House of Death, House of Life: Reflections of a Hospice Volunteer

Perhaps the fundamental requirement for hospice volunteers is an open mind. Assumptions and first impressions rarely predict reality. I met a soft-spoken woman who was once a nun, then later became a theme park belly dancer. I met an ex-Marine officer and small-town police chief, a self-described “soldier by nature,” who denounced all wars after 1945 as senseless bloodbaths. I met a former civil rights activist upset that minorities were moving into his neighborhood.

lllustration by McClain Moore. All rights reserved. lllustration by McClain Moore. All rights reserved.

That’s from the August Reflections essay in AJN, “House of Death, House of Life.” The author, Ezra Ochshorn, explores the moments of tragedy and levity he encounters in his work as a hospice volunteer, the powerful impression made on him by people who are either at peace or full of “bitterness and regrets” as they approach death, his realization that his most important task is to be in the “here and now” with each person—and then to do his best to take this lesson back into his own life.

But why not read the entire short essay, since it’s free? Just click the link above.—JM, senior editor

2016-11-21T13:06:47-05:00August 9th, 2013|patient engagement|1 Comment
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Winding Down Nurses Week 2013

By Shawn Kennedy, AJN editor-in-chief

We’d be remiss not to mention Florence Nightingale during Nurses Week, especially since her birthday marks the end of the celebration. (She was born on May 12, 1820.) I often wonder what this visionary would be like if she were a nurse today—my bet is she would be a PhD and FAAN, and conducting multinational outcomes research related to nursing-sensitive indicators with grants from the Royal College of Nursing and the AARP/Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Campaign for Nursing!

Nightingale never wrote for AJN, but there are some 200 stories and mentions of her in our archives. We thought we’d mark the close of Nurses Week with a comment from AJN’s founding editor, Sophia Palmer, on the occasion of Nightingale’s death in 1910. Here’s an excerpt, or read the original piece in our archives (free until next week on AJN‘s Web site).

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2016-11-21T13:07:36-05:00May 10th, 2013|Nursing|0 Comments
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Surely, ‘Tis Not an Easy Cap to Satisfy…A Nurse’s 1929 Meditation on Nursing Caps

Photo from otisarchives4, via Flickr. otisarchives4/Flickr.

By Karen Roush, AJN clinical managing editor

Though the nursing cap went by the wayside years ago, this beautifully written essay by a nurse about her cap, published in AJN in April, 1929, struck me as a metaphor for many things—nursing itself chief among them. And though the wearing of a cap may have changed, what this author expressed in 1929 about nursing hasn’t: “sympathy without sentimentality; broad understanding without cynicism; charity without weakness.”

The opening paragraphs are below, but the entire essay, “My Cap,” will be free until next week on the AJN Web site.

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2016-11-21T13:07:38-05:00May 8th, 2013|career, nursing perspective|1 Comment
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Nurse ‘Edge Runners’ from the AJN Archives

By Shawn Kennedy, AJN editor-in-chief

In her message to nurses for Nurses Week, ANA president Karen Daley notes, “This year’s National Nurses Week theme, ‘Delivering Quality and Innovation in Patient Care,’ emphasizes our role and influence in making the health care system work better for patients. Think about the many ways you innovate and improve care.”

The Frontier Nursing Service evolved from the Kentucky Committee for Mothers and Babies initiated by Mary Breckenridge in 1925. The Frontier Nursing Service evolved from the Kentucky Committee for Mothers and Babies initiated by Mary Breckenridge in 1925.

We’ve been publishing our series on “Edge Runners”—those nurses designated by the American Academy of Nursing (AAN) as creative, out-of-the box innovators. In January, we profiled Marilyn Rantz for her innovative program to assist seniors to age in place; in March, we highlighted Deborah Gross for her Chicago Parent Program; for May, we have a profile of Donna Torrisi, founder of a nurse-managed family health center in Philadelpia. (The AJN articles linked to in this post will be free for the next week, until May 13, in honor of Nurses Week.)

But of course, there were ‘edge runners’ well before the AAN starting naming them. Nurses have a time-worn tradition of using their creativity and problem solving to provide care to those who need it, and AJN has chronicled many of these movers and shakers over the years.

Here’s a couple of my favorites from AJN’s archives (click […]

2016-11-21T13:07:39-05:00May 7th, 2013|Nursing|0 Comments
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In Celebration of Nurses: Voices from AJN Archives

Today starts Nurses Week. AJN is participating in Lippincott’s Nurses Week initiative, and the entire May issue will be set for open access this week. Additionally, we are reprinting here a wonderful editorial from one of AJN’s former editors, Mary Mallison (click the text below for a larger version, or go to this link for the PDF version, free until June 6). Check in each day as we post voices from nurses from the AJN archives. Enjoy and take pride in our profession, in all that nurses have accomplished, and what nurses are doing today.—Shawn Kennedy, AJN editor-in-chief

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2016-11-21T13:07:41-05:00May 6th, 2013|career, nursing perspective|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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