How a Nurse Helped My Health Anxiety

IF Photo by Sheila Steele, via Flickr.

By Amy M. Collins, editor

As a person who suffers from health anxiety, going to the doctor is always an ordeal. While some hypochondriacs tend to seek medical care with fervor, I am of the variety that avoids it at all costs. Unless it’s necessary.

Recently I had a necessary diagnostic test that involved a contrast agent. Several things about the test worried me. I was told it might hurt; I’d never had a contrast agent before (and on House—a show I should never watch—patients are always allergic to it!); and I was afraid that during the exam I would panic, faint, or cry.

Some people might be thinking: “suck it up!”—and I wouldn’t blame them. But I promise you, this isn’t something I’m proud of. I’d love to be more stoic when it comes to medical procedures/visits. Unfortunately, anxiety is a real thing. It is illogical and it can sometimes take over one’s senses. I spent the days preceding the test sleepless and tense. […]

2016-11-21T13:04:21-05:00July 1st, 2014|Nursing|1 Comment

AJN’s July Issue: Diabetes and Puberty, Getting Patient Input, Quality Measures, Professional Boundaries, More

AJN0714.Cover.OnlineAJN’s July issue is now available on our Web site. Here’s a selection of what not to miss.

Diabetes and puberty. On our cover this month, 17-year-old Trenton Jantzi tests his blood sugar before football practice. Trenton has type 1 diabetes and is one of a growing number of children and adolescents in the United States who have  been diagnosed with either type 1 or type 2 diabetes. The physical and psychological changes of puberty can add to the challenges of diabetes management. Nurses are well positioned to help patients and their families understand and meet these challenges.

To learn more more about the physical and behavioral changes experienced by adolescents with diabetes, see this month’s CE feature, “Diabetes and Puberty: A Glycemic Challenge,” and earn 2.6 CE credits by taking the test that follows the article. And don’t miss a podcast interview with the author, one […]

When Metrics and Testing Replace Listening and Physical Assessment

By Gail M. Pfeifer, MA, RN, AJN news director

Emergency x 2 by Ian Muttoo, via Flickr. by Ian Muttoo/via Flickr

I was appalled as I read the Narrative Matters column by physician Charlotte Yeh in the June issue of Health Affairs, for two reasons. Aside from the compassion I felt for her suffering at being hit by a car on a rainy Washington, D.C., evening in 2011, I was dismayed that most of her story took place in an ED, one of the settings in which I used to work. While there, she met with a series of omissions that included not just medical care omissions but also—though she never explicitly connects the dots—basic and serious nursing care omissions.

It saddens me to think that one of the things I fought so hard to implement on our unit more than 20 years ago—transforming the staff’s automatic labeling of arriving patients (an MI, an MVA, a gunshot wound) into a unique picture of who that patient really was under those traumatic circumstances—has still not come to pass. Yet that change of vision is so important to completing the picture and arriving at an accurate diagnosis. Noting that her care demanded a better balance of necessary […]

‘Patient Activation’: Real Paradigm Shift or Updated Jargon?

By Jacob Molyneux, AJN senior editor

I attended a Health Affairs briefing yesterday in Washington, DC. Based on the February issue of the journal, it was called “A New Era of Patient Engagement.” A lot of research money appears to have been flowing to this area in recent years.

Our January article on "Navigating the PSA Screening Dilemma" includes a discussion of 'shared decision making' Our January article on “Navigating the PSA Screening Dilemma” includes a discussion of ‘shared decision making’

The basic idea isn’t entirely new to anyone who’s been hearing the term “patient-centered care” for a long time: as Susan Dentzer writes in “Rx for the ‘Blockbuster Drug’ of Patient Engagement,” a useful article summarizing the main ideas raised in the Health Affairs issue: “Wherever engagement takes place, the emerging evidence is that patients who are actively involved in their health and health care achieve better health outcomes, and have lower health costs, than those who aren’t.”

One might add to these projected benefits: better experiences as patients.

Something’s got to change, so why not this? If many nurses feel they’ve heard all this before, the sense of a health care system in necessary […]

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