A Nursing Way with Meaning

“I have found that the residents of Johnson Tower teach me more about being a nurse and a human being than you would imagine.”

Despite our seriously malfunctioning health care system, sometimes we are lucky enough to be reminded of the richness of our practice. Most of us experience a bright spot or two on most days—a patient’s condition finally improves, and we know we had a hand in that; we are able to spend some “quality time” to help a patient cope with her illness; a discharged patient returns for a happy visit.

Thriving, not just surviving.

A few of us, though, are lucky enough to have nursing work in which we can thrive, and not merely survive, every day. In this month’s Reflections column, “The Way of Johnson Tower,” nurse practitioner Mark Darby describes his work in an unlikely setting: a medical clinic located in a public housing high-rise. Resources may leave something to be desired—occasional leaks from the laundry above seem to target the clinic’s centrifuge—but his practice is rich and fulfilling.

“All these people, despite their circumstances, teach me more about generosity, perseverance, and hope than I could learn anywhere else.”

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2019-12-02T12:57:58-05:00December 2nd, 2019|Nursing, nursing roles, nursing stories, Public health|1 Comment
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December Issue: Diabetes Burnout, Hematologic Childhood Cancers, Malnutrition Readmission Prevention, More

“Now more than ever, nursing is in a position of influence.”—editor-in-chief Shawn Kennedy in her editorial, “Anticipating a Banner Year for Nursing”

The December issue of AJN is now live. Here’s what’s new:

CE: Original Research: Experiences of Diabetes Burnout: A Qualitative Study Among People with Type 1 Diabetes

Diabetes burnout has been described as feelings of exhaustion and frustration related to the demands of managing the illness, resulting in inconsistent self-care behaviors. The authors of this study conducted in-depth interviews with adults who have type 1 diabetes and current or previous experiences of diabetes burnout, revealing more about the nature of burnout and its contributing factors.

CE: Hematologic Childhood Cancers: An Evidence-Based Review

This article provides an overview of the approaches used to treat hematologic childhood cancers, explains which treatments are indicated for the various types of leukemia and lymphoma, and discusses nursing care of the child and family.
[…]

2019-11-25T09:41:53-05:00November 25th, 2019|Nursing|0 Comments
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We Can Do More to Prevent Patient Self-Harm in the Hospital

“Phone cords, plasticware, and pens – all items found on a typical hospital unit and all seemingly benign.  Yet unchecked, each can be used by a patient to cause self-harm.”

As our health care system jettisons more and more psychiatric inpatient beds, it seems that the old “medical psych” units are becoming a thing of the past. These were the units where a person with significant mental health problems stayed after surgery, or after a medical event. The fact that these patients had at least two serious health challenges—one mental, the other physical—was routinely acknowledged, and medical psych units were staffed with nurses expert in both types of care.

Self-harm on nonpsychiatric units: a closer look at who and how.

Today, patients with serious mental illness are routinely “housed” on medical or surgical inpatient units. Some of these patients have a history of self-harm, and nonpsychiatric hospital units are not designed to keep them safe.

In “Preventing Self-Harm in the Nonpsychiatric Health Care Setting” in this month’s AJN (free until December 10), Kim Liberatore from the Pennsylvania Patient Safety Authority shares some of her organization’s data on patient self-harm events in nonpsychiatric settings. […]

2019-11-22T09:47:57-05:00November 22nd, 2019|mental illness, Nursing|1 Comment
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Former Pediatric ICU Nurse: Where Are the Smart Guns?

Stars for the dead.

On the afternoon of Thursday, November 14, 2019, I visited our local art museum to see a retrospective exhibit by a conceptual artist. Walking into the museum gallery, the first piece you encounter is an installation of several dark blue banners suspended from the ceiling. On their blue fields are embroidered white stars; lots of white stars, 14,718 in all. Each star represents a person killed in the United States by another person with a gun in 2018.

It’s a sobering statistic, but what caught my attention was the half-dozen high school students seated cross-legged on the museum floor inside the circle created by the hanging banners. They faced each other silently. None of them was texting or taking selfies, which was remarkable in itself.

I hadn’t yet heard that earlier in the day two high school students died, and several more were injured in another school shooting, this one at Saugus High School in Santa Clarita, California. Later the shooter, a student, died of self-inflicted gunshot wounds.

As seen in the pediatric ICU.

As a former pediatric intensive care nurse, I have personally cared for several child gunshot victims. They were nice children from nice families who happened to have loaded guns in their homes.

Forgive my […]

2019-11-20T10:13:03-05:00November 20th, 2019|Nursing, Public health|1 Comment
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Caregivers Home Alone-And Needing Our Support

Family caregivers performing complex care.

When my mother needed care at home in her final days, she was fortunate in that two of her daughters were nurses who were familiar and comfortable in providing her care. We were fortunate in that she did not require complex care like tube feedings or IVs or ostomy care or wound care or dialysis. But many people do, and must rely on family members to do these complex tasks.

I remember how I felt as a nursing student when I had to administer one of these complicated interventions. I remember being anxious, my hands sweating as I desperately tried to recall the list of instructions I had looked up the night before.

And yet I had an instructor with me to walk me through it. Family caregivers have no such support and often don’t even get adequate instruction beforehand.

Family caregivers need more than recognition.

November is National Family Caregivers month and I can’t think of a group more in need of recognition. But while naming a month in their honor is nice to increase awareness of the more than 40 million family caregivers in this country, they need much more than that. Specifically, they need more in the […]

2019-11-18T11:16:45-05:00November 18th, 2019|family caregiving, family caregiving, Nursing, Patients|1 Comment
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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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