Cheryl Jaglowski-Ho, BSN, RN, CRN
2018 ARIN President
Hello to all.
I had the opportunity to attend the American Nursing Association (ANA) meeting this past month, representing ARIN. There were approximately 600 RN’s from all over the country. It is quite an honor for me to be representing ARIN in this group. Being part of the larger RN group, helps Radiology nurses to form our own nursing practice. It was inspiring to see the power and dedication from such a large group of nurses promoting change, for the better, in nursing.
The themes covered were many, with an emphasis on preparing for the future. I will briefly outline how ANA is advocating for nurses in the current health care climate. First off, they covered the Opioid Public Health Crisis with the big question “What is the risk to healthcare workers?” This generated much discussion. Some of the lesser questions asked by the group were, “Is it in the unnoticed grains of a drug which fell from a piece of clothing and is easily absorbed via mucus membranes,” “What about the uncapped needle found in a boot of the unconscious patient,” or “What about the suspected overdose who requires multiple doses of Naloxone?” “Should intranasal Naloxone be available everywhere in the hospital setting, on the EMS vehicles and in the school nurse's office?” “Are regular gloves enough or should the gloves be Nitrile?” “How can you teach safe needle practices to everyone who would like to carry a reversal kit?”
The discussion then evolved to “What about in sedation practice, where we spend time?” The group felt the capnography is a good starting point by advocating for its use in your practice. (ARIN advocates the use of Capnography for all procedural sedation exams. The tools and education to help support you can be found on the ARIN website.) The group pondered if a partnership with the American Association of Nurse Anesthetists could be forged to develop a standard around levels of care need for the opioid dependent person. There are currently no identified universal recommendations around caring for patients in an opioid crisis, from the protective equipment, to safe work practices. The meeting identified needing a safe way to search for drug paraphernalia, how to protect oneself from accidental exposure, like substances that may be found on contaminated clothing. The biggest discussion took place around health care policies that need to be in place for accidental exposure. Here is where ANA shines. They have a mechanism in place to reach elected officials, and advocate for safe work practices, proper PPE, and targeted education for families and staff. It was rewarding to me, to see how responsive ANA is to advocate for nurses’ rights.
Emerging innovations were another theme. The discussion highlighted new technologies, like robots and 3-d printed body parts. The vision of nursing care for hospitalized patients may change with robots. There is a robot that will lift a person out of bed and place them in a chair, a true MMLE environment, I envisioned that patients can be moved to the exam table easily or brought to the scanner room by a robot. No longer needing a lift or hover mat. The visionaries see that eventually all health information will be privately owned, not hospital or health system owned. This will hopefully give better access to information, as it will be controlled by the patient, the owner. When I think of this, I wonder how will PACs images be stored, how small will the files be, and what will the format be? Informatics nurses will be in high demand in this new environment.
The last emerging theme for nursing is the Ethics debate on the “The right to die.” This discussion revolved around the Code of Ethics, and how an RN can be present for the patient who wishes to end their life. As you can imagine, this brings about many ethical concerns that radiology nurses may be at the table in discussion with families. How to help define the wishes of the patient, family and the caregiver’s moral grounds, and navigating explanations around G- tubes, ports and drains. The biggest concern centered on the verbiage used in the Nursing Code of Ethics. This brings up the question about how familiar ARIN members are with this document as well as the Scope and Standards of Radiology Nursing. It was certainly a vivid discussion.
As I end this brief note, I want to encourage each of you to familiarize yourself with the Resource pool, https://arinursing.site-ym.com/page/NewVolunteers This is the area where you can indicate where you would like to serve in ARIN. Currently these are the projects looking for volunteers. Revision of the Core Curriculum, with the revision of Scope and Standards to follow and then the New Grad Orientation manual. If you volunteered for these important publications in the past, would you kindly consider sharing your expertise with this group? We also would like volunteers who like social media and would like to help with updating it for ARIN.
As always, I am available via email to answer any questions or concerns you have about ARIN. My contact info is Cheryl.jaglowskiho@arinursing.org.
