Wound Debridement: And Other Recommended Reading from AJN’s December Issue

This month’s cover photo shows a surgeon performing a total knee arthroplasty. See our “On the Cover” column for more.

The December issue of AJN is now live.

This month’s CE, “Evidence-Informed Nursing Clinical Practices for Wound Debridement,” provides nurses with a wound management framework, an overview of wound debridement options based on the potential for wound healing, and scope of practice considerations for developing a plan of care.

Two Original Research articles in this issue explore aspects of care following orthopedic surgery:

• “Improving Pain Assessment After Inpatient Orthopedic Surgery: A Comparison of Two Scales”: This study compared the commonly used Numeric Rating Scale with the Interventional Pain Assessment scale to determine which scale patients and their nurses prefer. (Open Access)
• “Changes in Sleep Quality After Total Knee Arthroplasty: A Systematic Review”: The authors examine the relationship between sleep quality and pain following this procedure.

Various types of water can be used to flush enteral feeding tubes, but which type of water is best supported by evidence? Read “Using Tap Water for Enteral Tube Flushes” to learn about a quality improvement project that explored this question and implemented the use of tap water as a safe, cost-effective alternative to sterile water at a multisite oncology institution.

“Palliative Nursing in Home Health Care Across the Lifespan” discusses the key elements and challenges of primary palliative nursing in the home health care setting and offers two case scenarios of patients receiving such care.

See also the extensive health care news sections, the Drug Watch and Journal Watch sections, an In the News article on school cell phone bans, a Specialty Spotlight on flight and transport nursing, and more.

Browse and subscribe.

Some articles in this issue like the original research studies and the editorial will be free to access; others will require log-in or subscription. You can subscribe to AJN, America’s most respected and oldest general interest nursing journal, for just $37.95 for a year (12 issues), so why not give it a try or give a subscription as a gift? We pay attention to appearance as well as content, and hope the cover of every issue will look good on a coffee table!