What to Know About the ACA After Third Failed SCOTUS Challenge

As trusted sources of information related to health and health care, nurses should be informed about health care laws that govern access to care.

The issue.

On June 17, 2021, the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) rejected the latest constitutional challenge to the Affordable Care Act (ACA). The ACA lawsuit was linked to the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of late 2017, which “zeroed out” the penalties imposed by the ACA’s controversial individual mandate requiring people to have health insurance. Following this, in February 2018 a coalition of 18 states and two individuals filed a lawsuit challenging the legality of the ACA because the individual mandate was unenforceable.

While most pundits initially dismissed the seriousness of the threat of the lawsuit, this changed in June 2018 when the U.S. Department of Justice under President Trump expressed support for the suit, asking the court to strike down not the entire law but just the ACA’s prohibitions against insurers’ denying coverage to people with preexisting conditions and against charging higher premiums because of health status (the Justice Department later expanded its support of the lawsuit to include repeal of the entire ACA). Historically, it is unusual for the Justice Department to oppose […]

2021-07-07T10:30:18-04:00June 28th, 2021|health care policy, Nursing, Public health|0 Comments
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Demystifying Clinical Research: A Series for Nurses Breaks It Down

No matter where you are working as a nurse, research is impacting the work you do. The articles in our two Evidence-Based Practice (EBP) series (the EBP Step by Step series and the EBP 2.0 series) remain some of the most-read AJN articles. However, you can’t develop or implement EBP projects without reading and understanding research articles.

Like learning a foreign language.

Clinical research can be intimidating for those not familiar with it. I liken it to learning a foreign language. And as with learning a new language, it makes sense to start at the basics and build your vocabulary as you go. Our latest series, Nursing Research, Step by Step, “is designed to give nurses the knowledge and skills they need to participate in research, step by step.” […]

2021-06-24T11:27:57-04:00June 24th, 2021|Nursing|0 Comments
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Making Relaxation a Priority as a Nurse

There have been a lot of articles lately about how people have adjusted their life priorities as a result of the pandemic—slowing down, going deeper into various pursuits, asking themselves what they really value in the face of life’s brevity. Many have faced terrible losses. Many others have made big changes.

photo by Meagan/via Flickr

The many faces of relaxation.

Now as summer really starts to get underway after this long and very hard year, it might be a good idea to give a little thought to how much we value relaxation. This means many different things to different nurses, as we learned back in 2010 when we asked followers on Twitter how they relaxed.

You can see some of the answers here; they included jogging and other exercise, spending time with family, taking hot baths, dancing, having a glass of wine, running a side business, making art, and spending time outside. In at least one case someone responded that relaxation was impossible because she was a nurse manager. […]

2021-06-18T12:25:27-04:00June 18th, 2021|Nursing|0 Comments
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Lost and Found in the Bronx

Before I could say another word, Mr. Smith cut me off. “I’m so happy you called. I’ve been so worried. I brought my wife to a hospital in Queens on Thursday night and I hadn’t heard from anyone since. But, wait—you’re telling me she’s in the Bronx now?” His tone seemed to shift from gratitude to anger as this fact sunk in. I looked at the date on the computer screen in front of me. It was Tuesday. 

“Lost and Found in the Bronx” is the title of the Reflections essay in the June issue of AJN. Author Kristopher Jackson is an acute care NP at UCSF Medical Center in San Francisco and spent two weeks as a volunteer in the Bronx in New York City during the height of the pandemic. He centers his essay around his care of a frail, elderly woman on a COVID unit.

In an effort to determine whether she would want to be intubated or not, he reaches out to her husband, who apparently has been wondering if she is alive or dead […]

2021-06-16T11:03:02-04:00June 16th, 2021|Nursing|0 Comments
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Revisiting Psychedelic Drugs for Therapeutic Use

Renewed interest in psychedelics to treat depression and PTSD.

An MDMA therapy session is conducted by researchers Marcela Ot’alora, MA, LPC, and Bruce Poulter, MPH, RN. Photo courtesy of the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies.

As the saying goes, “everything that’s old is new again,” and that apparently applies to the exploration of using psychedelic medications as part of mental health therapy. That’s the topic of one of our feature articles in the June issue.

When I was an ED nurse in the early 1970s, we often saw patients who were brought in because they were on a “bad trips” from illicit use of psychedelic drugs: acid (LSD, lysergic acid diethylamide), but also mescaline (3,4,5-trimethoxyphenethylamine, a hallucinogen derived from the peyote plant), or “magic mushrooms,” which contained psilocybin.

While these drugs were used in in psychiatric research as early as the 1950s (see the AJN article from 1964, “Supporting the Patient on LSD Day,” free until the end of June), they were later banned for use in the 1970s under the Controlled Substances Act after they became popular illicit drugs in the counterculture of […]

2021-06-11T07:50:48-04:00June 11th, 2021|Nursing|0 Comments
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