COVID-19: It’s Not Only About Hospital-Based Nurses

‘We all just went charging towards this monster…’

We’ve all seen the photos of nurses in PPE providing care to patients who are obviously very ill with COVID-19. These nurses have justifiably received recognition and accolades for their commitment to duty under the most challenging circumstances and often at great personal risk.

I recently spoke with Megan Brunson, the president of the American Association of Critical-Care Nurses (AACN), who is also a supervisor in the cardiovascular ICU at Medical City Dallas Hospital.

Brunson described her own experiences, but also what she was hearing from her colleagues as they all “just went charging towards this monster called COVID.” She also talked about how the organization was rapidly developing resources, not only for clinical care but to help nurses deal with emotional stress. One initiative is partnering with DearWorld.org to create a collection of portraits and stories from nurses caring for patients with COVID-19.

Disrupting work in many settings.

But it behooves us to realize that this pandemic has not caused stress and critical challenges just for acute care nurses; nurses in many settings have been challenged and have had their work disrupted.

In the last two weeks, I spoke with nurses and nursing leaders of several organizations to learn about how the coronavirus pandemic has changed their work. […]

2020-05-15T17:09:36-04:00May 15th, 2020|COVID-19, infectious diseases, Nursing, nursing roles|0 Comments
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CDC Draws Attention to Youth Concussion Risks, Offers Training and Resources

This post was contributed to AJN‘s blog by the Traumatic  Brain Injury Team at the CDC Injury Center.

As an A-student and star soccer player, Sarah was used to hard work. However, after she sustained a concussion while playing a varsity soccer game during her freshman year in high school, she found herself challenged in ways she had never expected.

“Recovering from the concussion was harder than recovering from other injuries I’ve had,” Sarah recalls. “When I got a concussion, I expected to sit out some games, but I never realized that it would actually hurt to think. For nearly two months I needed frequent breaks to make it through the school day. I would have to go to the school clinic and rest when I was overcome by headaches from the lights and noise of the classroom.”

Sarah’s story is not unusual. In fact, children and teens have the highest rate of emergency department visits for traumatic brain injury (TBI), including concussion, of all age groups. Fortunately, Sarah made a full recovery after four months and continues […]

2017-07-27T11:40:44-04:00April 11th, 2017|Public health, school nurses|0 Comments
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Do Schools Still Have Nurses?

By Betsy Todd, MPH, RN, CIC, AJN clinical editor

by woodley wonderworks, via Flickr. by woodley wonderworks, via Flickr.

In the December 1903 issue of AJN (reprinted, with an editor’s commentary, in September 2014), Henry Street Settlement nurse Lina L. Rogers described the impact of the first school nurse program in the United States. Ms. Rogers, who worked with Henry Street founder Lillian Wald to establish the program in New York City schools, emphasized that their purpose was not only to improve children’s health but to decrease missed school days.

Wise community leaders have long acknowledged the importance of school nursing in accomplishing these goals. But in recent years, this hasn’t prevented cutbacks that eliminate or severely limit the care that nurses can provide to their school communities.

An  October 10 article in the Philadelphia Inquirer describes an acute shortage of nurses in Philadelphia schools. Detailed here are multi-school coverage by individual RNs, wildly unrealistic caseloads for many of the nurses, and the significant responsibilities for “medical care” now borne by non-nurse teachers and administrators. In the article, Terry Jordan, president of the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers, underscores the complexities of school nurse work, noting, “We have so many families living in deep poverty, and for some of these families, the […]

2016-11-21T13:01:51-05:00October 16th, 2015|Nursing|4 Comments
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AJN’s September Issue: Anaphylaxis at School, Central Line Care, EBP, More

SeptemberAJN’s September issue is now available on our Web site. Here’s a selection of what not to miss.

It’s back-to-school time, and on our cover this month is a photo of Head Start nursing supervisor Travia Williams weighing a student in the program’s classroom at Cocoa High School in Brevard County, Florida. The program provides enrolled children with screening, physicals, and other health care services.

According to the National Association of School Nurses, a third of all school districts in the United States have reduced nursing staff and a quarter don’t have any nurses at all. Yet there is the potential for more emergencies in school now than ever, with school nurses treating increasingly complex medical conditions and chronic illnesses. For more on the important role school nurses play in handling these health emergencies, see the In Our Community article, “Emergency Anaphylaxis at School.” And don’t miss a podcast interview with the author (this and other podcasts are accessible via the Behind the Article page on our Web site or, if you’re in our iPad app, by tapping the icon on the first page of the article).

Applying EBP to Practice. Despite the recognized importance of evidence-based practice (EBP), there continues to be a gap between the emergence of research findings and their application to practice. In this month’s original research article, “Staff Nurses’ Use […]

2016-11-21T13:04:00-05:00August 29th, 2014|career, nursing research|1 Comment
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School Nurses: We Don’t Just Need Them for the Obvious Cases

Peggy McDaniel, BSN, RN, an occasional contributor to this blog, works as a clinical liaison support manager of infusion, and is currently based in Brisbane, Australia.

Sitting in the dark movie theatre, I hear a familiar high–pitched “beep, beep, beep.” The sound brings me to full attention, away from the action on the big screen and back to my “date,” a blond and very handsome five-year-old boy sitting beside me. I see him mouth the words, “I can’t breathe,” but he makes no sound.

Children at playground, Brisbane, Australia, 1939/Wikimedia Commons Children at playground, Brisbane, Australia, 1939/Wikimedia Commons

He’s not trying to be quiet for fellow moviegoers—he’s getting no air from his ventilator, as the alarm has indicated. Though his eyes are open wide and his nostrils flared with an oxygen-starved expression, his eyes still hold trust. He knows I can help him breathe, now—quickly, the Ambu bag is in my hand, squeezing breath into his immobile body, as I feel around in the dark for a disconnected vent circuit. (Of course, I had already silenced the alarm as quickly as possible, for the other kids and their parents in the theater during the lightly attended matinee.)

Such adventures out of the children’s hospital were a monthly occurrence. A child life therapist and a nurse would take medically fragile kids out into the community, usually with parents in attendance. These afternoons of fun gave the parents and kids hands-on experience before discharge.

And something […]

2016-11-21T13:08:27-05:00January 31st, 2013|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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