Clik here to view.
Stopping Eating and Drinking: The Case of a 100-Year-Old Who Sought a Legal...
Gertrude (not her real name; other identifying details have been changed) was 99 years old. Having survived the Holocaust and overcome many other challenges in her long life, she thought it ironic...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Notes from the Healthweb and Nursosphere
This week Not Nurse Ratched has an amusing, meandering, and thoughtful post about the uses of Facebook by patients in the hospital. There’s a short excerpt below, but read the whole thing here. They...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The ‘Inexhaustible Well’: Notes from a Trauma Nurse on Mortality
UW Digital Collections/via Flickr By Marcy Phipps, RN, a regular contributor to this blog. Her essay, “The Love Song of Frank,” will be published in the May issue of AJN. Years ago, long before I was a...
View ArticleClik here to view.
End-of-Life Discussions and the Uneasy Role of Nurses
Amanda Anderson, BSN, RN, CCRN, is a critical care nurse in New York City and enrolled in the Hunter-Bellevue School of Nursing/Baruch College of Public Affairs dual master’s degree program in nursing...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Presence, Improvisation, Dark Humor: Crucial Skills of a Hospice Nurse
Illustration by Pat Kinsella for AJN. Here’s the start of “Molly,” the Reflections essay in the November issue of AJN, written by hospice nurse Thom Schwarz. Late evening, early spring, the peepers not...
View ArticleClik here to view.
An Oncology Nurse’s Heart: Helping Dying Patients Find Their Own Paths Home
Julianna Paradisi, RN, OCN, is an oncology nurse navigator and writes a monthly post for this blog. Heart Break = Heartachegraphite, charcoal, watercolor, adhesive strip, by julianna paradisi The...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Unexplained Deathbed Phenomena: Honoring Patient and Family Experience
By Betsy Todd, MPH, RN, CIC, AJN clinical editor luke andrew scowen/flickr creative commons When my dad died, a special little travel clock that he’d given me years before stopped working. It restarted...
View ArticleClik here to view.
A Nursing Perspective on a Recent NEJM Palliative Care Article
By Pam Malloy, RN, MN, FPCN, director and co-investigator of the ELNEC Project, American Association of Colleges of Nursing (AACN), Washington, DC. I just read a New England Journal of Medicine article...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The Balancing Act: A Dying Patient and a Spouse Who Can’t Let Go
Illustration by McClain Moore The Reflections essay in the March issue of AJN is called “The Balancing Act.” The author describes a situation she faced as an ICU nurse in which her efforts to keep a...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Nursing Stories: Celebrating a Family Matriarch’s Life as Death Approaches
Illustration by Gingermoth for AJN. All rights reserved. In this month’s Reflections essay, “Helen’s Family,” a home health nurse remembers a family that was not ashamed to celebrate life around a...
View ArticleClik here to view.
PTSD and Falls: For the Elderly, a Lost Sense of Safety and Control
Jack lowers his head and presses his temples with his thumbs. He whispers, “Am I going crazy?” In the weeks after his fall and trip to the emergency department, something has gone painfully awry. He’s...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Integrating Strong Emotions as a Developing Nurse
Most people, I would venture to say, start off in their profession with a fair degree of idealism, and this certainly holds true for nurses. When I talk with nursing students or new grad nurses and ask...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Honoring the Moral Concerns of Caregivers Afraid of Giving Morphine
Joan’s breathing relaxes as the morphine starts working. Her son Travis, on the other hand, is clearly upset as we sit at her bedside where she is dying. Despite his mother’s intense respiratory...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Nurses, Dying, and Who Gets to Decide
by Ramon Peco/via Flickr On Wednesday, a California court declared the state’s right-to-die law unconstitutional. The End of Life Act (AB-15) was passed in 2016 in a special session called by Governor...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Not Until Cairo: A Flight Nursing Tale
Worsening signs. The author’s flight path circled the globe The cabin of the Learjet is dark, the heart monitor a metronome over the drone of the engines and pulse of the mechanical ventilator. I’ve...
View ArticleClik here to view.
How a Patient’s Family Heals a Nurse in this Era of Medicine
“This family’s brave, selfless, and clear-minded approach to their daughter’s last days showed me that it is still possible for me and my colleagues to heal in the ways we want to heal, hurt in the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Who Is Doing Advance Care Planning in Nursing Homes?
When I was an ED nurse in a city hospital years ago, we often received patient transfers from area nursing homes. Usually these patients were very elderly, appeared cachectic, and were largely...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Control: Ninety, and Still Haunted by a Husband’s Dying Promise
I will forever be haunted by the passing of Mrs. Haley. On the final days of her life, I was deemed her best, last support, because I knew something about the dangers of control. Or so I thought. Work...
View ArticleClik here to view.
DNR Does Not Mean Do Not Treat
Nurses and the meaning of DNR. I recall a patient I had as a very new nurse who was designated as do not resuscitate, or “DNR.” The patient had suffered an intracranial bleed and because of his...
View ArticleClik here to view.
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...
View Article
