At Denver Nurse Exec Mtg: Sully on Sources of Errors, Chow on Crucial Role of Patients and Families

Some quick take-homes from AJN’s editor-in-chief, Shawn Kennedy:

690px-Plane_crash_into_Hudson_Rivercroped via Wikipedia

I’m in Denver at the annual meeting of the American Association of Nurse Executives (AONE), the organization comprised mostly of hospital nurse executives, administrators, and managers. As you can imagine, the focus is on leadership.

Captain “Sully” Sullenberger, the former US Airways pilot who safely landed a disabled passenger plane on the Hudson River in New York City in 2009, was the featured keynote speaker. He of course talked about the event that launched his second career as a speaker, author, and safety expert, but his message was really about leading in challenging times. Some key messages:

  • His success in landing the plane was the result of teamwork, with everyone executing what they had learned and practiced.
  • Core values must be made real on a daily basis in organizations.
  • Errors and bad outcomes are almost never the result of a single person or event, but a result of a cascading chain of events or failures.

AORN meeting cover image AORN meeting cover image

Marilyn Chow, who spoke only briefly after accepting the AONE 2013 Lifetime Achievement Award, could as easily have been the keynote speaker at the meeting. Chow, who is vice-president, national patient care services, Kaiser Permanente, spoke with humor and passion about her values and where she thinks nursing’s values should be. She told of her 87-year-old mother’s great joy […]

2018-03-13T10:49:45-04:00March 22nd, 2013|nursing perspective|1 Comment
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The Seven Surprises: What I’ve Learned About Nursing Through Yoga

By Medora McGinnis, RN, whose last post for this blog was “Practically a Nurse: Life as a New Graduate RN.” Medora is now a pediatric RN at St. Mary’s Hospital in the Bon Secours Health System, Richmond, Virginia, as well as a freelance writer. As a nursing student she was the Imprint Editor for the National Student Nurses Association.

By HealthZone (The Star) [FAL], via Wikimedia Commons Hot Yoga (Bikram), by HealthZone (The Star), via Wikimedia Commons The room is dark, and hot; 105 degrees, to be exact. I carry my mat, towel, and water bottle to the back corner of the room and settle into my space. I drink some water and lie down, trying to let go of all of the thoughts racing around in my head. A few minutes later, class starts and we start breathing, moving, stretching, and sweating . . . and really sweating. I’m shaking as I try to hold my plank position (which I still have to modify on my knees), then relaxing into a forward bend. Breathing, drinking water, moving, and stretching—and without realizing it, my thoughts are only about the present moment.

When I decided to try hot yoga about a month ago, I knew it would help me reduce stress and gain flexibility, and I was even hoping I’d lose weight. As a present day RN and a former ballet dancer, I looked forward to some of the health benefits I’d heard […]

2021-06-17T15:01:35-04:00March 21st, 2013|nursing perspective, personal health practices|4 Comments
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When Nurse-Patient Boundaries Blur, in Fact or Fiction

By Marcy Phipps, RN, a regular contributor to this blog. Her essay, “The Love Song of Frank,” was published in the May (2012) issue of AJN. She currently has an essay appearing in The Examined Life Journal.

Courtesy of the author Courtesy of the author

Professional boundaries, as defined by the National Council of State Boards of Nursing (NCSBN), are “the spaces between the nurse’s power and the patient’s vulnerability.” The NCSBN describes the nurse–patient relationship as a continuum, with “too little care provider involvement” at one end and “too much care provider involvement” on the other.

The ideal therapeutic nurse–patient relationship lies in the middle, with “no definite lines separating the zone of helpfulness from the ends of the continuum.” I don’t love the indeterminate nature of that definition, but I understand it.

Some time ago, I was surprised by a friendship that developed between a patient and me. It was an unusual circumstance, in that the patient was in the ICU for a very long time for chronic problems that didn’t affect his mental capacity. I was his nurse many times, and through idle chatter during routine care we discovered not only a shared appreciation of literature in general, but a fondness for many of the same authors and books. I started thinking of books I’d bring him, hoping to augment the tedium of his hospital stay. At some point, I started thinking […]

2016-11-21T13:08:04-05:00March 15th, 2013|Ethics, nursing perspective, Patients|7 Comments
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Article Types, Topics of Interest, and Other Considerations for Prospective AJN Authors

iPad app exhibit AORNBy Maureen Shawn Kennedy, AJN editor-in-chief

I recently wrote a post that attempted to give readers a clearer sense of what we are looking for in article submissions and what we are not looking for: “My Professor Said to Submit My Paper (We Hope They Also Told You This).”

This post will just provide a quick overview of the types of articles we publish, as well as a plug for why it’s good to be published in AJN.

In terms of impact factor, AJN ranks 29/95 among ranked nursing journals, with an impact factor of 1.119. (Nursing journals with higher impact factors tend to be specialty research journals, whereas AJN publishes a broad range of content in addition to research, and for a variety of audiences.) Through our robust print, digital, iPad, institutional, and social media channels, AJN reaches more nurses than any other nursing journal.

We publish original research, quality improvement (QI), and review articles as primary feature articles and as CE articles. We also publish shorter, focused columns. All submissions must be evidence based and are peer-reviewed.

Clinical features should cover epidemiology, pathology, current research/“what’s new” in knowledge and/or treatment, nursing implications. There is no specific limit for word count, though feature articles are usually in the range of 6,000 to 10,000 words. (We have done two-part and three-part series for larger papers.) For examples of feature articles, see any of the CE articles on our Web site, […]

2016-11-21T13:08:08-05:00March 14th, 2013|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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