A documentary spotlighting nurse hero stories during COVID-19 is now available online. A new nurse-led study examines the reasons for out-of-bed patient mobility in the MICU. Members of the Committee on the Future of Nursing 2020-2030 are calling on nurses to lead efforts on health equity. A podcast features episodes dedicated to the wild, stressful, often sad, and sometimes hilarious world of the emergency department. Read on for more nursing news and insights.
Documentary offers nurse hero stories
A new televised documentary produced in conjunction with the American Nurses Association spotlights the “above-and-beyond” work of COVID-19 nurse caregivers and is now available online.
American Nurse Heroes offers a first-person account of Shumi Mazzacano, an intensive care nurse at Doylestown Hospital in Pennsylvania. The special features true stories of nurses who provided care on the frontlines of the pandemic. From vaccine distribution to unique circumstances within the public health system and schools, nurses share challenges they have faced.
Nurse-led study examines patient mobility barriers
A new study co-authored by a clinical nurse specialist and based on input from nearly 50 nurse participants has examined the reasons for out-of-bed patient mobility in the medical intensive care unit (MICU).
Among the issues that nurses reported as barriers for not mobilizing intubated patients receiving mechanical ventilation were concerns about safety, competing priorities, and uncooperative patients.
The study, “Nurses’ Perceptions of Barriers to Out-of-Bed Activities Among Patients Receiving Mechanical Ventilation,” examined mobility practices of critical care nurses in a 56-bed medical intensive care unit (MICU) at a hospital in the Northeast. Participating nurses were interviewed at the end of their shifts about mobility practices for their intubated patients who met specific mobility criteria.
Although all 105 patients met early mobility criteria within 8 to 173 hours after intubation, none were mobilized for out-of-bed activities.
The study was co-authored by Dawn Cooper, MS, RN, CCRN, CCNS, a clinical nurse specialist in the MICU. “Creating a unit culture that embraces early mobility practices requires collaboration, education, and a commitment that patients who can do out-of-bed activities are actually mobilized,” said Cooper in a prepared statement.
The most commonly identified barrier was uncooperative behavior, agitation, or anxiety, even though the study excluded patients who were very agitated or combative. Other patient-related reasons for not mobilizing patients included active medical issues, such as undergoing procedures during the shift, being weaned from a ventilator or awaiting extubation, and having an unstable respiratory status.
The authors of the report recommend that units begin by reviewing their mobility criteria and protocols for patients with complicated medical conditions. Together, the team should take an inventory of the patient, nurse, and environment-of-care factors unique to their setting that present barriers to early mobilization. Once this groundwork is laid, an interdisciplinary protocol-driven mobility program that is known to be safe and effective can be systematically applied to overcome them.
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Committee challenges nurses to foster future of equity
Members of the Committee on the Future of Nursing 2020-2030 are calling on nurses to lead efforts on health equity. According to a report by Medpage Today, committee members, who include nurses, have noted that structural racism has led to poorer health outcomes among minorities for decades.
Residential segregation, individual discrimination, and implicit bias are among the reasons for health disparities that nurses can help to resolve, according to the committee. Nurses are being called on to “take the lead in combating the multiple mechanisms that perpetuate these disparities and to collaborate with other stakeholders to reform the structural problems that lead to these health inequities in the first place.”
Kenya Beard, EdD, associate provost of social mission and academic excellence at Chamberlain University in Chicago, cited barriers to diversity in nursing as among her primary concerns, specifically, especially for minority students entering nursing school.
Podcast spotlight: The “Q” Word Podcast
The “Q” Word — Quiet — is a word known in emergency services as a punishable, offensive word. Whenever the word is muttered, the night (or day) is inevitably flooded with emergency calls. On this podcast, an art major and a theatre major who met in college decades ago share stories, listen to interviews, laugh a little, and learn something new each episode dedicated to the wild, stressful, wonderful, terrifying, often sad, and sometimes hilarious world of the emergency department.
The Q Word Podcast is available on iTunes.
Views expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of Elite Learning or Colibri Group. Media referenced in this news round-up does not constitute an endorsement.
