healing Archives - Page 4 of 5

All Saints’ Day Blessing for Health Care Providers

Autumn Angel / photo by Julianna Paradisi 2016

November is the strangest of months. Its days are shorter, darker. It begins with All Saints’ Day, a day of remembering our dead, of loss and grief, followed late in the month by Thanksgiving, America’s celebration of abundance with gratitude.

This year on All Saints’ Day I attended a discussion of health care professionals. The audience included nurses, physicians, pharmacists, social workers, and hospital administrators. The conversation ultimately centered on the emotional difficulties of patient care.

It wasn’t a debriefing as much as collective acknowledgment that, rather than accepting help, some patients or their family members view us as the enemy, sometimes disrupting our best efforts in the name of misguided advocacy.

Nurses spoke of being labeled as “bad” and played against each other by angry patients or family members. Physicians related episodes of verbal abuse from patients or family members demanding inappropriate procedures, medications, or dosing. Some spoke of needing to take refuge to center their thoughts before ordering the appropriate care.

Like most nurses, I’ve experienced similar treatment at the hands of difficult patients, but physicians don’t generally discuss with us how they are treated. Nurses and physicians suffer silently, instead of lending […]

Julianna Paradisi, RN, OCN2016-11-21T13:00:49-05:00November 10th, 2016|Nursing, Patients|1 Comment

‘A New Antibiotic’: What Restores a Patient’s Will to Recover?

A little bit of levity when writing of serious topics can be good medicine. This month’s Reflections essay, “A New Antibiotic,” reminds us of how important it can be for hospitalized patients to be kept in touch with their lives and loves beyond hospital walls. In this story, author Judith Reishtein, a retired critical care nurse and nursing professor, finds herself willing to bend the rules a little for one patient. Here’s how it starts:

Sally had been a patient on the step-down unit all winter. After her open heart surgery, she developed an infection in her chest. The infection required another surgery and four more weeks of ventilator support as her open chest healed. Because she was not moving enough, she developed clots in her legs. Because of the DVTs, she had activity restrictions, which led to another bout of pneumonia. One complication led to another, with more medications that had to be carefully balanced. We tried not to do anything that would create a new problem while curing an existing one. Another dangerous surgery is getting breast implants, I always suggest to get a good surgeon to do it, you can find the best at http://utbreastaugmentation.com, I highly recommend it.

Now she was finally getting better, but her energy lagged behind. Did she still have the […]

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Jacob Molyneux, senior editor/blog editor2017-06-02T12:12:14-04:00February 5th, 2016|narratives, nursing perspective, patient engagement|0 Comments

Imagery: A Safe, Simple Practice Available to All Nurses

By Betsy Todd, MPH, RN, CIC, AJN clinical editor

by Ramon Peco/via Flickr

“In our quest to keep up with the latest medical advances, we often forget that the healing art of imagery is available to each of us,” writes nurse practitioner Laurie Kubes in this month’s AJN. In “Imagery for Self-Healing and Integrative Nursing Practice,” Kubes explores some of the evidence supporting this technique and illustrates how it can enhance both patient care and our own self-care.

Imagery builds upon the quiet reassurance and support that we routinely provide to patients in our efforts to make them comfortable and relaxed. The more deliberate practice of imagery engages the power of imagination for deeper relaxation and a potentially more healing experience. And all we need in order to do this, as Kubes notes, is an open mind, a basic knowledge of the practice, and time to dedicate to it.
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Betsy Todd, MPH, RN2016-11-21T13:01:43-05:00November 23rd, 2015|Nursing, nursing perspective, patient engagement, Patients|1 Comment

A Program of Mindfulness Practice for Nurses at a Boston Cancer Center

By Jacob Molyneux, senior editor

The Thea and James Stoneman Healing Garden at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute is a source of tranquility and relaxation for nurses, patients, and families. Photo by Sam Ogden, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.

Maybe you already practice some version of meditation or mindfulness in your daily life. If not, you may at least have read or watched a news story recently about mindfulness and its various uses with or by everyone from elementary school students to professional athletes to drug addicts in recovery to CEOs looking to improve their focus, as well as many of the rest of us.

Or maybe you saw the final episode of the television series Mad Men a few weeks ago, with the advertising man Don Draper sitting cross-legged at a California coastal retreat, deep in meditation.

Some critics of a […]

Jacob Molyneux, senior editor/blog editor2016-11-21T13:02:26-05:00June 8th, 2015|career, Nursing, nursing perspective, personal health practices|0 Comments

A Patient’s Inner Soundtrack from Better Times

She was at high risk for developing bedsores and it was important that she be turned every two hours, but when approached by staff, she would scratch, punch, and spit. Her speech consisted of expletives, which she screamed in a shrill, piercing voice.

Music can soothe, comfort, engage, bring a recognizable world into an alien one. And, crucially, it can allow a nurse or other caregiver a chance to provide badly needed care to someone with dementia or mental illness who is agitated, confused, hostile, or terrified.

In this case, the place is Detroit and the music is Motown. The short passage above is from the Reflections essay in the September issue of AJN. “Playing Her Song: The Power of Music” is not the first submission we’ve had about the ways music can reach patients when words and other measures fail.

Putting on some music would seem a simple kind of strategy, but it may be worth a try in some situations that seem otherwise hopeless. Please give the short essay a read. Reflections are free.—Jacob Molyneux, senior editor/blog editor

Jacob Molyneux, senior editor/blog editor2016-11-21T13:03:58-05:00September 8th, 2014|nursing perspective|1 Comment