What were your fellow nurses reading and watching last year to stay up-to-date on the latest evidence-based practices and nursing trends? Find out by exploring our “Top 10” list.
This collection of resources reflects the most popular acute and critical care nursing CE activities offered by AACN in 2018. From moral distress and resiliency to ECG monitoring and medications, you’ll find information in these journal articles, webinars and conference sessions to help you practice at the highest level and continue providing the very best care to patients and their families.
- Predictors of Moral Distress in a U.S. Sample of Critical Care Nurses - Experiencing repeated episodes of moral distress in nursing practice can lead to burnout and impact our effectiveness. This article in American Journal of Critical Care (AJCC) explores aspects of our work environments related to these experiences and suggests ways to decrease their occurrence.
- Owning Your Future: Building Personal Resiliency in Times of Burnout and Challenging Environments - Sometimes, we experience situations at work that drain our capacity for compassion and caring for our patients and ourselves. This National Teaching Institute presentation shares practical ways of increasing your ability to effectively respond to stressful situations.
- Show Your Stuff and Watch Your Tone: Nurse Caring Behaviors - Our patients and their families have unique perspectives on what caring means. The researchers who authored this article in AJCC identify themes of caring that may help you work with your patients in ways they also perceive as caring.
- Making a Connection: Family Experiences With Bedside Rounds in the Intensive Care Unit - Whether you already engage patients and families in bedside rounds or you’re looking to begin, this journal article in Critical Care Nurse (CCN) can improve the experience. Study results identify key features of bedside rounds that create a strong connection between the patient, the family and the healthcare team.
- Letting the Patient Decide: A Case Report of Sedative Self-Administration During Mechanical Ventilation - Nurse administration and management of sedatives for mechanically ventilated patients is the current standard. Is there a better way? This case report in CCN shares the observations and experiences of one patient who used an experimental research protocol for sedation.
- Updated Practice Standards for ECG Monitoring: Impact at the Bedside - We rely on electrographic monitoring of our patients every day. This AACN webinar delves into ECG standards and how they apply to specific patient needs, including QTc, continuous ST segment and arrhythmia monitoring.
- Creating Healthy Work Environments for Second Victims of Adverse Events - Healthcare providers traumatized by an adverse patient event - the “second victims” - often experience profound feelings, with both personal and professional consequences. The information shared in this article in Advanced Critical Care (ACC) helps enable your contribution to an environment that supports second victims.
- Ketamine in the Intensive Care Unit - Although still considered a nontraditional sedative in critical care units, ketamine is being used more regularly as an opioid alternative. In this quick drug update in ACC, you’ll learn about the data supporting various off-label uses of ketamine in critical care, as well as its adverse effects and key elements of monitoring patients who receive the drug.
- Residual Neuromuscular Blockade in the Critical Care Setting - Longer-than-expected neuromuscular blockade in our patients puts them at risk for further complications. This article in ACC prepares advanced practice nurses to respond to the high incidence and complications of residual neuromuscular blockade.
- Updating Your Practice: The 2017 Sepsis Guidelines - This AACN webinar provides an overview of the most recent Surviving Sepsis Campaign Guidelines, which impact our daily nursing practice. The presentation integrates science on the pathology of sepsis with evidence-based interventions and provides access to tools for noninvasive identification of responders to fluid resuscitation and the qSofa score for sepsis.