Home Care Nursing Isn’t for the Faint of Heart


The convalescent-home referral said that Loretta was 71 years old with the usual health problems related to stroke and diabetes. It also said that her husband had a gun and “wasn’t afraid to use it.” Fiercely protective of his wife, he’d had many disputes with the nursing staff about her care. The discharge planner who’d referred her to our home care agency insisted that two nurses make the initial home visit.

Read the rest of “The Dirtiest House in Town,” the Reflections essay in the January issue of AJN, here. And let us know your own experiences in home care nursing.

Bookmark and Share

2016-11-21T13:20:19-05:00January 5th, 2010|nursing perspective|2 Comments
Read More

Lab Coats vs. Scrubs: Do the Clothes Make the Nurse?

By Jay Swanson, BSN, RN, OCN

Within a nurse’s career there are many opportunities for advancement, new jobs, or a change in shift. Most startling is the move from “working the floor” to “desk job.” When I left the floor to work in a job more focused on patient education, I was treated differently. I had worked on the same unit for five years; I was an informal leader on the floor and the chairperson of the floor management council, an elected position. I am not saying that I was well liked, but I was at least trusted.

During the first few months in the new job I felt that the coworkers I had known and worked alongside wouldn’t talk to me or look at me. Had I sold out? Was I less of a nurse?

It’s true, I no longer work 12-hour shifts, or weekends or holidays. I spend most of my time gathering resources and providing educational support for our oncology patients, and I get to leave work more or less when I want (usually after 5 pm).

Yes, all that’s true . . . but what I really blame is the lab coat. I believe the lab coat suddenly put me in a different category from those who wore scrubs. How do I know? When I did wear scrubs to work one day, I was treated differently, as if all of a sudden I was “one of them” again.

So what is it about the coat? Too close to physicians or other […]

2016-11-21T13:20:21-05:00January 4th, 2010|career, nursing perspective|9 Comments
Read More

2010: The Year of the Nurse

By Shawn Kennedy, interim editor-in-chief

Tomorrow when we ring in the New Year we’ll also be ringing in the International Year of the Nurse. No kidding. The designation honors the centennial of the death of Florence Nightingale (she died on August 13, 1910). It launches at noon everywhere on January 1 with the Million Nurse Global Caring Field Project, a “global meditation” led by noted nursing theorist Jean Watson, and events will continue throughout the year.

Most of you were probably aware that the United Nations had developed eight Millenium Development Goals (MDGs) that nations should achieve to end poverty and improve the health, education, and quality of life of their peoples. Three of the eight goals are specifically focused on health, but the others all have an impact on health one way or another.

The target date for achieving the goals is 2015, but as countries have implemented programs to achieve these goals they’ve become acutely aware that, without nurses in sufficient supply, they will fall short. For example, how do you reduce the maternal death rate during childbirth if there are few skilled health professionals to provide prenatal care or assist at births? How do you treat TB and HIV when there are no health workers to dispense and monitor drug therapy? […]

2016-11-21T13:20:23-05:00December 31st, 2009|nursing perspective|0 Comments
Read More

If Your Facility Were To Make a New Year’s Resolution, What Would It Be?

 

We asked the question “If your facility were to make a New Year’s resolution, what would it be?” on our Facebook page yesterday.

Below are some of the responses so far. Is there anything else you might add about your facility?

 

AMAZING HEALTHCARE

better patient care

maybe respect the staff

best patient safety

excellent mental/emotional health assessment and intervention

Every patient everytime!

i double that for respect for staff

It’s all about what’s best for the patients …

From my point of view….give us all a raise no matter how big or small!

Quality care, NOT Quantity care!!!

Free parking

Be COMPLETELY up on EMR by year end

To get the Drs to improve upon their verbal and written communication to nursing staff and to improve Drs understanding of what is meant by palliative care.

Bookmark and Share

2016-11-21T13:20:25-05:00December 30th, 2009|nursing perspective|2 Comments
Read More

Different Gods, Different Ideas of Compassion: A Clergywoman’s Story of the Doctor Who Wouldn’t

Jeanine was in her 60s. She wasn’t a church member and I barely knew her. A neighbor had called me to the hospital-Jeanine’s husband was dead, and there were no family or friends at her side. Trying to get my bearings, I leaned over her and recited the words of the Twenty-third Psalm: “The Lord is my shepherd …. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil ….”

“Help me,” Jeanine moaned. Her eyes opened and then closed. I knew she was pleading for release from her pain.

“Jeanine, I’m so sorry,” I whispered. I hurried to the nurses’ station. When a young nurse looked up, I asked if she could do more to relieve Jeanine’s pain.

“Nothing more to do,” she said, looking back down at an open ledger.

The above is an excerpt from the Reflections essay in the December issue of AJN. It’s by a retired clergywoman who tells of a moment early in her career that brought her face to face with a doctor who believed in a very different kind of God than her own. Click the link above to read the essay in entirety.  

Bookmark and Share

2016-11-21T13:20:26-05:00December 23rd, 2009|Nursing|0 Comments
Read More

Comment ground rules

1. Please be respectful.
2. We moderate all comments.

Content disclaimer

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.
Go to Top