AJN in December: Inside an Ebola Unit, Acupressure, Early Mobility, EHRs, More

AJN1215.Cover.OnlineOn this month’s cover, nurse Elie Kasindi Kabululu cares for a patient at Centre Médical Evangélique in Nyankunde, Beni, Democratic Republic of Congo. Originally, this location served a population of 150,000 and also housed a nursing school; but in 2002, during war in the region, the facility was attacked. About 1,000 people were killed—including patients and staff—and the center was looted and destroyed.

Providing medical assistance in the world’s war-torn and neediest areas is commonplace for health care providers like Kabululu, just as it is for humanitarian organizations such as Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), which works in 70 countries worldwide—nearly half of these in Africa. Shortly after the recent outbreak of Ebola in West Africa, MSF sent close to 300 international workers to help combat this public health emergency. To read one nurse’s experience traveling to Liberia for MSF to work in a treatment center, see “Inside an Ebola Treatment Unit: A Nurse’s Report.”

Some other articles of note in the December issue:

Original Research: Implementation of an Early Mobility Program in an ICU.” This article, from our Cultivating Quality column, recounts how the effects of an early mobilization program delivered to critically ill patients at a community hospital by an independent ICU mobility team contributed to fewer delirium days and improvements in patient outcomes, sedation levels, and functional status.

CE Feature: Incorporating Acupressure into Nursing Practice.” The effects of acupressure can’t always be explained in terms of Western anatomical […]

Today’s Notes from the Nursosphere

Image of Japanese Attack - Pearl Harbor, Hawai...

As noted today by Joni Watson at Nursetopia, it’s Pearl Harbor Day, and nurses were (surprise) key players in that day’s awful events. Here’s how the post begins:

My heart was racing, the telephone was ringing, the chief nurse, Gertrude Arnest, was saying, “Girls, get into your uniforms at once, This is the real thing!”

Speaking of safety, “Top 10 Health Technology Hazards for 2011” (pdf), from the ECRI Institute, gives us a list of hospital patient safety risks that, according to the authors, “reflects our judgment about which risks should receive priority now, a judgment that is based on our review of recent recalls and other actions . . . , our analysis of information found in the literature and in the medical device reporting databases of ECRI Institute and other organizations, and our experience in investigating and consulting on device-related incidents.” These include “radiation overdose and other dose errors during radiation therapy,” “alarm hazards,” and eight others.

And now to electronic charting vs. doing it the old-fashioned way: we have a comment thread going on at AJN‘s Facebook page about whether or not EHRs save nurses time or not. Go there to comment, or leave a comment here.

Also noted: Stephen Ferrara at A Nurse Practitioner’s View wonders whether the preceptorship model is still adequate for training NPs. Or is it time for a residency model instead?

I’m not necessarily referring to the […]
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