A Black Nursing Professor’s Personal Calculus in Choosing a Birth Center

“I knew getting pregnant meant that regardless of my socioeconomic status or education, as a black woman I was more than three times as likely to die during labor or in the weeks afterward compared to my white counterparts.”

Recent news stories have drawn attention the dismaying medical experiences of black women during and after childbirth, with even celebrities like Serena Williams and others finding their concerns about potentially life-threatening symptoms going dangerously unheeded by nurses and physicians. The statistics about maternal death from pregnancy or childbirth complications among black women tell us that such stories aren’t isolated examples but part of a larger pattern.

Illustration by Annelisa Ochoa.

A thoughtful professor weighs her options.

All of which makes the personal story told by Sheria Robinson-Lane, an assistant professor of nursing at the University of Michigan, in this month’s Reflections essay (“Birthing by the Numbers“) particularly timely. And yes, nuanced. She knows the numbers and she knows the stories about communication issues experienced by black women with their providers. However, she’s also affiliated with a respected major medical center.

So when she gets pregnant with her second child at age 39, what’s her best course of action in deciding where to have her child? It’s […]

2018-10-01T08:20:40-04:00October 1st, 2018|Nursing, nursing perspective, patient experience|0 Comments
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A Mother and a Nurse

Kristy Rodriguez, BSN, RN, works as a nurse in Florida.

As a mother and a nurse, I have often found myself with the dilemma of whether to inform others in a health care setting that I am a nurse. I say this because it can go either way: some look at it as a blessing that they can easily explain things to you using medical terminology, while other nurses may take it as a threat. And I understand these concerns. As a nurse I have come in contact with both attitudes—the helpful and the threatening—among family members and patients who work in health care. It has been helpful to have a family member or patient who understands at least the basics and is eager to learn. Then, on the other hand, it can be a nightmare with the patient or family member who uses the statement “I’m a nurse” as a kind of threat.

A son’s troubling symptoms.

My story all started about three years ago, a day that my son’s life would forever be changed, and mine with it. It was the spring of 2012 and my son was 12 years old and developing as a normal boy should develop. A stomach virus had recently swept through our house and sickened my son and his […]

2018-09-28T14:34:00-04:00September 27th, 2018|Nursing|2 Comments
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A Nurse’s Open Letter to Parents Who Have Lost a Child

“You are never alone as you miss these children, as you laugh recalling moments with them. Don’t worry that the memory of them is fading—their presence is strong and lives even beyond you and your love for them. We remember them, too.”

Illustration by Barbara Hranilovich for AJN. All rights reserved.

In this month’s Reflections column, author Jessica L. Spruit has written an open letter to parents who have lost a child. Spruit, a pediatric NP in a hematology/oncology department, makes it clear that the children in her care are not forgotten and that their deaths are never routine, even on a hem/onc unit. Here, she shares memories of her patients from over the years, recalling the things that made them unique—as children, and not just as “patients.”

In her letter, Spruit describes something that is often hard to convey about our work. In spite of all of the stress and frustrations of nursing today, we still are able to engage deeply with other people. The courage and grace (and fun and joy, too) that we have the privilege to witness become part of who we are. When our patients are children, their gifts to us are particularly memorable.

“Please don’t ever think that we ‘do this all the time’ or that it is ‘just part of our job.’ Please don’t fear that you are the only ones who remember and miss your children.”

Read “We Remember Them, Too” in […]

2018-07-17T14:28:09-04:00July 17th, 2018|Nursing, pediatrics|0 Comments
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Aid-in-Dying: A Daughter’s Challenging New Nursing Role

A father’s request.

The March Reflections essay in AJN is by a nurse whose terminally ill 92-year-old father asked her to help him legally end his own life under the requirements of Oregon’s Death with Dignity Act. The short essay is intimate, informative, and honest. Here’s a brief excerpt from near the end:

Although I miss my father terribly, I have no regrets. Mostly, I am thankful for his strength and courage, his clear-mindedness, and his willingness to work with me to repair our relationship. I am also thankful that nursing prepared me for the role of nurse advocate and taught me how to ‘be with’ a person at the end of life, even when that person was my father.

By Barbara Hranilovich for AJN.

Death With Dignity laws.

It can’t be easy for a nurse, whose job usually focuses on restoring patients’ health and preserving their lives, to help a family member die in this way. Nor is the process without challenges: the requirements of Death with Dignity laws are rigorous, layered with checks and double-checks to guard against potential abuses. […]

2018-02-26T10:41:13-05:00February 26th, 2018|Nursing, nursing stories|1 Comment
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Wabi-Sabi: Nursing and the Art of Brokenness

Wabi-Sabi (Kintsugi), watercolor and acrylic on paper, 2018 by Julianna Paradisi

Nursing is the art of healing, which ironically also makes it an art of brokenness. We pack and bind wounds. We administer medications to cure disease. We offer interventions for the side effects caused by the medication administered to cure.

We work in a health care system which, despite our best intentions, is broken: not enough resources, not enough staff or providers, not enough health care to go around for everyone.

Nurses have broken areas within ourselves too, but our work environments expect us to perform as perfectly as possible, amidst the brokenness of our patients, the brokenness of health care.

Patients, physicians, other departments, and hospital administrators expect nurses will fix problems, whatever they are, despite the brokenness.

A timely example this flu season is the paradoxical message: “Don’t come to work sick,” coupled with the implication, “Your sick call leaves us understaffed.”

The answer to brokenness is wholeheartedness.

The effort to fix the brokenness or imperfection of nursing and health care may be particularly exhausting for nurses because we are directly responsible for the safety of our patients.

The words of author David Whyte as he recounts a wise friend’s advice elegantly express […]

2018-02-14T10:05:33-05:00February 14th, 2018|healthcare social media, Nursing, nursing perspective|0 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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