The Puzzle of Snowflakes: Treatments May Be Uniform, But Patients Are Not

Julianna Paradisi blogs at JParadisi RN; her artwork appeared on the cover of the October 2009 issue of AJN, and her essay, “The Wisdom of Nursery Rhymes,” is upcoming in the February issue.

My patient sits in a chair, watching a DVD presentation about caring for his new, surgically inserted, tunneled catheter. In a few weeks, this catheter will be used for his stem cell transplant. I am teaching him how to flush it and change the dressing. He’s from out in the sticks, too far away from the clinic for our nursing staff to provide the care for him. He doesn’t have family or friends for support. After the DVD, I bring out a chest manikin and dressing kit to demonstrate the sterile dressing change. As I explain the technique of donning sterile gloves, he stops me with a challenging glare.

“I can’t do sterile.”

I stop what I’m doing to explain the dangers of infection if the dressing isn’t sterile. Like a car stuck in a snowdrift, he remains unbudged. “I can’t do sterile,” he insists. I puzzle over what to say next. My coworkers flurry by in their white lab coats. I’m wearing a white lab coat, too. My patient is lost in a health care blizzard. He doesn’t see snowflakes. He only sees snow.

2016-11-21T13:14:26-05:00January 4th, 2011|nursing perspective, patient engagement|4 Comments
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Workplace Violence Against Nurses — Neither Inevitable Nor Acceptable

I’ve read about hospital nurses dealing with violence at work, but I always told myself that was something that happened in the emergency room or the psych ward. In oncology, I reasoned, we have relationships with our patients, and I have always felt safe with them.

So begins a harrowing—and remarkably nonjudgmental— story of a really bad day at work, written by Theresa Brown, a nurse who blogs regularly for the NY Times. (AJN will be featuring a profile of Brown in the May issue.)

Unhappy coincidence: It so happens that AJN published a Viewpoint essay on workplace violence in the March issue. Here’s how it starts:

I was working in the ED one day when a patient looked up and threatened to kill me. Grabbing my hand, he squeezed it until I thought it would break. It took several staff members to restrain him and force him to let go. I’ll never forget how he looked into my eyes and smiled as I screamed in pain.

Some of my colleagues said I should file a police report; others told me to get used to this type of behavior and toughen up. I called the police, and although they took my statement, they wouldn’t arrest the patient because he hadn’t inflicted “serious bodily injury.”

The author, Jessica Leigh, offers advice to those who have faced workplace violence as nurses, and makes several recommendations for influencing policies at your hospital or facility, as well as […]

2016-11-21T13:18:45-05:00March 17th, 2010|nursing perspective|4 Comments
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If Health Care Reform Were an ICU Patient . . .

The idea that the Health Care Reform bill is on life support is disappointing, but not surprising. It was admitted in a weakened state of health. It appears suspiciously a victim of domestic violence by special interest groups. The bruises on its body resemble the outline of handprints of the insurance companies it was created to protect our citizens from.

So writes nurse-artist-blogger JParadisi RN in a recent post, which (whatever your beliefs about whether we should do something major soon about the increasing numbers of uninsured Americans and the skyrocketing costs of health care) has particular resonance as President Obama prepares to address the nation tonight about this and other issues.


(Full disclosure: Paradisi’s artwork appeared on the October 2009 cover of AJN.)

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2016-11-21T13:19:49-05:00January 27th, 2010|health care policy, nursing perspective|2 Comments
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Marketers Honing In On Online Nurses

Internet Splat Map (jurvetson/via Flickr)

Nurses, you’re being watched: a marketing Website has an article on the growing influence of nurses online. Let us know what you think. Here’s an excerpt:

. . . Manhattan Research recently released a report about nurses online noting that approximately three out of four U.S. nurses recommend health websites to patients. The study notes that the average nurse spends eight hours per week online for professional purposes, which is just as much time as physicians, and almost all of them use the Internet in between patient consultations. Nurses are also proactive in researching medical product information specifically online – over eighty percent have visited a pharma, biotech, or device company website in the past year.

In addition to the prevalence of the Internet as a research and patient communication tool, nurses are continuing to find their unique voices online through a growing number of prominent nursing blogs such as Codeblog and Emergiblog which both share powerful stories of healthcare from the nurses’ point of view.

Also found today on the Web: […]
2016-11-21T13:22:00-05:00October 2nd, 2009|health care policy, healthcare social media|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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