The Affordable Care Act Survives, At Least for Now

Shawn Kennedy, AJN editor-in-chief

Senate roll call, Affordable Care Act/by Kurykh, via Wikimedia Commons

It’s been a couple of weeks now since the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), and there have been too many articles and analyses to count. The bottom line is that its fate won’t be settled until after the November elections. If the Republicans win the election, the ACA will become the first battleground, as its repeal has been promised by candidate Mitt Romney.

What is concerning is that a great many people pay attention to the rhetoric rather than finding out the facts (remember “death panels”?). This point was well made by political cartoonist Stuart Carlson in this cartoon. It’s hard not to be in favor of many of the provisions—like extending coverage under a parent’s plan for children up to 26 years of age, or barring insurance companies from denying coverage for preexisting conditions.

As nurses, we need to know the facts and go beyond the political rhetoric. We need to be informed for ourselves (anything that has an impact on health care delivery and funding will affect nursing) and for our patients, who will have questions. Get the facts—read the law at the link above, a summary of the law, or the articles we published summarizing how it will affect nursing (our original article, and a 2011 update, both open access until […]

2016-11-21T13:09:43-05:00July 9th, 2012|health care policy, nursing perspective|2 Comments
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To the Nursing Class of ’12 (and ’84, and ’96, and ’01)

By Karen Roush, MS, RN, FNP-C, clinical managing editor. A version of this essay originally appeared in the 2008 AJN Career Guide, but we feel it’s still just as relevant to new nursing grads or even to seasoned nurses (and non-nurses, for that matter) who might need a sense of renewal.

via Wikimedia Commons

On a rainy cold Saturday last May my son graduated from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York. As I sat shivering in my complimentary plastic poncho, listening to the commencement speaker doing his best to inspire the faces peering up from under soaked tassels, the thought came to me that we all need a commencement address every five years or so. Someone to tell us we can make the world a better place, that the possibility for greatness exists within us, that we may yet achieve our dreams. Someone to remind us why we chose nursing, and why we work so hard.

So, whether you are a new graduate or graduated 50 years ago, this is my commencement address to you.

Stay alert. Be vital. Sharpen your mind and your skills. Read journals for nurses and on health care in general. But don’t limit your knowledge to health-related information. Read political discourse, economic theory, and great literature. At the time of this writing, a book of poems, Slope of the Child Everlasting by Laurie Kutchins, sits on my desk at home. Each evening it pulls me into a […]

2016-11-21T13:09:53-05:00June 15th, 2012|career, nursing perspective, students|2 Comments
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Staffing: Hot Topic as Usual for Nurses

Karen Roush, MS, RN, FNP-C, clinical managing editor

Our recent Facebook post on an article on nurse staffing at the NPR Shots blog (“Need a Nurse? You May Have to Wait”) got a lot of responses. Staffing is a hot topic for nurses—from both a personal  and a patient care perspective. And I say “hot” because it never fails to raise emotions.

Everyone agrees that adequate nurse staffing is essential for safe, high quality patient care and nursing job satisfaction. Research has shown that it significantly improves patient outcomes.

Yet we—nurses, as well as the larger health care community—continue to debate how to determine what “adequate staffing” is and how to best achieve it. Acuity-of-care measures? Unit-by-unit mandated staffing plans? State-mandated staffing ratios? What do you think?

We’ve published numerous articles and news pieces on this topic in recent years; here are a few examples:

News, reports, and analysis (open access articles)

“Nurse Staffing Matters—Again”

“California Mandated Nurse–Patient Ratios Deemed Successful”

“Nursing Shortage—or Not”

Feature. Requires subsciption or purchase; abstract only

“Nurse Staffing and Patient, Nurse, and Financial Outcomes”

And here are some blog posts that deal either directly or indirectly with issues related to nurse staffing.

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2016-11-21T13:10:00-05:00May 31st, 2012|nursing perspective|1 Comment
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Physician-centric vs. Patient-centric?

By Shawn Kennedy, AJN editor-in-chief

Last week, we posted here a piece by AJN’s clinical managing editor Karen Roush, decrying the use of the term “physician extender.” It reminded me of a recent article from the New York Times on nurses with doctorates, which reported that if some physicians have their way and their legal strategy succeeds, they will be the only group permitted to use the honorific “doctor.”

Degrees vs. licenses. This borders on the ridiculous, as the title is an academic title that signifies achievement in a field of study; it is not a license. Doctoral degrees are awarded in just about every field of study, from astronomy to zoology. Physicians are awarded a doctor of medicine, dentists are awarded a doctor of dental science, and so it goes. In health care, there are dentists, psychologists, social workers, physical therapists, pharmacists, and yes, nurses too, with doctoral degrees. Nurses have been earning PhDs and EdDs (doctorates in education) and the DNSc (doctorate in nursing science) for years, and now there’s a new nursing doctorate degree—a DNP, doctor of nursing practice—that’s specific to nurses in clinical practice. They are still licensed as nurses, as that’s what they are.

This parochial thinking is held by those physicians (not all, but far too many) who still adhere to the […]

2016-11-21T13:11:25-05:00November 16th, 2011|career|3 Comments
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Staff Nurses at the Center: Joyce C. Clifford’s Still Radical Notion

By Katheren Koehn, MA, RN, who is a member of the AJN editorial board

It was with great regret that I read of the passing of Joyce C. Clifford last week. She was a nurse whose career as a nurse administrator and leader was spent empowering nurses, from the bedside to the boardroom. Much has been written since her passing about her nursing leadership at the administrative level. I would like to take some time to recognize her as a nurse leader who empowered nurses at the bedside.

I first learned of the work of Joyce C. Clifford from a staff nurse who’d moved from Boston to Minneapolis in the late 1980s. The entire time this nurse and I worked together she was in mourning for the hospital and job she’d left behind in Boston. Almost every day she talked about how wonderful Beth Israel was and how great it had been to be a staff nurse there. She talked about primary nursing, nurse autonomy, and interdisciplinary respect. At the time, none of these terms were familiar to me, but I knew she was telling me that “my” hospital, where she now worked, could never measure up to the fabulous BI.

I next learned of the work of Dr. Clifford through the book Code Green: Money-Driven Hospitals and the […]

2016-11-21T13:11:32-05:00November 4th, 2011|career, nursing perspective|7 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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