Ann Burgess and Forensic Nursing: AJN Special Issue Highlights

The April issue of AJN is now live.

Here are some highlights. Some articles are open access or temporarily free; others will require log-in for access.

A SPECIAL ISSUE DEVOTED TO FORENSIC NURSING

In this month’s guest editorial, “The Sherlock Holmes of Nursing,” Angela Frederick Amar, PhD, RN, FAAN, dean at the NYU Rory Meyers College of Nursing, gives a compelling overview of the career of forensic nursing pioneer Ann Burgess. She begins this way:

Ann Wolbert Burgess is often described as the “Sherlock Holmes of Nursing,” but that title only captures half of her legacy. While Holmes deduced what had already happened, Burgess’s greatest gift has been her uncanny ability to “see around the corner”—to identify societal crises and clinical needs years, sometimes decades, before the rest of the health care and legal systems recognized them. Throughout her storied career, Burgess has operated at the vanguard of forensic nursing, victimology, and behavioral profiling. Her foresight is characterized by three distinct “turns” around the corner, where she anticipated the future of nursing and justice.

The rest of the editorial is free to read, and is both inspiring (in the best sense) and informative.

The April […]

2026-03-26T14:38:13-04:00March 26th, 2026|Nursing, Nursing education, nursing research, Quality improvement|0 Comments
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How to Keep Caring Without Breaking

Recently, a nurse asked publicly how others cope with empathy fatigue.

It struck me that the question itself was brave.

Empathy fatigue (more often called compassion fatigue) is easy to mislabel. It can present as irritability, detachment, or impatience. It can look like burnout. It can feel like failure. But often, it is something quieter and more specific: the accumulation of caring deeply for a long time.

The subtle internal shift signaling empathy fatigue.

The most dangerous part of empathy fatigue isn’t exhaustion. It’s the subtle shift.

It’s the moment you feel yourself pulling back. The internal eye roll that surprises you. The thought you don’t like having. The faint edge of resentment where compassion once felt natural.

That shift is uncomfortable. But it is also a signal.

In oncology, relationships are not brief. We see patients repeatedly. We learn their children’s names. We know when scans are coming. We recognize the weight in their voices before they say anything at all. Over time, that proximity to suffering accumulates. Grief does not arrive all at once. It layers.

Empathy fatigue is not evidence that we care less. It is often evidence that we have cared continuously.

Left unnamed, however, it can harden into something else. Resentment is not dramatic; it is […]

2026-03-17T11:25:37-04:00March 17th, 2026|Nursing, nursing perspective, Oncology nursing|0 Comments
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When Nurses Mobilize: “Professional” Degree Programs

ANA grassroots advocacy manager Katherine Rowe

Few moments in recent history demonstrate the power of nurses as clearly as the fight over the definition of “professional” degree programs. Hundreds of thousands of nurses spoke out against the Department of Education’s proposed definition, loud enough for the issue to gain traction across social media channels and make an impact on Capitol Hill.

How Did We Get There?

We’ve known that the Department of Education (ED) was preparing to scale back support for unsubsidized federal graduate loans; last year’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) tasked the ED to do so. The question was how. That’s why the American Nurses Association (ANA) pushed for nursing representation on the ED’s Reimagining and Improving Student Education (RISE) Committee and collaborated with partners on strong coalition letters when our calls for including the nurse voice went unheeded.

Despite these efforts, the RISE committee failed to recognize post-baccalaureate nursing programs’ strength and rigor, excluding them from the definition of “professional” degree programs.

Why does this matter? OBBBA eliminated the Grad PLUS Loans program while the RISE committee’s recommendations established two levels of federal student loan limits:

  1. Graduate caps: $20,500 annual / $100,000 total
  2. “Professional” caps: $50,000 annual / $200,000 total

In addition to […]

2026-05-04T09:51:06-04:00March 11th, 2026|Nursing, nursing advocacy, nursing students, Public health|0 Comments
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When Professional Organizations Are Out of Sync With the Needs of Nurses

The views expressed in this post are those of the author, and do not represent the views of their employers or affiliated institutions, or of AJN and Wolters Kluwer.

One of the many lessons my veteran father taught me was this: actions tell you what a person believes in, and you should believe people when they show you what they believe. This principle applies not just to individuals, but also to organizations run by groups of like-minded people.

Many of our national nursing advocacy organizations, like the American Nurses Association (ANA), National League for Nursing (NLN), and others have been complacent in many arenas of nursing advocacy for far too long. Nurses are more burned out than ever, bedside nurse wages have stagnated, the costs of both health care and education continue to balloon, and there is an ongoing epidemic of violence against health care professionals and citizens alike. I find myself reflecting upon my own efforts to address any of these issues faced by my fellow nurses or community, and I cannot help but look to the largest and most powerful nursing organizations with disappointment at their inaction on even the most straightforward issues.

When professional organizations fall short.

Sure, nursing organizations are good at issuing reports and recommendations. For example, in 2025 a new version of the ANA Code of Ethics for Nurses was published. Commitment to society and social justice is one of the provisions, including an ethical obligation for both nurses and their professional […]

2026-05-04T09:50:31-04:00March 9th, 2026|Ethics, Nursing, nursing perspective|1 Comment
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Fatigue in the Infusion Chair: Making Our Teaching Count

Cancer-related fatigue: not ordinary tiredness.

Image via Shutterstock

“I’m just really tired.”

She says it quietly, almost apologetically, while I’m flushing her port. If I’m not careful, I could nod and say, “That’s common,” and move on. But over time, I’ve learned that when a patient says “tired,” they’re often describing something much bigger.

Cancer-related fatigue isn’t the kind of tired that comes after a long day. It’s not fixed by a good night’s sleep. It’s the kind that makes someone say, “If I shower, I have to rest before I can get dressed,” or “If I cook dinner, that’s it for the day.”

In the infusion chair, fatigue is everywhere. During chemotherapy and radiation, most patients experience it at some point. For some, it lingers long after treatment ends. And when fatigue begins to interfere with daily life—cooking, driving, bathing, managing medications—it quietly erodes independence.

Talking to patients about fatigue.

But fatigue conversations are easy to rush. We have vitals to check, labs to review, medications to hang. It’s tempting to treat fatigue as expected background noise. I’ve found that the difference between a rushed fatigue conversation and a meaningful one often comes down to slowing down by just a minute.

Instead of asking only, “How tired are you?” I try to […]

2026-03-04T14:07:41-05:00March 4th, 2026|Nursing, Oncology nursing, patient experience, Patients|2 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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