Author Archive, Kim McAllister, RN

I have been conducting a research project over the last year. There is a particular source of stress affecting Registered Nurses that has yet to be quantified, qualified or even discussed in higher academia. It affects one registered nurse at a time, unless there is more than one RN in the family. The more RNs in the family, the more nurses it affects. It is called the "Nuptial Effect". ***** The onset can be up to one year before the ... More »

One of the nice aspects of my job is that I get to work with nurses from all education backgrounds, from ADN all the way up to PhD. One colleague in particular will have a PhD, with her focus on nursing history. Could I get luckier than that? Not only did she inspire me to go on with my education, but she is a wealth of information on everything nursing. I had the pleasure of reading one of her papers, ... More »

You just never know what you will find on the internet! I headed over to the National Institute of Nursing Research to see what I might find for today's column. As expected, I found a plethora of information. What I did not expect was to find an online class entitled Developing Nurse Scientists. Described as "general research training for nurse scientists who are in the early stages of their ... More »

I do a lot of research for my Nursing Jobs.org columns. This was a gem of a find! Think nursing history is boring? Take a look at this "mission statement": "...Nursing history is not an ornament to be displayed on anniversary days, nor does it consist of only happy stories to be recalled and retold on special occasions. Nursing history is a vivid testamony, meant to incite, instruct and inspire today's nurses as they bravely trod ... More »

"Nurse Researcher". What pops into your mind when you hear that phrase? If you were like me, the phrase conjured up images of old gray-haired stern nurses who hadn't touched a patient in fifty years, sitting with their noses between the pages of musty old library stacks. I seriously thought that without a doctorate in nursing, there was no place for me in nursing research. I was wrong. There is a place for all of us in the research ... More »

She decided to be a nurse at the age of eighteen. She worked in the New England Hospital for Women and Children until she was accepted at the nursing school. She was thirty-three years old. She was a student of the first professional nursing school in the United States. Out of her class of forty-two, she was one of only four who graduated from the sixteen-month course of study. If that alone was not enough to distinguish Mary Eliza Mahoney, she ... More »

If you have ever (a) been a baby or (b) had a baby you probably used a product made by Johnson and Johnson. If you are an RN, you may have seen a poster or two from the Johnson and Johnson "Discover Nursing" campaign If you are a nursing researcher, you may be well aware of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. If you are like me and have just realized ... More »

Emily Morgan, RN is not widely known. A Google search turns up a few comments about her role as the "diphtheria nurse" in the 1925 Nome, Alaska outbreak. The story of how dog teams raced lifesaving antitoxin to the ice-bound village - sledding over 1000 miles in five days - is legendary. It is still celebrated as the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race. There is a statue of the lead dog in Central Park. There is no ... More »

Many different patient surveys are used to ascertain patient "satisfaction". None of them allow patients to actually evaluate their nursing care. There is a discrepancy between measurement of "patient satisfaction" and a genuine evaluation of nursing care received. But... what exactly constitutes "quality nursing care" from the patient's point of view? No real criteria have been defined. Until now. This new assessment tool is called the "Patient's Assessment of Quality Scale - Acute Care Version (PAQS-ACV). ... More »

Did you know that physicians were hesitant to allow nurses to measure blood pressures? In fact, nurses did not routinely use stethoscopes for blood pressure auscultation until the 1960s! Lest anyone mistake the nurse's stethoscope for the doctor's device, they were called "assistoscopes" or "nurse-o-scopes" and made in lightweight pastels. By differentiating between the two, the appearance of nursing overlapping medicine was minimized. At the time of its introduction, the cuff represented a massive change in ... More »