A Lasting Gift for a Nurse’s Holiday Shifts and Lost Family Time

Illustration by Lisa Dietrich for AJN. Illustration by Lisa Dietrich for AJN.

As we know, gifts come in many forms, and often are as valuable to the giver as to the receiver. The best ones come at times when we least expect them. Readers will find that the start of AJN‘s December Reflections essay, “A Change of Heart,” describes a frustration that may be familiar to many nurses. In this case, it’s Christmas Day, and a nurse is kept by the urgent demands of her job from spending time with family. She writes:

I’ve been a nurse for more than half of my life . . . I love my career and consider myself blessed to have found my calling. But we all experience times when our long hours and the rigorous demands of this job make us feel that we sacrifice too much of our personal and family time to care for strangers.

The author had planned to be home for Christmas dinner. But, she tells us, “we had four back-to-back emergency CABGs starting at 8 am and stretching long past my scheduled 3 pm end of shift.” The essay develops from there as the hours pass. And then we meet a patient with everything at stake. The author is not the only one in danger of missing Christmas with family, and not just this year but for all the years to come.

We are reminded again and again that nursing has […]

2016-11-21T13:03:19-05:00December 19th, 2014|career, Nursing, nursing perspective|3 Comments
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Reading Between the Whiteboard Lines in the ICU

By Marcy Phipps, RN, a regular contributor to this blog. Her essay, “The Soul on the Head of a Pin,” was published in the May 2010 issue of AJN.

My hospital uses dry-erase whiteboards as a tool to communicate with patients and family members. Mounted to the walls in the patients’ rooms, the boards are prominent and concise.  Aside from a lot of basic information, notes get added to the board when diagnostic tests are completed, when complementary therapies have been implemented, and when housekeeping staff visit. The “meat” of the board, however, is the section that addresses plans and goals for the day. The plans and goals are updated and modified continuously by nursing staff. They’re specific to each patient, yet, despite their personalization, the goals for ICU patients tend to fall into distinct categories.

The first category includes goals which are often set by the patients themselves. They tend to require a certain amount of collaboration and active participation. These types of goals, which include things like “maximize incentive spirometer use,” “ambulate,” and “advance diet,” imply a relatively healthy state and tend to predict transfer orders.

The next type of goal is aimed at restoring health and stability. These goals don’t necessarily require patient participation and often focus on pathophysiologic processes. On the whiteboards of these rooms, the listed goals are likely to include things like “wean ventilator,” “control agitation,” “control fever,” or “increase level […]

2016-11-21T13:11:09-05:00December 15th, 2011|nursing perspective, Patients|3 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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