Nursing Voices: The 10 Most-Read AJN Blog Posts of 2016

flickr creative commons/by you me

As the editor of this blog, I’m often amazed by the originality, honesty, and quality of the writing that comes to us from people who are, in many cases, not writers by trade. AJN Off the Charts publishes articles about professional issues, health policy and research, and clinical topics, as well as many nurse and patient stories. Here are ten popular posts from 2016 that you might have missed. Some of the authors of the posts listed here are regular contributors, some are AJN editors, some are first-time contributors; some are established scholars, some are new to the nursing profession.

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The 10 most-read posts we published in 2016.*

What a Nurse Really Wants
“I just want some support. I just want to take care of my patients, and maybe get a lunch break on any given day. I just want to be heard.”

CDC Opioid-Prescribing Guideline for Chronic Pain: Concerns and Contexts
“These new guidelines cast a very wide net. Many patients with chronic pain will find themselves facing […]

2017-07-27T11:51:24-04:00December 16th, 2016|healthcare social media, Nursing|0 Comments
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Patients Change Us: A Formative Nursing Experience

From boliston, via Flickr From boliston, via Flickr

Many years ago, I was given the greatest gift by a patient who had no idea he would change my life and define my professional outlook as a nurse. While not every nurse will be fortunate enough to have such an explicit experience of the effect of the care they provide so early in their career, I believe that each patient you come in contact with is changing your life as much as you are changing theirs.

Quantity of Care vs. Quality of Care

Nursing has evolved into a highly technical profession grounded in scientific evidence, a profession that works to improve patient outcomes and shorten hospital stays. Research and technology support this work in innumerable ways.

But while nurses must be technical experts, drug experts, and efficiency experts, they must also do their best to alleviate the suffering of those in their charge. These many concurrent demands can result in high burnout rates among nurses as well as fragmented care for patients.

The quantity of care today’s nurse provides must go hand in hand with the quality of care. My own definition of quality care is focusing on patients as more than just a set of signs, symptoms, numbers, and processes in need of monitoring and adjustment. […]

2016-11-21T13:01:07-05:00June 22nd, 2016|career, Nursing, nursing perspective, nursing stories, patient experience|1 Comment
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What a Nurse Really Wants

Lois Corcoran, BSN, PCCN, is pursuing a master of science in nursing degree and works on a cardiac step-down unit. Although Nurses Week recently ended, we felt that this short, honest post sums up the way a lot of nurses seem to feel.

via flickr creative commons/by you me via flickr creative commons/by you me

I have been a nurse for 18 years. I went to nursing school when I was 33 years old, a year after I’d completed treatment for Hodgkin lymphoma. I was a single mom, newly divorced, trying to make my way.

Becoming a nurse felt like my calling. I was passionate about it. I had been through so much, and I knew I had a lot to give back—I wanted to be with patients, holding their hands, giving them the reassurance we so desperately want to hear when we are going through ill health. I knew that I could be that nurse. I felt that my cancer had been the portal to this realization, opening my eyes and heart to what patients need.

Eighteen years later the truth of my life as a nurse is a little more complicated. It’s not that my original soul’s calling isn’t still there, deep inside me. I still feel a close connection with my patients. I […]

2017-08-04T09:53:14-04:00May 19th, 2016|career, Nursing, nursing perspective, Patients|9 Comments
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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. 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 […]

2016-11-21T13:04:47-05:00May 12th, 2014|career, nursing perspective|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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