For your reading pleasure, two new articles: Cancer Nursing Today and The American Journal of Nursing.
Cancer Nursing Today
I recently spoke at a conference on improving nursing education. In the column below I share some of what I heard there.
P.S. The conference was in Orlando, and it was warm and sunny, and there were palm trees, which made the trip a nice antidote to the winter blahs.
Be Prepared: How Nursing Education Can Do Better
ByTheresa Brown, RN-Last Updated:February 20, 2024
After I graduated from nursing school in 2007—the accelerated nursing program at the University of Pittsburgh—I read journalist Suzanne Gordon’s new book Nursing Against the Odds: How Health Care Cost Cutting, Media Stereotypes, and Medical Hubris Undermine Nurses and Patient Care. It discussed all sorts of things that never came up in my nursing classes, including the extent to which profit-making drives health care and how little institutional support often exists for nurses. That book prepared me for my first nursing job in a way that school did not, and I don’t think I was alone in that feeling of unpreparedness.
I recently attended and spoke at a conference* in Orlando, Florida, on new nurses leaving nursing and how nursing education could better prepare nursing students for the actual job of being a clinical nurse. I’m sharing some of the insights I gained there as a first pass on how to improve nursing education. To begin with, it’s important to understand the scope of the problem. According to a 2023 report from Nursing Solutions Incorporated, 29% of all new RN hires left their jobs within 1 year. Additionally, those new graduate nurses make up 33% of all RNs who quit, meaning the loss of new nurses can create significant staffing gaps for hospitals. Some of those nurses may have taken new nursing jobs, but losing one-third of all new hires is a high rate of attrition and hospitals should care because they have to pay for training those nurses. (Instead of working to retain nurses, some hospitals tried to charge nurses for their training.)
See how much you appreciate the wry humor in these cartoons after reading my column
The American Journal of Nursing
February is Black History Month and for the past few years that has meant that my February “What I’m Reading” column for AJN focuses on some aspect of the history of Black Americans and health care. I always quibble a bit with myself about whether writing about health care and Black Americans in this specific month is tokenism, but in the end I decide that ignoring Black History Month would be worse.
For this February I review a fascinating book about the Black nurses who cared for tuberculosis patients on Staten Island from the 1930’s through the 1950’s. It’s an amazing story. Really.
The Black Angels of Sea View
Tuberculosis has long been an international scourge, and although it remains epidemic, for centuries there was no cure. In the 40 years between the discovery of the drug isoniazid in 1912 and its clinical use against tuberculosis in 1952, more than 60 million people died of the disease. Maria Smilios's The Black Angels: The Untold Story of the Nurses Who Helped Cure Tuberculosis (G. P. Putnam's Sons, 2023) reveals the pivotal role that Black nurses working at Sea View Hospital in Staten Island, New York, played in finding the cure. Those Black nurses did work that White nurses were unwilling to do, all while navigating the racism of the time, which was surely no less virulent than tuberculosis. They would become known as the Black Angels.
The book begins with the story of one such nurse, Edna Sutton. Growing up in Savannah, Georgia, Sutton found her life circumscribed by “Jim Crow” laws, which mandated racial segregation and fueled discrimination. Sutton had trained to be a nurse, but discrimination prevented her from getting a nursing job, and she ended up doing office work. Then, in the summer of 1929, one of her former nursing instructors told her that a tuberculosis sanatorium in New York City was hiring “colored” nurses, even paying the education costs of those who needed additional training. Sutton applied, and after being accepted at Sea View, left Savannah for New York City and a new life as a paid professional nurse.
Learning Spanish
A few readers asked me if I used my Spanish when I was in Madrid. The answer is, yes! I was able to read signs and most people understood my slow, halting requests for things. However, the people of Madrid spoke so fast I understood practically nothing that any of them said, and they all spoke such good English that they would switch over to English immediately since it would be obvious that Arthur and I were confused. I told my friend Victoria, who’s from Argentina, this story and she said, “Ah, Madrid,” with a dismissive wave of the hand, which made me feel better. People spoke more slowly in Toledo and I understood somewhat more spoken Spanish there.
And I’m still learning Spanish. My community college class for this semester got cancelled due to low enrollment, which made me sad, but I’m continuing to do Duolingo and I’m trialing a different app that includes grammar lessons and actual vocabulary lists. The language learning continues to be fun and enjoyable and mind broadening in all kinds of small but significant ways. It feels like my new hobby.
I’ll share my Covid experience in my next newsletter
The short version is, it sucked!
Hugs to all, and stay well,
Theresa
Hi Theresa - I just happened to see BLACK ANGELS in the New Books section at my local library yesterday and snapped it up. I'm always up for a new book on some aspect of the history of nursing! Haven't had a chance to start it yet, but now after reading your review I'm anticipating an enlightening reading experience even more. Thank you!
Theresa, you gave us quite an interesting mix of observations on this post. First, the education and professional development of new nurses, and the troubling losses in the workforce for a variety of reasons. You then provided an interesting book review of “The Black Angels”, which motivated me to not only request a copy from my library, but also to once again have a discussion about the past and present racism experienced by our colleagues of color. Finally, you shared with us your experience speaking Spanish on a recent trip, which once again emphasized the importance of going outside one’s comfort zone by continually learning new things, even when that process can be hard.
And you have done all this while recovering from COVID…bravo!
Great reading today, Theresa.