American Nurse Research Articles

Illuminating the Contributions of African American Nurse Scientists Despite Structural Racism Barriers: A Qualitative Descriptive Study.

Illuminating the Contributions of African American Nurse Scientists Despite Structural Racism Barriers: A Qualitative Descriptive Study.

The contested status of theory/theorizing and humanism/posthumanism in Olga Petrovskaya's Nursing theory, postmodernism, poststructualism, and Foucault.

The contested status of theory/theorizing and humanism/posthumanism in Olga Petrovskaya's Nursing theory, postmodernism, poststructualism, and Foucault.

The Association Between Korean American Nurse and Primary Care Provider Burnout, Areas of Worklife, and Perceptions of Pandemic Experience: Cross-sectional Study

Korean immigrants are among the fastest-growing ethnic minority groups and make up the fifth-largest Asian group in the United States. A better understanding of the work environment factors and its impact on Korean American nurse and primary care provider (PCP) burnout may guide the development of targeted strategies to help mitigate burnout and workplace stressors, which is critical for the retention of Korean American nurses and PCPs to promote better alignment of national demographic trends and meet patients' preference for cultural congruence with their health care providers (HCPs). Although there is a growing number of studies on HCP burnout, a limited number of studies specifically focus on the experience of ethnic minority HCPs, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic. In light of these gaps in literature, the aim of this study was to assess burnout among Korean American HCPs and to identify work conditions during a pandemic that may be associated with Korean American nurse and PCP burnout. A total of 184 Korean American HCPs (registered nurses [RNs]: n=97; PCPs: n=87) practicing in Southern California responded to a web-based survey between February and April 2021. The Maslach Burnout Inventory, Areas of Worklife Survey, and Pandemic Experience & Perceptions Survey were used to measure burnout and work environment factors during the pandemic. A multivariate linear regression analysis was used to assess work environment factors associated with the 3 subcategories of burnout. No significant differences were found in the level of burnout experienced by Korean American nurses and PCPs. For RNs, greater workload (P<.001), lower resource availability (P=.04), and higher risk perception (P=.02) were associated with higher emotional exhaustion. Greater workload was also associated with higher depersonalization (P=.003), whereas a greater (professional) community (P=.03) and higher risk perception (P=.006) were associated with higher personal accomplishment. For PCPs, greater workload and poor work-life balance were associated with higher emotional exhaustion (workload: P<.001; worklife: P=.005) and depersonalization (workload: P=.01; worklife: P<.001), whereas only reward was associated with personal accomplishment (P=.006). Findings from this study underscore the importance of strategies to promote a healthy work environment across multiple levels that recognize demographic variation among Korean American RNs and PCPs, potentially influencing their burnout mitigation needs. A growing recognition of identity-informed burnout experiences across frontline Korean American RNs and PCPs argues for future explorations that capture nuance both across and within this and other ethnic minority nurse and PCP groups. By recognizing and capturing these variations, we may better support the creation of targeted, burnout-mitigating strategies for all.

An African American Nurse Battling Racism

An African American nurse and scholar reflects on the racism she has experienced throughout her career.

Illuminating the Contributions of African American Nurse Scientists Despite Structural Racism Barriers: A Qualitative Descriptive Study.

A qualitative descriptive approach examined African American nurse scientists' (AANSs') experiences with African American research participants despite obstacles of structural racism. Fourteen nurse scientists participated in semistructured interviews that provided data for the thematic analysis. Major themes included barriers to overcome as doctoral students, cultural experiences with structural racism, designers of culturally sensitive research, and humanitarian respect and relationship depth. This is the first research study to illuminate the contributions of AANSs who lead research in health disparities. Therefore, nursing leadership needs to illuminate AANSs' contributions, increase nurse diversification, and dismantle structural racism that creates obstacles that ultimately impact population health.

Through the Lens of Servant Leadership: African American Female Nurse Leaders’ Journey to Executive Status

This research examined how African American female nurse leaders describe their journey to their current positions as executive leaders. This study gave voice to 8 African American female nurse leaders in health care facilities in the southeast United States. The theoretical frameworks used were critical race theory and servant leadership. Three themes resulted from this phenomenological research, (a) there is no blueprint, (b) it comes with the job, and (c) the secret to my sauce. The findings of this study will inform aspiring African American female nurse leaders on how to achieve their leadership goals.

From poster to publication: Seven steps to success

From poster to publication: Seven steps to success

Health Disparity, Natural Disaster, and COVID-19: Perspectives From a Bahamian American Nurse.

Trauma clusters are formed when 2 or more disasters occur simultaneously and/or consecutively. These disasters have the propensity to potentiate health disparities. The purpose of this article is to share thoughts about critical caring theory and how the theory can inform holistic nursing action when health disparity amplifies trauma clustering.

How to Conduct a High Quality, Interactive Virtual Meeting:: Learnings From Virtual Magnet® Site Visits

Virtual meetings are now a core construct of how business operations are conducted during the coronavirus pandemic. There has been a sharp increase in the use of video and interactive meetings to assure business continuity while maintaining the community's safety and workforce. Additionally, technology has given rise to businesses re-evaluating how outcomes can be reached today and in the future. Our ability to conduct high quality, interactive virtual meetings is essential. Virtual meetings offer many advantages, such as decreasing travel costs, and expand the definition of reaching a more diverse audience while incorporating technology to stay connected. The benefits extend to meetings beyond the organizations' confines where care occurs, to professional events, conferences, regulatory visits, and other virtual meetings. In response to the novel coronavirus, the American Nurse Credentialing Center now uses this technology to meet the site visit requirement to achieve Magnet designation. This article discusses how to conduct effective virtual meetings, how organizations can best prepare for a Magnet® virtual site visit, and the critical lessons learned to assist nurse leaders in conducting effective Magnet virtual site visits.

Two sides of editorial queries: Editors and authors

Two sides of editorial queries: Editors and authors

Leveraging Academic-Clinical Partnerships to Create an Operating Room Nurse Pipeline.

This article describes an academic-clinical partnership program between a school of nursing and an American Nurse Credentialing Center Magnet®- and National Cancer Institute-designated Comprehensive Cancer Center based on a shared vision and multifaceted for optimal new graduate operating room (OR) recruitment and use of clinical partner resources. The program, now in its 3rd year, has a 100% retention rate among the cohorts. Implementing a multifaceted OR partnership program based on nursing theory is a strategy for workforce development to increase retention of new graduate OR nurses.

NNJ Journal Club - A Nurse Assignment Refused by the Patient - What to Do?

American Nurse Journal, 16(8), 22-25. https://www.myamericannurse.com/patient-refusalwhen-a-patient-refuses-a-nurse-assignment/ Nurses in settings caring for patients with chronic kidney disease (CKD) may establish long-term nurse-client relationships over years following patients through the management and progression of their disease. Does patient bigotry toward nurses or other staff members represent discrimination against employees? Hospitals have a duty to provide a safe work environment for nurses and at the same time provide appropriate care to patients... The former group of patients requires that leadership and possibly security must be mobilized to deal with the behavior to ensure the safety of staff members as well as the patient.

The Mentoring Experience: Perceptions of African American Nurse Leaders and Student Mentees.

The purpose of this study was to explore the perceptions of African American mentors and mentees about the mentorship experience and examine mentorship as a blueprint for success in a nursing school. Using a concurrent nested mixed-method, purposeful, and criterion-sampling technique, we surveyed participants from a 4-year public institution's mentorship program about the impact of the program and its effects on college progression. Four themes emerged from our analysis of the African American nursing students and the role of mentor-ship: challenges, desire for guidance, sharing of knowledge, and positive outcomes. On the basis of our findings, we developed a set of hypothetical practices involved in establishing mentorship programs and evaluated mentorship potential as a strategy to promote engagement and retention of African American undergraduate nursing students to increase diversity within the profession of nursing. [J Nurs Educ. 2021;60(1):25-28.].

The Backwash of War: An Extraordinary American Nurse in World War I, by Ellen N. La Motte.

The Backwash of War: An Extraordinary American Nurse in World War I, by Ellen N. La Motte.

Creating safe and healing environments: Innovative curriculum to support team members during patient and family escalations in a quaternary care pediatric hospital

Workplace violence in healthcare settings is at a crisis point. Healthcare organization have almost as many serious injuries from violence then all other industries combined (OSHA, 2013; Phillips, 2016). The costs of workplace violence have reached a crescendo provoking a response from several leading healthcare organizations including the Center for Disease Control, Occupational Safety and Health Administration, American Organization of Nurse Executives, American Nurse Association, and the Joint Commission who have all prioritized workplace violence initiatives.To address the issues of workplace violence our hospital embarked on a systematic change to improve the physical and psychological safety of faculty and team members. A multidisciplinary curriculum team developed the Creating Safe and Healing Environment course that introduces concepts to honor the unique demand on team members as they manage the intricacies of caring for others in a hospital setting. The team revisited the complex nature of the relationships and partnerships that are formed in healthcare between the team member, patients and families.The focus of this paper is to discuss the complex issue of workplace violence and review the development of curriculum that focuses the complexities of caring for pediatric patients, introduce the concepts of healing environments and teaches the skills and knowledge needed to co-create safe and healing environments for both care providers and their patients. This paper will also highlight the how a curriculum of this type is informed by the expertise of nursing theories including revisiting Nightengale ideals and incorporating Jean Watson's “Philosophy and Science of Human Caring”.

Transitioning an Advanced Practice Fellowship Curriculum to eLearning During the COVID-19 Pandemic.

The COVID-19 global pandemic brought mandatory shelter-in-place orders, disrupting traditional face-to-face teaching methods for advanced practice fellowship programs nationally, creating a challenge for fellowship program directors to preserve curriculum using nontraditional methods. Using a variety of both web-based and app-based virtual platforms, a nationally accredited fellowship program converted traditional in-seat learning modalities to elearning platforms using both synchronous and asynchronous education. Preliminary data indicate that knowledge acquisition and perceived fellow satisfaction are preserved despite the abrupt change to program delivery. Programmatic modifications were submitted to the American Nurse Credentialing Center for compliance and deemed as creative, innovative, and collaborative. Curriculum for advanced practice fellowship programs can be favorably converted to elearning using virtual platforms during a crisis. Through prompt reevaluation and restructuring, virtual platforms can replace in-seat didactic lectures, patient case studies, mentoring, and even simulation, while ensuring program continuation and compliance with accreditation standards. [J Nurs Educ. 2020;59(9):514-517.].

COVID-19: Nurses have responded, now it is time to support them as we move forward.

The inspiration for The American Nurse Project, Dr. Rhonda Collins, DNP, RN, FAAN, is Chief Nursing Officer for Vocera Communications. Every year around Nurses Week, Dr. Collins publishes a report examining important issues that impact the nursing profession worldwide. Her 2020 CNO report looks at many of the challenges impacting nurses before, during, and after COVID-19—highlighting the mental anguish and physical burdens that COVID-19 has placed on nurses and other frontline healthcare workers as they put themselves in harm’s way to protect others. Dr. Collins examines the foundation of cognitive science and outlines a three-point strategy to guide hospital and nurse leaders moving forward as they strive to support staff members: lightening clinicians’ cognitive load by addressing the difference between documentation and communication, relieving the burden of adapting to multiple systems by giving clinicians control over how they communicate, and providing clinicians with clear, contextual, just-in-time information—using software to enhance workflow, not distract from it. During these unprecedented times, health leaders can honour nurses by providing them with the tools to help strengthen resiliency and healing from this crisis.

Innovative curriculum design for learner-centeredness and eustress learning in critical care educational programs

Background: Hamad Medical Corporation (HMC), Qatar, aims to be MAGNET accredited (Nurse Excellence Program) by the American Nurse Credentialing Center (ANCC), in addition to be an academic health center. For these accreditations it is required to establish specialty foundation courses1 and one of these courses is the Critical Care Foundation Program (CCFP) which was designed by HMC critical care and educational experts. During the planning and curriculum design stages, the scientific and planning committee had a thematic focus on; learner-centeredness, active learning, and eustress learning strategies2,3. Methods: Stressful learning has negative impact on achieving learning outcomes2,3. For effective implementation of learner-centeredness and eustress learning, the CCFP design embedded different interactive teaching and assessment strategies including but not limited to; case-based teaching, competency-based teaching, interactive group learning conversations, and demonstration workshops1,2,4,5. To get the CCFP certificates learners should attend the whole program. However, there is a clinical attachment (competency assessment) and the CCFP was designed as eight teaching days over 8 weeks (one day per week). The program design was planned purposefully as the critical care nurses are given enough time to go to the critical care clinical fields to do the competency assessment for related CCFP teaching topics. Eight hundred critical care nurses have attended CCFP over the last four years. During the program, learners were given a chance and appropriate time to consolidate their knowledge and skills, in addition to bridge the gap between theory and practice, and to become competent and specialized ICU nurses with normal and tolerable levels of stress (eustress)3–5. As per the Qatar Certified Healthcare Practitioner Continuing Professional Development requirement, all course participants completed an evaluation form, which we administered online and combined with the participants’ ability to download the program completion certificate. The data from the participants’ evaluation forms was reviewed by the course scientific and planning committee which then was used to make further recommendations. Results: The CCFP curriculum design was helpful and effective in controlling critical care nurse's stress level which was evident by learner's self-reporting feedback and assessment tools (Table 1). Moreover, the program design was effective for active learner's engagement which was evident by the learner's feedback, educational experts, and peer review reports (Tables 1 and 2). A total of 800 nurses underwent the critical care specialty competency assessment process, and they were signed off as competent in all the domains assessed. Conclusion: Eustress learning allocates the learner at the center of the learning process and provides better learning outcomes. The design of this teaching curriculum which integrates different modalities of teaching and assessment methods helps learners to be actively involved in the learning and assessment process. Considering flexible and evidence based assessment methods in addition to written exams is recommended to decrease stress among learners. Reflection, and competency clinical attachment are recommended teaching and assessment methods to decrease learning and assessment stress levels, and to promote the effectiveness of the learning and teaching process.

Ellen N.La Motte. The Backwash of War: An Extraordinary American Nurse in World War I. Edited with an introduction and biography by Cynthia Wachtell. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2019.

Ellen N.La Motte. The Backwash of War: An Extraordinary American Nurse in World War I. Edited with an introduction and biography by Cynthia Wachtell. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2019.

Writing Resources—An Annotated List of Helpful Books

Writing Resources—An Annotated List of Helpful Books