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AJN’s Spring Break with the Student Nurses in Phoenix: Sunnier Job Outlook for New Graduates?

By Maureen Shawn Kennedy, MA, RN, AJN editor-in-chief

PhoenixSkyline After a long winter in the Northeast, it was wonderful to visit Phoenix last week for the 63rd annual convention of the National Student Nurses’ Association (NSNA).

Like other meetings, this one was packed from morning to late evening with educational sessions, exhibits, resume-writing consultation, and for some, deliberating over 60 resolutions at the House of Delegates. Keynotes addressed:

health care reform (Gerri Lamb).
progress on implementing recommendations from the Future of Nursing report (Susan Hassmiller).
clinical ethics and moral distress (Veronica Feeg and Cynda Rushton).
and, the closing speech, a charge to continue nursing’s legacy into the future (yours truly).

Concurrent sessions, most of them well attended by Starbucks-fueled students, covered nursing specialties, exam help, licensure and legal/ethical issues, and clinical topics. (Betsy Todd, AJN‘s clinical editor, who is also an epidemiologist, led a session called “Is It Safe: Protecting Ourselves and Our Patients from Infectious Diseases.”)

Changing job climate? Several students I spoke with who were graduating at the end of the semester didn’t seem to have the anxiety of previous years’ students over securing a job. Maybe this is because things are looking up in the job market for new graduate nurses, at least according to recent figures in NSNA’s annual survey of graduates.

Reporting in the January issue of Dean’s Notes, researcher Veronica Feeg, associate dean of Molloy […]

Shawn Kennedy, MA, RN, FAAN, editor-in-chief (emerita)2016-11-21T13:02:41-05:00April 17th, 2015|career, Nursing, nursing perspective, students|0 Comments

Revisiting Reality Shock – What’s Changed for New Nurses?

julie kertesz/ via flickr creative common

By Maureen Shawn Kennedy, AJN editor-in-chief

Last month, we highlighted on Facebook a blog post I had written in 2010, “New Nurses Face Reality Shock in Hospital Settings – So What Else is New?” (It seemed timely in terms of all the June graduations.)

I wrote that original post in response to a study that had just been published in Nursing Outlook (here’s the abstract) describing the experiences of new nurses. Generally, these newbies felt harried, unprepared, overworked, and unsupported—all similar concerns voiced by nurses in Marlene Kramer’s 1974 book, Reality Shock: Why Nurses Leave Nursing. (Here’s AJN’s 1975 review of the book. It will be free for a month; note that you have to click the PDF link at the article landing page to read it.)

My post back in 2009 noted how nothing much seemed to have changed since the publication of Kramer’s book. Now, once again, this post has generated many comments, a number of them on our Facebook page as well as on the original blog post.

Here are a few. I’ll start with Facebook:

I’m almost a 20yr RN and have experienced [this] in a new job. I’ve developed skills to deal with this over the course of my career, so it doesn’t impact me like it […]

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Shawn Kennedy, MA, RN, FAAN, editor-in-chief (emerita)2016-11-21T13:04:14-05:00July 28th, 2014|career, Nursing, nursing perspective, students|10 Comments

To Be a Nurse Is a Powerful Thing: Thoughts on Graduation

By Karen Roush, PhD, RN, FNP, AJN clinical managing editor

Photo by Karen Roush.

After years of work and sacrifice, last month I successfully defended my dissertation. In the weeks leading up to my defense I found myself overcome with emotion each time I imagined that moment when I would hear myself called “doctor” for the first time. And my breath did catch in my throat when the questioning was over and the chair of my dissertation committee turned to me and said those magic words, “Congratulations Dr. Roush.”

But then something funny happened. There was no incredible high. I wasn’t walking on air. For so many years I’ve been focused on the goal of achieving a doctor of philosophy in nursing. But now that I’ve accomplished that, I am faced with a new and no less difficult challenge—what I do from here and how I make those words, Dr. Roush, mean something.

Many of you graduating this month may have similar feelings. It is a powerful thing to be a nurse. What we’ve learned in the classrooms, in hospital halls, in the connections that pass between us and our patients in moments great and small, has given us tremendous knowledge. But it is what we choose to do with that knowledge and how we do it that gives meaning […]

Amy M. Collins, managing editor2016-11-21T13:04:47-05:00May 12th, 2014|career, nursing perspective|1 Comment

AJN’s February Issue: New Nurses, Children’s Posttonsillectomy Pain, Medication Errors, More

AJN’s February 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.

With high hospital turnover rates, keeping newly licensed RNs (NLRNs) continues to be a priority for hospitals. This month’s original research article, “Changing Trends in Newly Licensed RNs,” found that new nurses considered themselves to have fewer job opportunities and to be less likely to work in hospitals and more likely to have a second job than new nurses who were surveyed six years earlier. Earn 2.5 CE credits by reading this article and taking the test that follows.

Tonsillectomy is effective at treating a variety of pediatric disorders, such as sleep apnea and frequent throat infection. But it often results in prolonged, moderate-to-severe pain. “Posttonsillectomy Pain in Children” reviews the causes of posttonsillectomy pain, the efficacy of various treatment interventions, and the recommendations for patient and family teaching regarding pain management. Earn 2.3 CE credits by reading this article and taking the test that follows. If you’re reading AJN on your iPad, you can listen to a podcast interview with the author by tapping on the podcast icon on the first page. The podcast is also available on our Web site.

According to an Institute of Medicine report, at least 1.5 million preventable medication-related adverse events occur in the U.S every […]

Amy M. Collins, managing editor2016-11-21T13:05:32-05:00January 31st, 2014|nursing perspective, nursing research|0 Comments

AJN’s Top 15 Most Viewed Articles in 2013

by rosmary/via Flickr

We thought readers might be interested in seeing which articles and topics got the most page views in 2013. Many of these articles are open access, including a number of CE articles as well as the articles from our Evidence-Based Practice: Step by Step series. Some articles require an AJN subscription or individual article purchase. Several of the articles in this list were from recent years other than 2013; a couple were much older, but are evidently still relevant, since not every idea in nursing is ephemeral or subject to improvement by the next generation.—Jacob Molyneux, senior editor

1. “Asking the Clinical Question: A Key Step in Evidence-Based Practice” – (March, 2010) – part of AJN‘s EBP series

2. “Improving Communication Among Nurses, Patients, and Physicians” – (November, 2009)

3. “The Seven Steps of Evidence-Based Practice” – (January, 2010) – part of our EBP series

4. “Nurses and the Affordable Care Act” – (September, 2010)

5. “From Novice to Expert: Excellence and Power in Clinical Nursing Practice” – (December, 1984; not HTML version; readers must click through to PDF version)

6. “COPD Exacerbations” – (CE article; February, 2013)

7. “Therapeutic Hypothermia After Cardiac Arrest” – (CE; July, 2012)

8.