What Will It Take? When Will We Act?

Once again, we are sickened by another school shooting and the loss of children and teachers who tried to protect them from being mowed down by an assault weapon in the hands of an 18-year-old boy. This time Uvalde, Texas, is grieving for 19 children and two teachers, and it’s less than two weeks since a shooting in a Buffalo grocery store left 10 dead. Of course, we immediately see the messages from legislators offering their condolences and thoughts and prayers, but no promises to change anything. If not them, then who can?

I remember the awfulness of treating the occasional pediatric gunshot victim when I worked in the ER—usually an unintended target who was caught in crossfire. It was gut-wrenching, the kind of thing that should be a “never-event.” Today, ER nurses, paramedics, and physicians see young gunshot victims far too often. I don’t know how they can do it day after day, trying to comfort parents while dealing with their own trauma.

The leading cause of mortality in children and adolescents.

Firearm deaths are now the leading cause of mortality in children and adolescents (ages 1 to 19 years) in this country, according to a recent analysis by researchers at the University of Michigan reported in the New England Journal of […]

2022-05-27T14:01:41-04:00May 27th, 2022|gun violence, pediatrics, Public health|3 Comments
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Giving Back: The Heart of a Nurse

The Importance of Community Engagement, Volunteering, and Why Nurses Should Get Involved

Many of us became nurses because we wanted to heal and help others, and we believed that there is no greater honor and privilege than aiding another human being.

Nurses can offer so much to communities. People trust us, and we bring a health lens to everything we do. We know that people need safe places to exercise and play, a comfortable place to call home, clean air to breathe and water to drink, grocery stores with healthful food in our neighborhoods, and human connectedness. When we join boards or volunteer with organizations, we make our communities healthier.

During the pandemic, nurses volunteered at vaccine clinics and distributed food to people in need. Nurses served as a voice of reason when community members did not know who to turn to for health advice. Nurses are the backbone of disaster-relief efforts, and we teach our neighbors how to get and stay healthy.

A sense of empowerment and fulfillment.

My experiences serving as a disaster nurse with the Red Cross have […]

2022-05-23T16:53:37-04:00May 23rd, 2022|Nursing, nursing roles|0 Comments
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Driving the Nursing Profession Forward with Continuous Professional Development

A challenging few years.

The last few years have been especially challenging for the nursing profession. We fought a virus that wreaked havoc on our patients, families, and on ourselves. We struggled with equity, diversity, and inclusion issues and we had to adjust how we educate nursing students, moving from in-person to hybrid and online models. Faced with inadequate numbers of competent staff, we developed innovative workforce and care models while focusing on fostering resiliency.

Through it all we recognized the need to acquire new knowledge and skills through continuing professional development to keep up with the demands of the evolving health care paradigm.

‘Every day we learned something new.’

Investment in professional development is essential so that we are prepared to care for our patients and ready to help shape and lead the future of health care. Every day during the pandemic we learned something new about caring for patients with COVID-19. Learning new skills, investing in new knowledge and education, challenging ourselves to think differently about situations, and being mindful can all help propel and focus our nursing journey. […]

2022-05-16T10:08:47-04:00May 16th, 2022|career, Nursing, nursing career|0 Comments
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RN Resiliency: Humor, Hounds, and Holistic Medicine

‘Even my hair is tired.’

If you’ve been faced with death, trauma, significant stressors, and losses, you’ve had to be resilient. And boy, did I choose a career with all of the above. I started my nursing career during the AIDS epidemic, and later moved to active duty Air Force nursing, travel nursing, polytrauma, rehab, chronic pain, spinal cord injury, working with the homeless, mental health, and lastly COVID-19. After 27 years of this, even my hair is tired. But I’ve never been so proud to pick this career—it is a calling. As Nurses Month begins, I tear up thinking there aren’t enough words to express my gratitude.

During COVID, understaffing, hourly policy changes, increased workloads and responsibilities, an increase in mental health disorders, the political climate, and anti-science rhetoric only added to the stressors. I had to look hard to find the gold, because every day you could definitely find the rust. I often asked myself, “How can I keep a healthy attitude, a warm heart, continuous focus, and a genuine nurse smile?” The answer for me has been my humor, hounds, and holistic medicine approaches.

Humor as stress relief.

This realization started when I landed in the ED after a period of not taking care of myself after learning my patient died by suicide. […]

2022-05-04T09:28:13-04:00May 4th, 2022|Nursing, nursing career|1 Comment
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How to Support the Nurse in Your Life, May 2022

Photo by Dương Nhân from Pexels

A few years ago, I wrote a blog post directed towards friends and family members of nurses, entitled “How to Support the Nurse in Your Life.” While the ideas in that post still hold up today, so much in nursing has changed, the COVID pandemic being the obvious main factor. With nurses in more need of support than ever, I find it important to revisit this idea of helping friends and families supporting the nurses in their lives at this unique point in time.

1. Listen to what the nurse is actually distressed about in the moment, and stay with them there.

In normal, non-pandemic times, nurses already have many people, situations, and issues to tend to in addition to the actual patient. There are so many unique aspects of the nurse role that challenge us, all of them rolled into a tangled ball in the course of a 12-hour shift. If we are distressed about one particular aspect, please stay with us in your focus on the actual issue at hand so we have time and space to unpack it without all the other competing stressors vying for all our attention.

For example, we might be upset one […]

2022-05-02T09:19:45-04:00May 2nd, 2022|Nursing|2 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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