What’s Lurking in the Sink? Rethinking Water as an Infection Risk in Health Care

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Nurses play a primary role in patient safety through direct care and through the environments in which care is delivered. While clinical responsibilities are well defined, the nurses’ role in promoting a health care environment that prevents health care–associated infections (HAIs) is not always clear.

A recent report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) revealed that U.S. hospitals saw meaningful declines in several major HAIs in 2024, including Clostridioides difficile (C. diff) infections, catheter-associated urinary tract infections (CAUTIs), central line–associated bloodstream infections (CLABSIs), and methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) bacteremia. Despite the obvious progress, each day, approximately one in 31 hospitalized patients and one in 43 nursing home residents contract at least one HAI in association with their health care. This alarming statistic underscores the need for frontline vigilance by nurses in every clinical setting.

When the Environment Works Against Us

Infection prevention is often framed around what we can see—dirty floors and high-touch surfaces, visibly soiled equipment, and stained linens. Some of the most consequential risks in health care are not visible. One emerging area of concern is the role of health care water systems as reservoirs for pathogens. Surprisingly, it’s not dirty water that’s being scrutinized, but […]

2026-04-08T10:03:07-04:00April 8th, 2026|infection control, Nursing|0 Comments
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From Care to Calling: How a Nurse’s Small Act Became a Lifelong Inspiration

Often, the simplest questions lead to the greatest moments of reflection and growth. While serving on a recent panel discussion, I was asked how I knew I wanted to be a nurse? The question offered me the opportunity to reflect on the butterfly effect of one nurse’s actions on the future of a teenage girl.

A mother’s sudden illness

I was 17 years old, a junior in high school, and growing increasingly excited about my first prom. The dress was picked out, the makeup decided, and my high school sweetheart (and current husband) had already asked me to be his date. Just prior to the big day, my mother began experiencing worsening headaches and increasingly noticeable vision changes. Though it was originally written off as stress or typical age-related vision changes, an eye appointment for a new prescription quickly led to a neurology consultation. With roughly 50% of my mother’s peripheral vision already gone, scans were ordered, and a craniopharyngioma was discovered.

Suddenly, prom was the last thing on my mind as my mother was admitted to a local cancer hospital for treatment of a large (noncancerous) brain tumor. Her surgery was scheduled for the day of the big dance. Her last words before being wheeled into surgery were, “When I wake up, the first thing I want to see are pictures of how beautiful you looked at the prom.”

2026-05-04T09:48:29-04:00April 2nd, 2026|career, family experience, Nursing, nursing career, Patients|0 Comments
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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 issue […]

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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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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