Acknowledging Nightingale’s Pervasive Influence on Medicine as We Know It

By Jacob Molyneux, senior editor

Florence Nightingale in Crimean War, from Wikipedia Commons Florence Nightingale in Crimean War, from Wikipedia Commons

There’s a very good article about Florence Nightingale in the New York Times right now (“Florence Nightingale’s Wisdom”)—and it’s by a physician.

The author, Victoria Sweet, writes that Nightingale was the last person she wanted to know about or identify with when she was in medical school. Then she gradually began to realize Nightingale’s extraordinary influence on modern medicine as it’s now practiced. As Sweet point out,

So much of what she fought for we take for granted today — our beautiful hospitals, the honored nursing profession, data-driven research.

It’s a good piece, and though you may already know some of what it covers, it’s well worth reading. For those who want to learn more about Nightingale, let me point out a series of short posts we ran back in the summer of 2010 on this blog. In Florence’s Footsteps: Notes from a Journey, written by Susan Hassmiller, senior advisor for nursing at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, detailed the stages of a trip she took that summer as she retraced Nightingale’s steps through England and all the way to the Crimea, all the while contemplating her legacy.

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2016-11-21T13:05:17-05:00March 4th, 2014|career, nursing history, nursing perspective|3 Comments
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AJN’s October Issue: Breast Cancer, Celiac Disease, the Fall Elections, More

AJN’s October issue is now available on our Web site. Here’s a selection of what not to miss, including two continuing education (CE) articles, which you can access for free.

All women who inherit a BRCA1 or BRCA2 mutation have a significantly increased risk of developing breast or ovarian cancer or both. This month’s original research article, “Being Young, Female, and BRCA Positive,” explores the psychosocial consequences in young women who test positive for one of these mutations—especially where it concerns marriage and childbearing. This CE article is open access and can earn you 2.1 CE credits.

Diagnosis of celiac disease in adults is often missed or delayed because clinicians often consider it to be a childhood disease. “Celiac Disease: A Medical Puzzle,” provides an overview of this widely underrecognized disease, outlines the pathophysiology and the four types of celiac disease, addresses diagnosis and disease management, and offers illustrative stories in the interest of raising nurses’ awareness of the disease. This CE article is open access and can earn you 2.1 CE credits. For more information, listen to a podcast with the authors.

Being unaware of the realities of licensure can damage a nurse’s career, even permanently. “Common Misconceptions About Professional Licensure” is part one of a three-part series that will discuss nursing disciplinary actions and provides tips for maintaining one’s license in good standing. For more, listen to a podcast with the author, […]

2016-11-21T13:09:11-05:00October 1st, 2012|Nursing|0 Comments
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Mid-October Rainy Thursday Web Roundup

By Jacob Molyneux, blog editor/senior editor

The nursosphere is thriving and Change of Shift, the always interesting compendium of what’s new on nursing blogs, is up over at Emergiblog.

The health care reform process creeps slowly but surely toward an end someone somewhere can surely envision. One crucial question many are still asking is whether insurance companies might serve consumers a bit more readily and agreeably if they were forced to face a little competition from a public option. After all, isn’t competition supposed to be a good thing?

Most experts don’t expect the H1N1 vaccine to pose any more danger than the seasonal flu vaccine; even so, many Americans (and nurses commenting here, or taking our poll about the mandatory vaccine) continue to be wary, prompting public health officials to engage in especially aggressive surveillance measures in order to quickly detect any possible negative reactions to the vaccine: “Government Keeps Close Eye on Swine Flu Vaccine.”

AJN clinical editor Christine Moffa posted here a while back about how meditation might help cranky or exhausted or overworked nurses stay focused on what matters during the workday. Today the NY Times has a related piece on “doctor burnout” and meditation.

The role of social media in health care is constantly evolving as we all find our way. Its use by hospital workers is at issue in a recent post at Running a Hospital, about one hospital’s decision to ban social media from all its computers. And here’s something else on this: blogger Not Nurse Ratched wonders if social media policies in […]

2016-11-21T13:21:43-05:00October 15th, 2009|health care policy, nursing perspective|1 Comment
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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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