The Priceless Clarity of Inexperience

By Marcy Phipps, RN, a regular contributor to this blog. Her essay, “The Soul on the Head of a Pin,” was published in the May 2010 issue of AJN.

Heartstudy by James P. Wells, via Flickr

I was precepting a senior nursing student last week. During an idle moment, I asked her why she’d decided to go into nursing.

She shrugged, averted her eyes, and mumbled something like “I’ve just always wanted to.”

I didn’t press it, but I’m sure there’s more to it than that. I probably shouldn’t have asked, given that I cringe when posed the same question, and usually give a faltering and inadequate “I like helping people” kind of answer . . . when “that’s too personal of a question” would be more honest.

I’ve been a nurse for years, and there are certain aspects of the profession I wouldn’t attempt to broach in casual conversation. I doubt that I could have articulated my motivations when I was a student, even if I’d wanted to. That exchange, though, calls to mind one of the most defining experiences of my nursing career.

I was a senior nursing student, doing a clinical rotation in the ICU. My preceptor and I were caring for a patient who’d been in a motorcycle accident. He’d not sustained a head […]

2016-11-21T13:11:53-05:00September 22nd, 2011|career, Nursing, Patients, students|8 Comments
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‘The Worst I’ve Ever Seen’: One Persistent Nurse’s Take on Somalian Refugee Situation

By Shawn Kennedy, editor-in-chief

Gerry Martone is a nurse who has traveled to the far reaches of the world in his job as director of humanitarian resources at the International Rescue Committee (IRC). We ran a profile of Gerry in 2001 and also a photo essay. He’s also a skilled photographer and we’ve published his photo essays documenting his travels. (See here for one on assessing poverty in Afghanistan and here for one on Sudan refugees; click through to PDF versions for best viewing.)

So when I spoke with Gerry last week, shortly after he came back from a visit to a refugee camp in Kenya, it scared me when he said the situation in East Africa is the worst thing he’s ever seen. The region is plagued by a severe drought (Martone says it’s had no appreciable rain in two years), and while drought is a cyclical phenomenon there,  a struggling central government, lack of health and response systems, and ongoing  conflicts among local clans have worsened the situation, causing widespread food shortages. The global community is responding with aid, but for many, it will be too late.

He visited a UN camp outside the city of Dadaab, Kenya, to which more than 440,000 displaced people—mostly Somalians, who are the hardest hit—have fled. The IRC runs a hospital at the camp. The situation is dire: the UN estimates that, […]

2016-11-21T13:11:57-05:00September 20th, 2011|Nursing|14 Comments
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What One Thing Will Make Today Better for You?

As I entered Mr. Ricker’s room, I remembered that the night nurse had mentioned that his wife had been with him overnight. I knocked very lightly and opened the door a crack. The two of them were cuddled up closely in the bed.

“What One Thing Will Make Today Better for You?” That’s the title of the Reflections essay in the September issue of AJN, in case you thought a genie had materialized out of the steam from your afternoon coffee mug. A simple question, but one that author Susan Goff has used since the 1970s with her patients. Sometimes the answer is surprising—that is, sometimes we shouldn’t assume we know what patients want . . . or need. Sometimes, in the case of the patient she describes in this essay, there’s something that should trump NPO. We hope you’ll read the essay and let Susan know your thoughts in our comments section below.—JM, senior editor


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2016-11-21T13:11:58-05:00September 12th, 2011|nursing perspective|1 Comment
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Remembering 9/11: Nurses Were There

By Shawn Kennedy, editor-in-chief

One can find many commemorative events for the 10th anniversary of 9/11 being held in those places (New York City, Washington, DC, and Shanksville, Pennsylvania) where planes hit, and in other cities as well. Some are appropriate and done well and others are (at least to me) over-the-top and tactless—like one New York City radio station playing tapes of the confusion and chaos from first responder radio transmissions; families and friends of victims don’t need to hear that and think of what their loved ones were going through in their final moments.

How we saw it then. AJN’s offices are located in New York City. In 2001, we could see the burning World Trade Center from our windows and we wrote about about our experiences and thoughts. We knew nurses would be in the forefront of responding to help, so we reached out to nurses here in New York and in the Washington, DC, area in order to report on what nurses there were doing. And we also carried a Viewpoint essay, in which one of our Muslim colleagues reported on the backlash that she was experiencing and made a plea for tolerance.

Our current coverage. In planning this September issue, we wanted to acknowledge the events in some way—hence our cover (thumbnail illustraton above) by artist and nurse Charlie Kaiman, who witnessed the events (see also his artwork from 2001 conveying that […]

2016-11-21T13:11:58-05:00September 9th, 2011|nursing perspective|8 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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