Manicure by Julianna Paradisi 2014
It’s an honor to have my post and illustration, A Brief Meditation on Love, Loss, and Nursing, originally published on Off the Charts, the blog of the American Journal of Nursing, featured in the February issue of AJN
Click on the link above to read the issue online, and find look for Best of the Blog, A Brief Meditation on Love, Loss, and Nursing, in the table of contents.
In my mind, as long as the weather is good, summer isn’t over. However, the beginning of the new school year, and the return of football indicates that ritual outweighs my imagination.
Sigh.
It’s good to let an imagination run free from time to time, so I took the summer mostly off from blogging.
Preparing paintings for display. Image and paintings by jparadisi 2014
I’m back.
I think there’s a tendency to view creative work as less taxing, dare I say less challenging, than nursing. I wouldn’t say less, so much as different: Different types of knowledge, different sets of skills. The biggest difference, I think, lies in accountability. Harsh criticism of their work can damage an artist’s psyche.Missing a deadline for a post or art exhibition is unprofessional and negatively affects the editors and curators writers and artists work with. It leaves them in the lurch, which in turn negatively impacts the artist’s career.
In nursing, however, medication errors can seriously impact a patient’s health, with potential life-changing consequences for patient and nurse.
I discovered something this summer: Taking time off from creative projects creates a vacuum into which other projects, out of nowhere, are sucked in, filling the “free” time I worked so hard to create. I see this phenomenon in the lives of the retired too. In fact, I often tell my Mom, “You’re scaring me; retirement looks twice as busy as working life, without the paycheck.”
Mom just smiles, and says, “Remember, ‘normal’ is a cycle on the washing machine. Don’t wait for things to slow down. They won’t.”
She’s right.
An unexpected project close to my heart this summer was the opportunity to hang my paintings and monotype (one of a kind) prints in a health care setting. It is a very satisfying experience to work with a design team to select and hang art with the intention of improving patient experience. In the past, I’ve sat on selection committees choosing artists for hospital art commissions, but this was my first experience as the selected artist.
For me, it came together when a patient, unaware that I am the artist, made this remark about the art, “It makes me think of other things than why I’m here.”
Bingo. That’s exactly the result I was looking for.
The Adventures of Nurse Niki is back too. The latest episode, At The Raleigh, posted Monday.
Summer vacation brought fresh insights, generating posts for AJN’s Off the Charts. In a drop-in life drawing studio I drew a connection between art and nursing. A road trip with my husband inspired this post. And a close call with danger inspired yet another.
Normal is just a cycle on the washing machine.
Drawing From Life is my latest post for Off the Charts, the blog of the American Journal of Nursing. It posted yesterday. Often the lines between art and nursing easily blur, like soft charcoal lines smudged on paper. You might want to check it out, or leave a comment.
The Adventures of Nurse Niki now posts new episodes on Mondays, instead of Thursdays. Be sure to read week’s episode, Moving On..
Call Light Magazine: Looking for Real Nurse Models, The Adventures of Nurse Niki Chapter 30, posted Thursday. Niki and her coworkers answer the call for Real Nurse Models needed for a lifestyle magazine photo shoot. A little out there? Maybe, but real nurses don’t live in hospitals, do they?
NPR Syndrome is the name of my February post for Off the Charts, the blog of the American Journal of Nursing. It discusses the difficulty nurses have letting go of our work once we leave the hospital, due to information overload in our digital age.
The Adventures of Nurse Niki has a new format. The homepage is now static with Chapter One, like a book. The latest chapters are found by clicking the chapter number above the blog’s header, or from the Chapters drop down box at the upper left corner. Each chapters now has a brief description. The changes are in response to suggestions by faithful readers (you know who you are) and are intended to make The Adventures of Nurse Niki friendly to first-time readers, while keeping navigation easy for those following the story from its beginning.
Off the Charts has this to say about The Adventures of Nurse Niki:
This blog is made up entirely of first-person episodes told by a fictional nurse named Niki. Each episode is short, detailed, and engaging, and it’s easy to keep up with it on a regular basis, or quickly catch up if you haven’t yet read any episodes. Jacob Molyneux, AJN senior editor/blog editor
Kevin Ross, aka @InnovativeNurse wrote a review of The Adventures of Nurse Niki, with this highlight:
Julianna has embarked on something special for the nursing community. The Adventures Of Nurse Niki is one of the most intelligent perspectives of life as a nurse. These are the experiences of a “real nurse” if you ask me. Nurse Niki is a smart and dynamic character who works night shift in the PICU at a California hospital. A good television show or fiction novel could certainly draw out the sexiness of working in the ICU, but with Niki’s story we quickly discover that this dynamic character is also struggling to cope with life at the bedside, and as a mother and wife. Hidden within each chapter the discovery is that Nurse Niki is in fact you. She’s me. Well that is of course if I was a woman.
You can interact with Niki on The Adventures of Nurse Niki’s Facebook page. Please don’t forget to “Like” it too. Show Niki some love! Thank YOU!! to the readers following The Adventures of Nurse Niki, the retweets of @NurseNikiAdven (Hashtag #NurseNiki) and those who Like Nurse Niki’s Facebook Fan Page. The support is very much appreciated!
JParadisiRN readers may know that last year I began writing a monthly blog post for Off the Charts, the blog of the American Journal of Nursing. The latest post, Voice of Dissension: When Nurse Teamwork and Patient Safety Diverge published yesterday. I think it’s worth a read, and even a comment, if I do say so myself. For readers unfamiliar with JParadisiRN, I also made the drawing that accompanies the piece.
Buy Yourself Another One, The Adventures of Nurse Niki Chapter 27, posted today. It’s about the eating habits of nightshift nurses and that special relationship between doctors and nurses.
The Adventures of Nurse Niki is a work of serial fiction. The blog is formatted so the most recent episodes appear at the top. New readers not wanting spoilers of The Adventures of Nurse Niki may begin at Chapter 1 and scroll up from there. Chapters are archived by month (click on the lined square icon on the home page). New chapters post weekly on Thursdays.
Off the Charts has this to say about The Adventures of Nurse Niki:
This blog is made up entirely of first-person episodes told by a fictional nurse named Niki. Each episode is short, detailed, and engaging, and it’s easy to keep up with it on a regular basis, or quickly catch up if you haven’t yet read any episodes. Jacob Molyneux, AJN senior editor/blog editor
Kevin Ross, aka @InnovativeNurse wrote a review of The Adventures of Nurse Niki, with this highlight:
Julianna has embarked on something special for the nursing community. The Adventures Of Nurse Niki is one of the most intelligent perspectives of life as a nurse. These are the experiences of a “real nurse” if you ask me. Nurse Niki is a smart and dynamic character who works night shift in the PICU at a California hospital. A good television show or fiction novel could certainly draw out the sexiness of working in the ICU, but with Niki’s story we quickly discover that this dynamic character is also struggling to cope with life at the bedside, and as a mother and wife. Hidden within each chapter the discovery is that Nurse Niki is in fact you. She’s me. Well that is of course if I was a woman.
You can interact with Niki on The Adventures of Nurse Niki’s Facebook page. Please don’t forget to “Like” it too. Show Niki some love! Thank YOU!! to the readers following The Adventures of Nurse Niki, the retweets of @NurseNikiAdven (Hashtag #NurseNiki) and those who Like Nurse Niki’s Facebook Fan Page. The support is very much appreciated!
A physician, standing in a busy hospital unit, was overheard telling a resident,
“If you want to be certain something gets done for your patient, find the busiest nurse in the unit, and ask her to do it.”
It’s true, nurses thrive on getting the job done.
Here at JParadisiRN blog, things are hopping. Besides transitioning to a new employment opportunity, I’ve been busy writing, and making art.
In case you missed it, Do EHRs Rob Nurses of Voice and Oversimplify Descriptions of Patient Care? is the title of my latest post for Off the Charts, the blog of the American Journal of Nursing. While I mostly love EHRs, the voice of bedside nursing is lost by reducing the nurse’s note to check boxes and smart phrases. However, not everyone agrees. What’s your opinion? BTW, the I made the collage illustrating the post; the text is from Florence Nightingale’s Nursing Notes.
Weekly, I write and illustrate a post for TheONC, The Oncology Nurse Community website. This week’s post, Which Came First, The Chicken or the Nurse? ponders the lack of privacy and personal space for nurses.
Chapter 13 of The Adventures of Nurse Niki is posted. In Collusion, Niki’s creative solution for managing her patient’s under medicated post-surgical pain last week yields an unexpected result, in which she coaches a father how to ask his daughter’s surgeon to treat her pain. How do you handle similar situations?
I receive comments from nurses, some asking questions. A recent comment submitted to an older post, Of Medication Errors and Brain Farts is a single line,
I made a med error and lost my job how do you go on
If the comment touches you, please reach out with support and advice for this nurse in replies to this comment. Let’s help out a fellow nurse, yes?
The Adventures of Nurse Niki Chapter 12 is posted!
In this week’s episode, A Happy Shift, Niki offers her opinion on why some surgeons don’t order enough pain medication for their patients. Do you agree? What do you think?
Off the Charts has this to say about The Adventures of Nurse Niki:
This blog is made up entirely of first-person episodes told by a fictional nurse named Niki. Each episode is short, detailed, and engaging, and it’s easy to keep up with it on a regular basis, or quickly catch up if you haven’t yet read any episodes.
Jacob Molyneux, AJN senior editor/blog editor
Comments on The Adventures of Nurse Niki blog are limited, however, you can interact with Niki on The Adventures of Nurse Niki’s Facebook page. Please don’t forget to “Like” it too. Show Niki some love!
Thank YOU!! to the readers following The Adventures of Nurse Niki, the retweets of @NurseNikiAdven, and those who not only Like Nurse Niki’s Facebook Fan Page. The support is very much appreciated!
The Adventures of Nurse Niki Chapter 11 is posted!
In this week’s episode, Niki reflects on sharing about patient deaths at grief debriefings, and how much extra time nurses already spend at the hospital for continuing education and skills training.
In contrast, Niki and friends from work finally make it to an after shift breakfast. There, they comment on men in nursing, the role of respiratory therapists (every ICU nurse knows skilled respiratory therapists are a crucial part of the health care team), and share thoughts on marriage.
Off the Charts has this to say about The Adventures of Nurse Niki:
This blog is made up entirely of first-person episodes told by a fictional nurse named Niki. Each episode is short, detailed, and engaging, and it’s easy to keep up with it on a regular basis, or quickly catch up if you haven’t yet read any episodes.
Jacob Molyneux, AJN senior editor/blog editor
Comments on The Adventures of Nurse Niki blog are limited, however, you can interact with Niki on The Adventures of Nurse Niki’s Facebook page. Please don’t forget to “Like” it too. Show Niki some love!
Thank YOU!! to the readers following The Adventures of Nurse Niki, the retweets of @NurseNikiAdven, and those who not only Like Nurse Niki’s Facebook Fan Page. The support is very much appreciated!
This month, in my post for Off the Charts, the blog of the American Journal of Nursing, I consider the differences between nursing burnout and boredom. There’s a great discussion going on in the comments.
Here’s the back-story to Differentiating Nurse Burnout from Boredom:
Nurse Niki received an email from a nursing student asking Niki her thoughts on various subspecialties of pediatric nursing (I am charmed that Nurse Niki gets emails). The student was concerned with the possibility of some subspecialties being more boring than others. Her comment coincided with my current change of employers, which I’d previously written about, also for Off the Charts. Surprisingly, or maybe not, I find myself recharged by the change, even though I hadn’t initiated it.
Read the post at Off the Charts and leave a comment. We’d love to know your opinion!
The Adventures of Nurse Niki Chapter 9 is posted!
In this week’s post, Niki unintentionally stands ER nurse Corey up for breakfast after her patient’s early morning code. As if that wasn’t enough, Niki meets a traffic cop on her way home from the hospital.
Off the Charts has this to say about The Adventures of Nurse Niki:
Jacob Molyneux, AJN senior editor/blog editor
You can interact with Nurse Niki on her Facebook page, and don’t forget to “Like” it. Show Niki some love!
Thank YOU!! to the readers following The Adventures of Nurse Niki, the retweets of @NurseNikiAdven, and those who not only Like Nurse Niki’s Facebook Fan Page, but post comments too. The support is very much appreciated!
