November Issue: Pediatric Antibiotic Stewardship, New Family Caregivers Series, More

“Kindness goes a long way. Patience. Remember that everybody’s going through something.”—school nurse Tonja Frank in the November Conversations article

The November issue of AJN is now live. Here’s what’s new. Some articles may be free only to subscribers.

Original Research: Suicidal Ideation and Attitudes Toward Help Seeking in U.S. Nurses Relative to the General Working Population

This study investigated the prevalence of suicidal ideation and attitudes toward seeking mental health care among U.S. nurses relative to other workers; and, among nurses, the extent to which personal and professional factors, including burnout, were related to suicidal ideation.

CE: Pediatric Antibiotic Stewardship

The authors review the evidence on shorter versus longer duration of antibiotic therapy for pediatric patients and discuss the nurse’s role in antibiotic stewardship.

Supporting Family Caregivers: No Longer Home Alone: The 4Ms of an Age-Friendly Health System

This article—the first in a new series published in collaboration with the AARP Public Policy Institute—outlines the 4Ms of an Age-Friendly Health System framework and how it can be implemented by the health care team, including nurses and family caregivers, in the inpatient hospital setting.
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2021-10-25T08:58:45-04:00October 25th, 2021|Nursing|0 Comments
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The Essentials for Nurses About Recognition and Treatment of MIS-C

‘A massive systemic inflammatory response.’

While on the whole the United States is seeing a decline in COVID cases, this most recent wave of the Delta variant has seen an unprecedented number of children infected and hospitalized for COVID-19.

While children generally fare better than adults from the virus, infection may make them susceptible to a rare condition known as multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children (MIS-C).

This rare but serious condition was described by Shields and colleagues in our May issue as “a massive systemic inflammatory response that has physiologic correlations to Kawasaki disease, Kawasaki disease shock syndrome, toxic shock syndrome, macrophage activation syndrome, and cytokine release syndrome.”

The CDC reports that, as of October 4, the number of patients meeting the case definition for MIS-C was 5,217 (up from 4,000 reported in June) and the total number of deaths meeting the case definition was 46.

The CDC case definition includes the following:

2021-10-28T10:36:09-04:00October 20th, 2021|COVID-19, infectious diseases, Nursing|0 Comments
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FDA Revokes Authorizations for Certain Respirators, Decontamination Systems

Changes reflect replenished stockpiles of approved equipment.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has revoked its emergency use authorization for disposable respirators that haven’t been approved by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH). Emergency use authorizations for decontamination and bioburden reduction systems were also revoked as of June 30.

The actions were taken to align with updated recommendations from the CDC and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) that reflect an increased domestic supply of approved respirators. This means facilities no longer need to rely on crisis strategies to cope with supply shortages, such as the reuse of disposable respirators.

The FDA ruling, which took effect July 6, allows for a transition period. The agency suggests that health care facilities consider redistributing unapproved respirators to countries in need as well as to nonmedical industries, such as construction.

Every employer must have plan to protect workers.

Also in June, OSHA issued an Emergency Temporary Standard to protect health care workers from exposure to COVID-19. The standard requires that every employer have a plan in place that identifies COVID-19 hazards in the workplace and lists additional requirements for reducing transmission of COVID-19, including the use of respirators and PPE. OSHA will continue to monitor […]

2021-10-18T09:52:28-04:00October 18th, 2021|Nursing|0 Comments
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Precepting: Revisiting Ground Rules with My New Grad RN

A return to precepting.

By Suzanne D. Williams/Unsplash

There is no question that precepting new grad RNs requires a lot of extra thought, time, and energy for bedside nurses also looking to take care of our patients and their family members. But even as an introvert who finds it challenging to talk nearly nonstop for an entire 12-hour shift, I have in the past still enjoyed precepting. I’ve found it deeply rewarding to watch someone under my mentorship grow in skill and confidence as a young nurse.

When the pandemic hit and sent my young children home for distance learning, I took a break from precepting, as my capacity for additional mentoring at work had shrunk significantly.

Now that my children are back on their school campus, I am preparing to precept a new grad who is part of a cohort that went through nursing school during a pandemic with considerable limitations to their clinical experiences. As I dust off my own preceptor hat, I have found myself revisiting what I want to lay out as a foundation for my new preceptee. […]

2021-10-14T09:47:10-04:00October 14th, 2021|career, new nurses, Nursing, nursing career|3 Comments
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What Nurses Need to Know About Cybersecurity and Patient Health

Ransomware attacks are well recognized as causing an increasing number of disruptions to health care services as well as steep economic losses, but their impact on patient health outcomes has been less easy to determine.

A suspected ransomware death.

A report published recently in the Wall Street Journal details the potentially fatal effects of cyberattacks. “A Hospital Hit by Hackers, a Baby in Distress: The Case of the First Alleged Ransomware Death” (subscription may be required) describes a lawsuit contending that a child born at an Alabama hospital in 2019 during an eight-day cyberattack subsequently died because the building’s disabled computer systems prevented staff from properly caring for the infant.

A Becker Hospital Review post last week further highlights the reported links between cyberattacks and patient outcomes. It describes the above lawsuit, as well as findings from studies by the Ponemon Institute and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, that suggest a link between such attacks and increased mortality rates.

Caption: Medical devices and applications connect to the Internet of Medical Things in a variety of ways, including via USB connectors, Wi-Fi, sensors, LTE wireless data connection, and other wireless technology such as Bluetooth. Reprinted with permission from Al-Turjman F, et al. Intelligence in the Internet […]

2021-10-11T10:51:32-04:00October 11th, 2021|Nursing|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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