Off the Charts

AJN’s January Issue: Men in Nursing, Perioperative Medication Withholding in Patients with PD, Book of the Year Awards, More

AJN’s January issue is now available on our Web site. Here’s a selection of what not to miss, including two continuing education (CE) articles, which you can access for free.

Even though more men are starting to become nurses, they still make up less than 7% of all RNs. In “Men in Nursing,” the authors discuss the challenges of recruiting and retaining men in the nursing profession. This article is open access and can earn you 2.1 CE credits.

In this month’s original research article, the authors report on findings from a quantitative study exploring antiparkinson medication withholding times during hospitalization and symptom management. Part one of a two-part series, this article is open access and can earn you 2.5 CE credits. Look for part two in our next issue, which reports on findings from a qualitative study on the perioperative hospitalization experiences of patients with PD.

After sustaining a needlestick injury during a research study, nurse Lynn Petrik created a new safety device for a commonly used glucose sensor. “From Putty to Prototype” takes readers through the steps of her invention, from the prototype to the provisional patent.

Looking for a good read? The votes are in, and the winners of AJN’s annual Book of the Year Awards are listed in this issue. A supplemental online only companion to the article gives the judges reviews for each book.

And finally, read “The Clinical Nurse […]

Amy M. Collins, managing editor2016-11-21T13:08:39-05:00December 28th, 2012|nursing research|0 Comments

A Mental Health Nurse’s Perspective on Newtown and Its Aftermath

Mary Magdalene Crying statue/Wikimedia Commons

By Donna Sabella, MEd, MSN, PhD, RN, mental health nurse, AJN contributing editor, and coordinator of the monthly Mental Health Matters column

As we all know by now, last Friday, December 14, our nation was forced to bear witness to another act of unconscionable violence, as 20 children and six adults were gunned down inside their elementary school on a morning that began with the murder of the gunman’s mother.

As the country ponders why and how this could have happened, we know that there are no easy answers. Those answers that we do arrive at will undoubtedly involve much thought and soul-searching. How could one human being, one lone gunman barely an adult himself, wreak such devastation on so many?

The pain and grief of Friday hangs heavy over Newtown, and only those who lost a child or loved one that day can begin to imagine the sorrow they are experiencing. But the sorrow and grief do not stop there. As President Obama stated on Sunday night in his remarks to the Newtown community, the nation collectively shares their sorrow, disbelief, and pain.

As we know, one need not be directly involved in an event to be affected by it. This horrible event forces us all to confront the notion that while we are the land of the brave and the home of the free, we share our land with evil, with senseless […]

Jacob Molyneux, senior editor/blog editor2016-11-21T13:08:40-05:00December 19th, 2012|nursing perspective|1 Comment

In Memory of the Victims in Newtown

By Shawn Kennedy, AJN editor-in-chief

I could scarcely watch the news coverage of the horrific shooting that occurred in the small Connecticut town of Newton on Friday. It was just too awful. Children no older than seven, all shot, along with several teachers, by a young man who had already killed his mother and who later took his own life after causing unimaginable carnage. When the first reports emerged and newscasters were speculating on the number of people killed, I recalled then-mayor Rudy Giuliani’s reported response to a journalist who asked him how many were killed in the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center: “More than we can bear.”

As nurses, we are no strangers to what happens when violence occurs. We see the results of it every day in our workplaces. Individuals, families, and communities are changed forever, and often we as caregivers are, too. What begins as an ordinary day becomes a tragic milestone: future events are remembered as “before” or “after” the event.

I’m tired of hearing “Guns don’t kill people, people kill people.” Yes, but some guns make it a heck of a lot easier to do so, and in large numbers. We’ve had Columbine, Virginia Tech, the Aurora movie theater, a Portland mall, Congresswoman Gabby Giffords and others on an Arizona street, and now Newtown. And as I was writing this, the Chicago Tribune reported that a 60-year-old man in Indiana was arrested after threatening […]

Amy M. Collins, managing editor2016-11-21T13:08:43-05:00December 17th, 2012|nursing perspective|5 Comments

Precarious Hope: A Hospice Nurse Balances Truth and Kindness

This couple might be your elderly neighbors: he helps his wife into the house as she moves slowly, step by unsteady step, in time with her four-point cane; at the same time, you know that he is recovering from recent chemotherapy treatments. Or they may be your aging parents: your mother’s role as primary caregiver hampered by her right leg weakness from a stroke and advancing heart disease, while your father needs more care from day to day as his renal failure approaches the decision to begin dialysis or not. They support and care for each other.

The December Reflections column in AJN, “Precarious Hope,” is by an RN case manager at a hospice. She describes a couple in which one partner has dementia and the other has cancer, their mutual dependency, and the challenge of knowing how best to care for them:

In hospice, I’m often confronted with the difficulty of balancing honesty with kindness. I love a quote often attributed to the Buddha: “When words are both true and kind, they can change our world.” It follows that sometimes what is true is not kind, and that truth must be cloaked in kindness—as in this instance, as I sit at the table listening to George, whose hopeful, unrealistic comments confirm that he simply can’t hear the truth.

It’s a sensitive portrait of love, the fine line between self-delusion and perseverance, and the way that sometimes simply bearing witness is the […]