Coronavirus Casting Environmental, Climate Issues Into Sharp Relief

The COVID-19 pandemic highlights the vital link between public health and the environment.

Since 1970, April 22 has been designated Earth Day. The theme of this year’s observations, held digitally due to the pandemic, is climate action, with the organizers calling climate change “the biggest challenge to the future of humanity.”

The biggest immediate challenge facing humanity is coronavirus. Yet, just as the pandemic’s economic fallout highlights the interconnectedness of health and the economy, this crisis underscores the ongoing environmental emergency and its link to public health.

Air pollution and COVID-19 deaths.

Since coronavirus first emerged, there’s been speculation about a link between air pollution and severe illness or death. Early this month, a nationwide study conducted by researchers at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health offered evidence of a connection: even a small increase in long-term exposure to fine particulate matter—dangerous inhalable solids or liquid droplets in the air—is associated with a large increase in the COVID-19 death rate.

The inhalation of fine particulate matter is known to cause inflammation and damage to the lungs, making a person more susceptible to asthma, heart conditions, and other health problems. Fuel combustion—for example, automobile and industrial emissions—is one of the main sources of these microscopic pollutants.

Communities with […]

2020-04-22T08:31:24-04:00April 22nd, 2020|environmental health, Public health|0 Comments
Read More

The U.S. Still Can’t Manage COVID-19 Testing: Why Is This Such a Big Deal?

By Betsy Todd, MPH, RN, nurse epidemiologist and AJN clinical editor. Published April 20.

How is it that we in the U.S. make up 4% of the world’s population but account for more than 31% of global COVID-19 cases? Because at the start of the pandemic we weren’t prepared to test quickly and widely—and incredibly, after three months’ time, we still aren’t.

Coincidentally, both the U.S. and South Korea saw their first cases of COVID-19 on January 20. Two weeks later, South Korean scientists had perfected a diagnostic test for the virus, and infected people began to be identified and isolated.

Meanwhile, in the U.S. a series of problems and poor decisions held back test development. In early March, as the number of cases of COVID-19 exploded in parts of the country, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar promised that by March 14, labs would be running four million tests per week. As of April 20, the total number of SARS-CoV-2 tests performed in the U.S. since the pandemic began was only 3.8 million, according to covidtracker.com. Our testing capacity is frighteningly low. Estimates of an adequate number […]

2020-04-20T12:32:03-04:00April 20th, 2020|infectious diseases, Nursing, Public health|0 Comments
Read More

COVID-19: Where Do We Go From Here?

By AJN editor-in-chief Shawn Kennedy

It’s mid-April and I feel like I’m in one of those B-rated movies of the 1950s—where the atomic bomb hit and everyone is sequestered in bunkers, only venturing out to forage for food.

I’m entering our 5th week following stay-at-home recommendations and I guess it’s paying off—New York (where I usually work) and New Jersey (where I live) seem to be seeing a slight “flattening of the curve.” (Does anyone not know about the COVID-19 curve? See this site by the University of Michigan for an explanation).

But that good news is tempered by the fact that some states have yet to see their peak. In addition, we’ve yet come with grips in how to deal with the spread of the coronavirus in nursing homes, prisons, and shelters.

It’s worrisome to me that there is already talk of relaxing stay-at-home orders and social distancing before we have sufficient testing to have a clear understanding of how the disease spreads, before some states have reached their peak, and before we have refined the process of supplying and protecting health care workers. No one doubts that the economic shutdown is causing tremendous suffering, but without a firm grasp on how best to contain this disease and […]

2020-04-16T10:26:04-04:00April 16th, 2020|Nursing|0 Comments
Read More

Practicing the ABCDEs of Self-Care in Pandemic Times

While talk of the surge in COVID-19 cases continues, what has been less audible in the national discourse is the surge in mental health distress that will be with us long after the pandemic is gone. Many of us who have enjoyed relative psychological well-being are feeling inundated with near-pathological levels of anxiety, uncertainty, anticipatory grief, and real or secondary trauma.

Here are ABCDEs of self-care to keep yourself and loved ones emotionally—and physically—well.

ABCDEs of Self-Care

About

Stay informed as you need to regarding the pandemic, but then promptly pull yourself away and unplug. Initiate what we call a “sensory diet” to limit anxiety-provoking exposure to TV and radio news, social media, print materials, etc., beyond what you must know for yourself, your family, and/or your job. Fearful news can be addictive. Don’t overindulge!

Body

Many people, when asked how they can best care for themselves to stay well, say something on the order of “handwashing, masks, social distancing….” Sure, all that! But we also need to respect the healthy things our mother tried to teach us. How about exercise and fresh air (even if it’s just a three-minute brisk walk around the block), adequate sleep and decent nutrition? Honoring our bodies now will help us stay healthy and well, in […]

2021-01-21T11:10:16-05:00April 13th, 2020|infectious diseases, mental illness, Nursing, wellness|0 Comments
Read More

Two Poems by an ED Nurse

Mask

         -from Latin, masca (specter, nightmare)

My borrowed face,

incorporeal,                blue—

I give you        only

my eyes.

First Sunday on the Ward, Pandemic

Deft swallows nest inside the thorny crown of a stone Christ.

I whisper Our Father . . .                   

twice

over the scrub sink.

 

-Editor’s note: These two spare poems were sent to us recently by Stacy Nigliazzo, an ED nurse and poet whose work has been featured in JAMA and the Bellevue Literary Review, as well as in AJN’s Art of Nursing column. We don’t usually publish poems on this blog, but make an exception here because they seemed to us urgent and yet timeless. Publishing them implies no affiliation of AJN with any particular religion. At the same time, it’s only natural that faiths and practices of every sort are likely to be a source of strength and meaning during this time for nurses around the world. 

2020-04-10T13:39:42-04:00April 10th, 2020|Nursing, nursing perspective|2 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