The Power of Pictures in Therapeutic Healing

Sam was a 17-year-old who had been admitted following a major traumatic leg injury. The surgical teams were trying to save his leg.

A colleague asked me to ”pop in” on him, since he was having a hard time coping. Frankly, he was completely bummed out.

Sam and his mom were together in his room waiting to go to OR. I introduced myself as a nurse working with the pain management/spiritual care team. Conversation was stiff but polite. Sam made no eye contact with me at all.

Building relationships takes time.

photo courtesy of author

Following his procedure, I made a point of stopping by to visit almost every day. Mom had warmed up to me—Sam just a bit. It was an isolating time in the hospital. Visitors were not allowed, except for a single family member for pediatric patients, and the contacts with staff were often task focused and purposeful. One afternoon, I saw mom sitting in the hallway talking on her cell phone, crying. So I waited.

When she ended her call, I asked if she’d like some company. Our conversation found its way from the hospital to the kitchen, stopping along the way as we shared family and shopping tidbits. She laughed and we connected. I also learned […]

2021-09-07T08:34:46-04:00September 7th, 2021|nursing perspective, nursing students, patient engagement|0 Comments
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The Bittersweet Reality of a Nurse’s Limits in Providing End-of-Life Care

Three young patients on the same trajectory.

Image by strikers/pixabay

I have recently spent time with a few young patients all on the same sharp trajectory towards their final day of life. All had different diagnoses, and on the days I had the privilege of being their nurse, they were each at different points on that trajectory.

M. was just four days away from dying, though he and all his medical caretakers thought at that point that he had at least a few more weeks.

J. was a couple of months away from dying, and on my shift with her, she knew her situation was bad but remained hopeful for some last-ditch interventions.

R. was well-appearing outside of an unsteady gait and slight sideways drift of her eyes. She maintained levity and a hopeful innocence in the first few hours of my shift with her before I took her to her MRI scan. As I watched her MRI images appear with a clear and tragic diagnosis, I heard the physicians outside of earshot from the MRI table discuss the inoperable, inevitable turn this would take for her in the very near future. R. didn’t know yet that her budding dreams for adulthood would not come to pass, and it felt […]

2021-04-02T15:27:22-04:00March 31st, 2021|Nursing|1 Comment
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Levels of Weariness Among Nurses

I imagine that nurses throughout the world are constantly being asked “How are things at work these days?”—with the implied question being “How are you holding up with your work situation?” While my colleagues and I in our pediatric hospital have not seen an overwhelming surge of COVID+ patients come through our doors, we have certainly seen some, with an uptick in our COVID+ census as the numbers throughout the country have increased.

When I pause at this point in the conversation, the usual response I get is, “Oh, that’s so good to hear. You’re lucky.” And I agree and reflect this back to whoever I’m speaking with. My heart hurts for my fellow nurses in other parts of the nation who have been utterly overwhelmed by COVID and its cruelty. I recognize that I am indescribably lucky.

At the same time, though it’s hard to articulate why, even nurses who haven’t been hit by the surges seen in other hospitals bear layers of deep weariness by this point in the pandemic. […]

2021-01-21T11:28:06-05:00December 16th, 2020|career, COVID-19, infectious diseases, Nursing|1 Comment
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The Legacy of the Asthma Nurse Who Really Listened to a Five-Year-Old

My mum tells me that when I was two years old, I would regularly go blue, particularly when I was walking my sister to school on a cold, windy day. Alongside this, I coughed incessantly. My parents took me to the doctor’s surgery multiple times, and their concerns were dismissed by the GPs, or a course of antibiotics given.

One day when I was particularly unwell, my mum was unable to get a doctor’s appointment but was able to see one of the practice nurses. The nurse identified intercostal recessions and immediately got a doctor to examine me. The doctor asked my mum how long I had been asthmatic; that was the point at which I finally received the diagnosis that linked me into a nurse-led clinic for long-term monitoring.

The nurse was Mr. Pierce*, a man who initially seemed to me scary, authoritative, and old. His voice boomed and filled his modest consulting room. He always pushed open the door to the patient waiting room with considerable energy and vigor, loudly announcing patient names, a habit which made me jump without fail.

Trusting the patient’s expertise.

Mr. Pierce was very much ahead of his time in terms of acknowledging patients’ expertise in their own health. He listened to my account of symptoms, asking my parents […]

2020-12-02T10:58:37-05:00December 2nd, 2020|Nursing|0 Comments
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Autism Spectrum Disorder: A Critical Role for Nurses in Screening and Interventions

“‘What’s the scoop with our autism screening?’ a concerned mother asked the nurse upon realizing that the autism spectrum disorder screening questionnaire she had completed wasn’t addressed during her daughter’s well-child visit. The nurse brought the mother’s concern to the primary care provider, who replied, ‘Don’t worry, I only look at screenings if I think there’s a problem. I can spot autism during a patient visit.’”

Is this provider’s confident claim a realistic one? Almost certainly not, as will become clear to anyone who reads the CE articles on autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in the October (“From the CDC: Understanding Autism Spectrum Disorder“) and November (“Autism Spectrum Disorder: The Nurse’s Role“) issues of AJN. As a result of such casual attitudes toward screening, many autistic children are almost certainly not receiving the early treatment and monitoring that can make a big difference in their quality of life.

Delayed diagnosis reduces the window for effective interventions.

ASD is the most common developmental disability in the United States, yet according to the November CE article, screening rates across the U.S. range from a low of 17.2% in Mississippi to a high of less than 60% in […]

2020-11-12T10:16:12-05:00November 12th, 2020|Nursing|0 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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