remarked that my hoarse voice sounded sexy, like actress Kathleen Turner’s. Despite my crankiness from inadequate respiratory gas […]

Julianna Paradisi, RN, OCN2016-11-21T13:07:32-05:00May 22nd, 2013|career, Nursing, nursing perspective, patient experience, Patients|2 Comments

Dispatch #2 from Melbourne: Dues, Election Results, Nursing at the WHO

By Shawn Kennedy, AJN editor-in-chief

Melbourne, Australia

There’s lots happening at the International Council of Nurses (ICN) meeting and I’ve logged more walking miles here in Melbourne in the last two days than I do in a week at home. Judith Shamian

On Monday, the Council of National Representatives (CNR), the ICN’s governing body, announced election results. Judith Shamian, a well-known Canadian nursing leader, was elected the 27th president of the ICN. (For more information about Judith and other election results, read this press release.)

The CNR also agreed to address issues related to membership models and will move forward with a plan designed to support inclusiveness and membership growth in national associations. The plan also includes a tiered voting model that takes membership and percentage of membership into account. (The final vote will take place at the 2015 Congress). Rosemary Bryant

New dues scheme: will RCN return? […]

Amy M. Collins, managing editor2016-11-21T13:07:32-05:00May 21st, 2013|career|2 Comments

Dispatch from Melbourne: A Significant Loss for International Council of Nurses?

By Shawn Kennedy, AJN editor-in-chief

Melbourne, Australia

So this week I’ve traveled halfway across the world to Melbourne, Australia, where the International Council of Nurses (ICN) is holding its 25th quadrennial meeting. Nearly 4,000 nurses from 134 countries are expected to attend. There’s a mind-boggling number of concurrent sessions—there must be about 60 sessions each hour, offering glimpses into various international health problems and solutions from nurses. Chinese Nursing Association at ICN 2013

A river of nurses. Sunday morning was the opening plenary. I left my hotel at 8:30 am to walk to the convention center along the Yarra River, which runs through this very metropolitan city. I began as a fairly solitary walker, but was soon joined by other walkers, mostly women, all carrying the same ICN2013 conference bag, all walking purposefully in the same direction. We were mostly middle-aged and dressed in sensible walking shoes and “business casual” clothes, and must have looked like a well-dressed walking club to those biking and strolling past. I was quickly reminded that, for all our differences in language and customs, we’re all pretty much alike.

Missing this year from the Congress of Nursing Representatives, however, is the Royal College of Nursing (RCN), which represents nurses from the United Kingdom. The RCN was suspended for failing to pay all of its dues and now is expected to withdraw […]

Shawn Kennedy, MA, RN, FAAN, editor-in-chief (emerita)2018-03-28T10:32:41-04:00May 20th, 2013|nursing perspective|2 Comments

Where Medicine Leaves Off

Long before we see the face, we hear the crying. Mournful, broken, it expresses general discomfort more than acute pain. In it lies the anxiety of all those children brought here against their will, made to submit to the probing of pale strangers who speak an alien tongue.

That’s the start of the May Reflections essay, “After the Science,” by Charlie Geer, about working as a medical translator on an Episcopal church–sponsored team in the Dominican Republic. Geer, who published a comic novel in 2005, writes with sensitivity about the limits of medicine and the way the “nurses gather round, the compassion that brought them to medicine picking up where medicine leaves off.”—JM, senior editor

Jacob Molyneux, senior editor/blog editor2016-11-21T13:07:35-05:00May 17th, 2013|Nursing|1 Comment

Angelina, Florence, End-of-Life Care, Nursing History, Postpartum Depression: A Web Roundup

By Jacob Molyneux, AJN senior editor/blog editor

In the news today we have an op-ed piece in the New York Times by Angelina Jolie about her rationale for getting a double mastectomy. There are sure to be many reactions to this disclosure, with many offering praise for her frankness about her decision. There may also be some who disagree with her decision to take this preventive step because she has the BRCA1 gene, which sharply increases her risk of getting breast cancer. Jolie’s perspective seems to be one of empowerment for women rather than a sense of helplessness or sorrow. Though Jolie’s circumstances are hardly universal in terms of the cushion provided by her great wealth, it’s hard not to admire the strength it takes to see things in such a positive light: “Life comes with many challenges,” she writes. “The ones that should not scare us are the ones we can take on and take control of.”

It’s come to our attention that, in honor of Nurses Week, the American Antiquarian Society blog, PastIsPresent.org, put together an interesting collection of items related to nursing from its mid-19th century archives, leading their post with a mention of AJN‘s March cover, which featured a vintage illustration, “A Map of the Open Country of Woman’s Heart.”