Strong Nurse and Patient Voices On the Blogs This Week

Photo by mezone, via Flickr.

Here’s a short Friday list of recent smart, honest, informative blog posts by nurses, as well as a couple of interesting patient perspectives on prominent types of chronic illness and the ways they are talked about by the rest of us.

At Head Nurse, in “Yes…No. I’m Having Some Thoughts About BSNs,” an ADN-prepared nurse makes some familiar and some more surprising observations about the effects of the new policy of hiring mostly BSN-prepared nurses at her facility as it tries for Magnet status. For example, one of the effects she notes is “a massive drop-off in terms of the diversity of our nursing staff.” The move toward BSNs is obviously the trend in nursing, and is supported by research, but this doesn’t mean that there aren’t still two sides to the issue, or real unintended consequences to address as this change is gradually implemented.

At Hospice Diary, the blog of hospice nurse Amy Getter, there’s a post called “Hearts, Flowers, and Bucket Lists.” Reflecting on the imminent death of a patient, the author puts the popular notion of bucket lists into perspective:

“I think about some of the things I would still like to do in my life, and realize . . . . most of those wish-list items would be swept away in a moment, if I only had a little time this week. I would hug my kids harder and love more, and want to squeeze every last drop of time to put into my relationships that I will have to leave behind. “

Staying with the end-of-life theme for a moment longer, you’ll find at Pallimed, a very good hospice and palliative medicine blog, a new post with a to-do list that some of us or our loved ones really can’t put off until next month or next year: “10 Practical Things to Do When Diagnosed With a Serious Illness.”

Two consistently good nurse bloggers, both of whom have written for this blog or for the journal itself from time to time, happen to have reviews of books about aspects of nursing on their blogs this week. Not Nurse Ratched reviews a book about a year in the life of four ER nurses. J Paradisi RN reviews a book about the ways nurses can address the chronic dissatisfaction (that is, burnout) they may encounter at a certain point in their careers. Both books sound promising.

Patient engagement’s a hot topic. There’s a smart and sometimes very frank Australian woman with type 1 diabetes who has a blog called Diabetogenic. It’s updated often, and can be very insightful about living with this chronic illness. A recent post, “What’s In a Name?”, revisits the seemingly long-settled issue of whether one is a “diabetic” or a “person with diabetes.”

Another patient perspective, this one by a journalist with another type of chronic illness, can be found at Just My Honest Opinion, with a post about the new name that’s been proposed for chronic fatigue syndrome, which is SEID, or systemic exertion intolerance disease.

Enjoy the weekend, and keep writing!