Off the Charts

Are Job Prospects Improving for New Nurses?

Image via Wikimedia

Back in 2010, we ran a post by our then clinical editor, Christine Moffa. It was called “Prospects for New Nurses: Thoughts On Graduating During a Downturn” and it generated quite a few comments. Below is a sampling of excerpts. Some people were pretty distressed, wondering whether they should take jobs that separated them from their families, facing criticism from people who expected they should find a job easily. After all, they were nurses! And we all know they are always in demand.

We’ve been hearing anecdotally that the prospects for new nurses are getting better overall. Is this your experience?—JM, senior editor

“It costs a lot of money to train nurses, especially new grads. Many employers want experienced nurses. The best piece of advice given to me was to stay with same healthcare system/unit floor I worked with as a student nurse. Even that prospect, however, seems to be circling the drain for the same reason I hear over and over again: EXPERIENCE REQUIRED!!! Relocation may not be an option for some people….I’m sure I will eventually get a job, but it’s the uncertainty of my future that frustrates me. It’s quite aggravating to have worked so hard in school only to be disappointed in the end.”

“I just graduated in March and am really worried about getting a job. Thankfully I will be able to stay at my current job as a RN- I worked there as a LPN for almost […]

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Jacob Molyneux, senior editor/blog editor2016-11-21T13:10:05-05:00May 17th, 2012|students|1 Comment

Women’s Health Week – It’s Your Time

Cycling mother and daughter, Netherlands/via Wikimedia Commons

Women, especially working women with families, often are their own last priority—the job and family come first. This week is the 13th annual National Women’s Health Week, which started on Mother’s Day, May 13, and will last until May 19th. The theme for this year is “It’s Your Time.” And it’s the perfect time for women to stop and take stock of their own health needs. This year’s Women’s Health Week is particularly poignant, coming on the tail of the recent debates about access to birth control on the national stage.

Coordinated by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office on Women’s Health, this special week is meant to bring together health organizations, businesses, government offices, and communities in order to promote women’s health. You can find more information about how to get involved on womenshealth.gov.

Our views on women’s health continue to evolve. For example, menopause: what is a “normal” symptom during menopause? What treatments are available for various symptoms, and what can women do to help themselves? What do we currently know about the effects of certain treatments, and are they worth the possible benefits? Are we overmedicalizing women’s bodies? Or what about pregnant nurses on the job? What might endanger their health or that of their developing babies?

We’d like to offer some of our recent articles on women’s health to help increase awareness of some health […]

Jacob Molyneux, senior editor/blog editor2016-11-21T13:10:09-05:00May 16th, 2012|Nursing|0 Comments

The Evolution of Nursing: Always a Mirror for Cultural Attitudes, But With Some Constants

Of hygiene practices at one public institution, Hobson wrote, “The visitor found a woman with a broken leg twelve days after she had been brought to the hospital in the same miserable garments in which she fell.” In describing an almshouse (poorhouse) hospital, she said, “The condition of the patients was unspeakable; the one [untrained] nurse slept in the bathroom, and the tub was filled with filthy rubbish.”

. . . On the subject of nutrition, Hobson recounted a Friday meal in the same hospital, wherein “the dinner of salt fish was brought in a bag to the ward and emptied on to the table; the convalescents helped themselves, and carried to the others their portions on a tin plate with a spoon.”

Pediatric NP, circa 1965. Courtesy of Barbara Bates Center for the Study of the History of Nursing, Univ. of Penn. School of Nursing

These are quotes from “Key Ideas in Nursing’s First Century,” an article in the May issue of AJN by historian Ellen Davidson Baer. Baer draws on vivid primary sources from the 19th century, such as the one quoted above, to depict stages in the evolution of nursing into a respected and regulated profession with standards and essential skills and knowledge.

Though nursing has changed a great deal since its early days, Baer sees theory and compassion as intertwined constants throughout the history of nursing, both of them very much present from the start.

She’s also attuned to ways in which the […]

Jacob Molyneux, senior editor/blog editor2016-11-21T13:10:09-05:00May 14th, 2012|career, nursing perspective|1 Comment

How Good Are Your CPR Skills? Research Shows Monthly Practice Is Crucial

A nurse practices CPR on a voice advisory manikin. Photo courtesy of Laerdal Medical.

By Maureen Shawn Kennedy, AJN editor-in-chief

Most of you are probably aware of the AHA’s revised CPR guidelines that were issued in 2010. They include a major change in the resuscitation sequence—which now begins with chest compressions rather than ventilation—and emphasize the importance of achieving adequate compression of the chest—“at least two inches (5 cm)”—to achieve adequate blood flow. (You can see a video by the AHA demonstrating the new guidelines here.) This change is especially important in light of recent research on CPR skills.

In 2011, Marilyn H. Oermann and colleagues conducted research with nursing students to determine how often one needs to practice CPR skills to maintain competence.

As she explains in an article in the May issue of AJN, students who practiced briefly each month not only maintained their skills, but improved them significantly by the end of 12 months.

In comparison, the skills of those who only had an initial training session deteriorated after three months; by 12 months, few could perform CPR adequately, especially in terms of achieving adequate depth for chest compressions. And although these were students, Oermann describes studies showing similar results with paramedics, non-ICU nurses, and nurse anesthetists.

Most hospitals and agencies only require an annual review or demonstration of skills to be recertified in CPR; few, I bet, measure the depth of compressions. Sounds like it’s time to revisit this […]

Amy M. Collins, managing editor2016-11-21T13:10:10-05:00May 11th, 2012|Nursing|1 Comment

Nurses Week: Comparing Notes on Matters of the Heart

By Marcy Phipps, RN, a regular contributor to this blog. Her essay, “The Love Song of Frank,” was published in the May issue of AJN.

Image courtesy of Wikemedia Commons

Earlier this week I took care of a man who nearly coded, rather unexpectedly. I was standing next to his bed when his heart rate slowed suddenly and significantly, with one extraordinarily long pause between beats.

A pause doesn’t have to be extraordinarily long to feel like it is, especially when you’re standing next to someone, palpating their pulse while watching the monitor. In this case, in this five-second pause that felt like minutes, I’d dropped the bed rail, shouted out to my team, and was ready to start chest compressions when his heart beat again. His symptomatic bradycardia was treated accordingly; there were no chest compressions, and it was no code.

I had lunch with a good nurse-friend of mine who works in a nearby hospital. I was telling her how “bradycardia with a five-second pause” feels a lot like asystole, when you’re standing next to your patient, and she was telling me that her hospital had sort of cancelled Nurses Week this year. Instead of the traditional week of silly games, superlative awards, and physician-sponsored lunches, and then a later “Hospital Week,” her facility was having a combined “Team Member Week.”

“It feels like we’ve lost recognition,” my friend said. “We don’t feel appreciated, and we’re angry.”

I definitely see […]