Dr. Oz’s Sexy ‘Nurses’: Here We Go Again

By Shawn Kennedy, AJN interim editor-in-chief

In the “what could he have been thinking?” category, Mehmet Oz, MD, wins first place—well, at least, for now. I’m sure someone else will come along soon and take his place.

In case you’ve been MIA the last month, Oz became a target for nursing ire when, on his November 4 show, he danced with several women who were wearing nurses’ uniforms revealing red lingerie. The segment apparently had nothing to do with nurses, but rather weight loss through dancing, they talked about This impact diet whey review and by the end the nurses were pretty convinced about it. (So of course that would make one think of nurses with red lingerie???)

I’m hoping it was a case where he “just didn’t think”—rather than that he thought that the segment might possibly offend nurses but decided to go with it anyway. Dogged by a letter-writing campaign spearheaded by Sandy Summers of the nursing image advocacy and watchdog group, The Truth About Nursing, and from criticism from other nursing groups like the American Nurses Association, Oz apparently released a statement on December 6 apologizing, according to various news reports. However, one can’t find it anywhere on his Web site or on the Web, for that matter.

It’s always interesting to see the level of offense colleagues and others feel. Comments posted on news sites carrying the story […]

2017-07-07T13:32:16-04:00December 8th, 2010|career, nursing perspective|2 Comments
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Halloween Nurse

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

by indigoprime/via Flickr

When I was a little girl about six or seven years old, I decided that I would dress up as a nurse one Halloween.

My mother bought me a play nurse’s kit.  It was a pink plastic “little nurse bag” containing a white nurse’s cap, a stethoscope, a tongue depressor, blue-framed plastic glasses that perched on your nose, a plastic thermometer with the “mercury line” painted to 101 degrees, a plastic hypodermic syringe, a small notepad and pencil, cotton balls, and Band-Aids.  (For your information, the “junior doctor kit” contained pretty much the same things, except it was black plastic, had a yellow and orange plastic otoscope, and a headband with a reflector disc. My brother received one of those.)

I wore a white blouse and tan skirt (my mother drew the line at buying clothes for one day) and used a safety-pin to clip a blue towel around my neck as a cape. I wore the nurse’s cap and glasses. My brother dressed in his Catholic school uniform (white shirt and navy blue pants and red tie) and wore his stethoscope around his neck and his little blue glasses perched on his nose.

We were quite the medical team. I wonder how many nursing or medical career seeds were planted with those play kits. by rosmary/via Flickr

With Halloween this weekend, many schools celebrated […]

2016-11-21T13:15:07-05:00October 29th, 2010|Nursing|8 Comments
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Will Texas Nurse Whistle-blower Case Have Dangerous Ripple Effect?

KERMIT, Tex. — It occurred to Anne Mitchell as she was writing the letter that she might lose her job, which is why she chose not to sign it. But it was beyond her conception that she would be indicted and threatened with 10 years in prison for doing what she knew a nurse must: inform state regulators that a doctor at her rural hospital was practicing bad medicine.

That’s from an article in today’s New York Times about a Texas nurse who’s being prosecuted for blowing the whistle on what she asserts were inappropriate medical practices by a doctor she worked with. We’ve posted on this as the case has developed and also written about it in the journal. Ultimately, the judgment is up to the court. But the concern we’ve expressed and which others have also voiced is that this will have the effect of silencing others who should be speaking out. In the process it may well reinforce old nurse–physician dynamics that profit no one. What do you think?

UPDATE: She was acquitted today (February 11)!Bookmark and Share

2010-02-11T17:35:19-05:00February 7th, 2010|nursing perspective|5 Comments
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Different Gods, Different Ideas of Compassion: A Clergywoman’s Story of the Doctor Who Wouldn’t

Jeanine was in her 60s. She wasn’t a church member and I barely knew her. A neighbor had called me to the hospital-Jeanine’s husband was dead, and there were no family or friends at her side. Trying to get my bearings, I leaned over her and recited the words of the Twenty-third Psalm: “The Lord is my shepherd …. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil ….”

“Help me,” Jeanine moaned. Her eyes opened and then closed. I knew she was pleading for release from her pain.

“Jeanine, I’m so sorry,” I whispered. I hurried to the nurses’ station. When a young nurse looked up, I asked if she could do more to relieve Jeanine’s pain.

“Nothing more to do,” she said, looking back down at an open ledger.

The above is an excerpt from the Reflections essay in the December issue of AJN. It’s by a retired clergywoman who tells of a moment early in her career that brought her face to face with a doctor who believed in a very different kind of God than her own. Click the link above to read the essay in entirety.  

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2016-11-21T13:20:26-05:00December 23rd, 2009|Nursing|0 Comments
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H1N1 Flu Vaccine: Remembering Why I Became a Nurse

By Shawn Kennedy, editorial director

Last week, I got away from my desk, computer, and stacks of paper and (briefly) became a “real nurse” again. As a member of my county’s Medical Reserve Corps, I volunteered to help administer H1N1 flu vaccine at a local school. Our vaccinees were children over two years and young adults up to 24. We were distributing FluMist, a live attenuated vaccine administered intranasally (see the article on FluMist in the October AJN).  The applicator looks like just like a syringe, but without a needle.

I was impressed with how organized the process was. Employees of the health department were there controlling traffic, fetching supplies, inputting data, interviewing new arrivals and helping them complete forms. A physician was on hand to screen individuals if there were any questions about whether someone should receive the vaccine.

I was one of 20 RNs, most of whom worked as county public health nurses. We had a brief reminder of the vaccine administration procedure (we had received instructions and a link to a video demonstration about administering the vaccine the prior week), and then were sent to our stations at tables in the large gymnasium. There was a light-hearted and almost casual atmosphere—the key to it, I think, was that there were no needles involved. Such looks of relief when I took the rubber tip off the applicator!

I had just one solitary young man come to my table. He looked embarrassed and a little nervous, judging from his leg twitching up and […]

2016-11-21T13:20:50-05:00November 30th, 2009|career|0 Comments
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