Decreasing the Trauma of IV Sticks – for Patients and Nurses

In my clinical days, I was adept at IV sticks. I had a lot of experience from my days in the ER, but especially from working as a chemotherapy nurse, where I had patients with fragile and damaged veins. I learned every trick to coax a vein to appear and which gauge needle would work the best to avoid puncturing through the vein. I was so “into” IVs at one point, I’d note the veins on people’s arms, judging whether they’d be an easy or hard stick.

Venous access may be difficult to achieve in older adults. Photo © Alto / Alamy Stock Photo.

Little instruction in starting an IV.

But it wasn’t always so. I recall approaching the first time I had to draw blood with much trepidation. There was virtually no training—a more experienced colleague had me watch her and then walked me through it in a few minutes:

“It’s not that hard: see which hand or arm has the better veins; tie the tourniquet around the arm; swab the skin with alcohol; insert the needle, bevel down; pull back and […]

2018-07-19T12:02:08-04:00July 19th, 2018|Nursing|0 Comments
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The Stay-at-Home Nurse

“You may not always take your work home with you, but you take your nurse self everywhere.”

Diane Stonecipher, BSN, RN, lives in Austin, Texas.

by rosmary/via Flickr by rosmary/via Flickr

The proverbial “what do you do?” always flummoxed me. My answer was usually some variation on this: “I used to be a nurse, but I have not worked outside the home while I’ve been raising my sons.”

But most people stopped listening after the “I used to be.” Sure, I could recite some things that I had done during the intervening years, but they were not really vocations I could make a claim to.

Even my children, who I had after first being a nurse for 15 years, never thought of me as a nurse. I did not leave the house for work, I did not get paid, I did not gripe about my job (in front of them), and I was available to them 24/7.

There are many professions that lend themselves to being a good mother. There are many interests, talents, and personalities that contribute to good mothering skills. Look at nature and you will see incredible maternal gifts in every species.

Still, I can’t help but think that I have been a better mother because I am a nurse and that my children have benefited […]

2016-11-21T13:01:41-05:00December 4th, 2015|career, narratives, Nursing, nursing perspective|3 Comments
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Bedpans and Learning: Nursing Basics Still Matter

By Amanda Anderson, a critical care nurse and graduate student in New York City currently doing a graduate placement at AJN.

Photo by Morrissey, via Flickr. Photo by Morrissey, via Flickr.

There I was, orienting to a busy medical ICU, perplexed over a bedpan. You’d think, since I was just graduating from nursing school, that bedpans would be my area of expertise. Critical thinking and vent strategies came easy; how could I possible admit I had no idea how to give a bedpan to a patient?

Frightening, to graduate from nursing school and a competitive externship program without this competency. Somehow, though, every unit I’d experienced offered patient care assistants, or patients who didn’t need this age-old tool. I’d certainly helped patients to the bathroom and cleaned incontinent ones. Despite the barrage of clinical learning, the basics of offering the pink plastic tool hadn’t sunk in.

Paralyzed, I stood with it in my hand, looking at my intubated, awake patient. I’d had the wherewithal to ask the family to step out, but couldn’t figure out which end went first. The horror of my preceptor finding it backwards would end me. Did the pointed end go towards the patient’s back? The larger end toward the feet for better coverage? Why couldn’t I remember?

Somehow, I managed to decide, […]

2016-11-21T13:02:43-05:00April 8th, 2015|career, narratives, Nursing, nursing perspective, patient engagement|7 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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