Finding Perspective In an Ancient and Fabled Landscape

“Negativity and angst dissolved. Silence seeped into our spines, relaxing our amplified neural conversations and untying cranky muscles. We were just two insignificant human specks surrounded by a massive, glacier-carved swamp; its deep bowl filled with the layering detritus of millennia…”

Illustration by Janet Hamlin for AJN. All rights reserved.

The above quote is from the July Reflections essay in AJN. We’ve been running this column for decades, each month a one-page personal essay by a different outside author, many but not all of them nurses.

The author of “Of Swamps and Pandemics” in July (free until August 20) is Pamela Sturtevant, a nurse in Massachusetts. She writes deeply and well about a simple thing: taking a walk with a companion in an ancient and fabled swamp during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Taking refuge in ‘deep time.’

While the most frightening surges of the coronavirus may be in the past, and the initially bewildering and all-powerful virus has been tamed by vaccines and precautions if not vanquished, our world hardly feels more stable than it did a year ago. Smoke from wildfires 3,000 miles to the west recently tinted a sickly yellow the air of states in […]

2021-07-22T10:49:19-04:00July 22nd, 2021|Nursing, nursing stories|2 Comments
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Caring for Caregivers—We Need More Than Self-Care and Resilience

Mural painted by critical care unit staff to honor patients who contracted COVID-19. The stars represent those who succumbed to the illness and the flowers those who were discharged from the hospital. Mural by the MedStar Montgomery ICU Team; photo by Cherri Walrath.

Self-care is not a panacea.

Since the start of the pandemic, AJN has received many manuscripts and queries related to self-care and resilience to prevent burnout. It’s not surprising, given that this has been a harrowing year for nurses.

But while self-care and resilience are important, and such articles are needed, all the self-care in the world can’t fully address the root of the problem—the systemic issues that lead to burnout. At some point health care administration needs to step in and become part of the solution and offer staff the help they need.

A CE feature in our May issue, “Providing Care for Caregivers During COVID-19,” highlights one hospital system’s efforts to do just that. The Care for the Caregiver program, which existed prior to the pandemic, was created to support ‘second victims,’ defined by the Center for Patient Safety as “healthcare providers who are involved in an unanticipated adverse patient event, medical error and/or a patient related injury and become victimized in the sense that the provider is traumatized […]

2021-05-27T09:19:17-04:00May 27th, 2021|Nursing|0 Comments
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Never Ever Stop Learning: Guidance for Today from Florence Nightingale

On Florence Nightingale’s 201st birthday, coming as it does each year at the end of Nurses Week—and this year after a year of unprecedented challenges for nurses around the globe—there’s no better time to revisit her career.

If she were here today, there’s no doubt she would have much to say and many insights. She helped envision a nursing that encompassed the compassion and professionalism of a skilled bedside nursing that was grounded in ethical principles, scientific and statistical evidence, and a spirit of inquiry.

In 2011, Susan Hassmiller, PhD, RN, FAAN, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Senior Adviser for Nursing, spent her summer vacation traveling through Europe pursuing a dream to learn more about the life and work of Florence Nightingale. In her dispatches from the road, posted one by one and collected here, Hassmiller reported on her trip, what she learned, and what it means to nurses’ work today.

Ten lessons learned from her life.

The culminating post in the series may be a good place to start, however, and to reread and contemplate as we face old challenges in ever new guises:

“Parting Thoughts: Ten Lessons Learned from Florence Nightingale’s Life”

It begins, as one might expect, with “never, ever stop learning.” We couldn’t agree more.

2021-05-12T07:10:19-04:00May 12th, 2021|Nursing|0 Comments
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‘Right Under Our Noses’: Nightmarish Nursing Home Conditions During the Pandemic

As vaccinations increase and COVID-19 infection rates in nursing homes plummet, it’s easy to forget just how bad things got in many of them and how ill-equipped many were in the the early months of the pandemic to provide humane and effective care.

The following excerpt is from our March Reflections essay, “Right Under Our Noses: Nursing Homes and COVID-19,” which was written by a California nursing professor who volunteered to join a California Medical Assistance Team. The mission of her team was to bring aid to a skilled nursing facility where the coronavirus was rapidly infecting both patients and staff, a facility with little PPE available and many staff members refusing to come to work out of fear of infection.

The conditions I saw were shocking, even to an experienced nurse. I saw soggy diapers on the floor at the heads of many beds on most mornings. One day a bedbound patient needed the bedpan. I searched every closet and drawer but there were no supplies. I filled a basin with warm water and cut up a PPE gown to make washcloths to clean the patient. On the second day of my deployment I realized that many of the […]

2021-03-18T12:10:25-04:00March 18th, 2021|COVID-19, Ethics, infectious diseases, Nursing, nursing perspective, safe staffing|1 Comment
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No Country for Old People

In my editorial in the March issue, I ask, “Where do we go from here?’” in thinking about what’s next for nursing. In particular, I wonder if we’re going to make any strides in improving the quality of how we care for older adults who need long-term care.

Disasters give rise to assessments of what went wrong.

After prior disasters like hurricanes, heat waves, and flooding, there has often been a flurry of initial concern, with many committees convened to look at the deaths that occurred.

More recently, the New York Times has reported on the fate of nursing home residents during the Covid-19 pandemic in relation to the deterioration of quality in nursing homes once they are owned by for-profit entities—as 70% of nursing homes now are. So here we are once again, this time decrying the conditions revealed by Covid-19. Will things change this time?

In answer to this question, I’m especially pleased with the article in our March issue by 22 nurse gerontology experts. They issue a call (a challenge?) for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) Coronavirus Commission for Safety and Quality in Nursing Homes to rewrite standards to finally address under-resourcing and ensure residents get the care […]

2021-03-15T15:33:48-04:00March 15th, 2021|COVID-19, nursing roles, patient safety, Patients|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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