Nurse Appreciation

A Mediaplanet Guide to Celebrating Nurses Everywhere

JUNE 2022 | EDUCATIONANDCAREERNEWS.COM

Nurse Appreciation

Samantha Roecker Why the Philadelphia nurse ran the Boston Marathon in her scrubs

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6/6/22

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How AMSN is recognizing & supporting the e�forts of medical-surgical nurses

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Learn about IntelyCare, the app empowering nurses while solving sta��ıng problems

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What Is a Nephrology Nurse? ForwardThinking Advocates for Kidney Care Nephrology nursing, a specialty that provides patients with kidney care, is an autonomous area of practice that occurs in many settings. The largest number of nephrology nurses work in freestanding hemodialysis clinics.

Kristin Larson MSN, RN, AGNP-BC, National Secretary, American Nephrology Nurses Association (ANNA)

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typical day as a nephrology nurse includes preparing the patients for dialysis treatments, monitoring and assessing patients, providing information, teaching, and discharging patients home.

Because of this level of responsibility, nephrology nurses have a solid understanding of physiology, fluid balance, hemodynamics, and psychosocial needs of persons requiring kidney care.

Kidney disease education As forward-thinking advocates for their patients, nephrology @MEDIAPLANETUSA

nurses look beyond free-standing hemodialysis and educate patients to consider hemodialysis or peritoneal treatments in the home, or kidney transplantation.

This encouragement ties into the executive directive of 2019, Advancing American Kidney Health, which aims to improve kidney disease prevention, diagnoses, and treatment; promote home dialysis therapies as a management option; and increase the number of kidney transplants.

The proposal requires that nephrology nurses play a more prominent role in the public platform by educating persons @EDUCATIONANDCAREERNEWS

with and without kidney disease and, if needed, to prepare persons for in-home dialysis or transplantation.

Diabetes and hypertension The epidemics of diabetes and hypertension are the leading cause of kidney disease and failure. The number of persons who will develop kidney issues because of these diseases is sobering and not expected to decrease as time goes forward.

Despite nephrology nurses educating patients in the early stages of kidney disease about behavior changes and preventative measures, if kidneys progress to complete failure,

nephrology nurses are at the forefront of caring for the patients and their families. The family and immediate social support (or lack thereof) sets the starting point for education and advocacy. Successful nursing care engages the patient requiring kidney care where they are at that moment and is reinforced through a team of professionals dedicated to the patient. These nephrology nursing roles require highly skilled nurses that act in an autonomous manner.

Dialysis clinics The appeal for a new graduate nurse or experienced medical-surgical nurse to practice in a dialysis clinic would be the intense immersion in the process of dialysis, the mechanics of the equipment, and how the body responds to the treatment.

Nephrology nurses react quickly to changes in the patient’s physiology during dialysis by altering the mechanics of the hemodialysis machine to keep their patient safe. Care of a person receiving hemodialysis will literally get your blood pumping, as well as your patient’s blood through their machine. The payoff for a successful hemo-

dialysis treatment is sending the patient home to continue their life which would otherwise be shortened without this treatment and care. Because persons can receive dialysis treatments for years, lifelong relationships with patients and their nurses are created.

No two persons receiving dialysis are the same, and no two working days are the same.

Beyond the dialysis clinic, a nephrology nurse collaborates with nurses on the kidney transplant team, another role for nephrology nurses.

Together, the nephrology nurse and the kidney transplant team partner for success in the patient attempting kidney transplant by completing all the pre-transplant criteria and supporting transplant education. The patient will need an understanding of the elements required for placement on the transplant list, the possibility of a wait period for a kidney donor, and an acceptance of the new lifestyle that will be required for the success of the transplanted kidney. Along with the transplant team, nephrology nurses are the coach and anchor that reenforce education and hope. n

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Publisher Victoria Melland Business Developer Joelle Hernandez Managing Director Jordan Hernandez Lead Designer Kayla Mendez Designer Celia Hazard Lead Editor Jon Adams Copy Editor Taylor Rice Director of Content and Production Jordan Hernandez All photos are credited to Getty Images unless otherwise specified. This section was created by Mediaplanet and did not involve USA Today.

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“I

love the privilege of being responsible for something larger than myself and using my skills to help me succeed,” explains Roecker, 30. “Having said that, at times it is emotionally stressful and draining to be tasked with something so large, at times in subpar circumstances.”

To cope, the Philadelphia native turns to a hobby she adopted in 7th grade and has maintained since: running.

Running for a cause Recently, Roecker also took a step toward effecting change in her profession when she broke the Guinness World Record for the fastest marathon

PHOTO: JASON AYR

Nurse Samantha Roecker’s favorite part of her job — the responsibility — is also her least favorite part.

PHOTO: MARATHONFOTO

Why One Nurse Ran a Marathon in Scrubs

run in scrubs by about 20 minutes at the 2022 Boston Marathon. Roecker’s time was 2:17.2 (two hours, 48 minutes, 2 seconds). She raced in Moxie Scrubs, which provided her “total comfort,” she says, as she ran to raise awareness and funds for nurses’ mental health in partnership with the American Nurses Foundation’s Well-Being Initiative.

“The idea came when so many of my friends and coworkers had to pivot their roles to support COVID patients over the last few years. Each day there’s a new story about healthcare workers burning out and nurses who have struggled since the start of the pandemic,” says Roecker, who is a clinic nurse in the otorhinolaryngology practice at the Perelman Center for Advanced Medi-

cine at Penn Medicine and a student in the Family Nurse Practitioner Program at The University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing.

Spreading smiles Roecker values building relationships with patients and their families, and the feeling of mutual respect among the nursing community. She ran, in part, to honor her colleagues.

“I chose to run in scrubs in honor of those nurses who are struggling.

I wanted to remind them that we can do hard things — while also putting a smile on my friends’ faces as I attempted to beat a Guinness World Record for the fastest marathon run in scrubs,” she says.

As the COVID-19 pandemic continues, so do the struggles that come with it. Roecker is continuing to call for greater access to mental health resources for nurses.

“We understand that this job is physically and emotionally demanding, although we did not expect the trauma that was and continues to be associated with the COVID-19 pandemic,” Roecker says. “Access to mental healthcare is difficult in general; we especially need to find a way to raise awareness and support for the growing population of healthcare workers who have an increased need for mental health resources. I pledge to continue to work on this, and I hope to inspire others to do so as well.” n Melinda Carter

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How Travel Nursing Empowered One Nurse and Saved Her Career Like many nurses, Sarah Gaines was frustrated at being underpaid and overworked in her staff nursing job as a labor and delivery nurse.

Still, the work was rewarding for Gaines.

“Seeing a baby take their first breath on this Earth is an everyday thing for me,” she says.

“That’s amazing. I love it.”

It wasn’t until Gaines’ father died a few years ago that she made a decision that changed her life: she was going to become a travel nurse.

She came to that conclusion when she requested the day off after her father’s funeral and the request was denied due to staffing needs. Gaines worked the shift and had a breakdown in front of a patient, who had just delivered a baby boy and was introducing the baby to his grandfather.

“Instead of just sitting around and complaining about how terrible it is,” she says, “when I realized that things were not going to change, I jumped into travel nursing to take back control of my career.”

Empowered Gaines, who has been a nurse for 10 years, worked three years as a staff nurse and has been a travel nurse for seven years.

“I pretty much jumped in and didn’t look back. It’s crazy because, unfortunately, so many nurses can relate to that story, and a lot of nurses had their breaking point during the pandemic,” she says.

These days, mandatory overtime for nurses is a must at many facilities, and it’s burning out people who love the profession. Gaines encourages medical facilities to adjust their culture and better support nurses, and for nurses to try travel nursing.

“It really puts the power back in your hands as a nurse. You get to choose when you want to work, where you want to work, and how long to do it.”

Gaines has had more than 20 contracts all over the United States. She’s currently in Florida, a work destination she chose because she wanted someplace warm, in a city, and near the beach.

For her, every new travel nursing assignment is rewarding: “There’s a new opportunity and a new experience with every single contract.”

Kristen Castillo

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In 2022, Medical-Surgical Nurses Take Center Stage

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ince the pandemic changed the world — and the lives of medical-surgical nurses administering acute care in hospitals throughout the United States — the Academy of MedicalSurgical Nurses (AMSN) has worked tirelessly to support a membership that found itself stressed, overwhelmed, and exhausted by a healthcare crisis of historic proportions. CEO Terri Hinkley, EdD, MBA, BScN, RN, CAE, speaks to their efforts.

With the demands of the COVID-19 pandemic falling on their shoulders, how are today’s medical-surgical nurses carrying on in their patient-first mission of care?

The nursing community is still pushing forward through the pandemic. COVID is not gone, and hot spots continue throughout the country. Medical-surgical nurses, and all nurses, continue to care for patients with COVID, and it continues to take its toll on healthcare professionals. It has been a very challenging two years for medical-surgical nurses.

They have seen the devastation first-hand. They have had to try and help patients and families manage a very uncertain and frightening illness where the death toll was devastating. Nurses initially lacked essential personal protective equipment and supplies, and they were also juggling upheaval in their own lives. It was incredibly stressful, yet medical-surgical nurses showed up day after day and did what they always do so very well: care for those that needed them at the worst and most vulnerable times of their lives.

What new strides is AMSN taking in advancing medical-surgical nursing career pathways?

Over the last two years, AMSN has invested heavily in professional education for our medical-surgical nurses. We are particularly proud of two products recently launched to support our members and the patients they serve. Earlier this year, AMSN developed the first-ever validated competency framework for medical-surgical nursing. It’s a comprehensive assessment that covers three dimensions: individual attributes, practice competencies, and outcome measures, and it’s measured across three proficiency levels.

The framework helps both individuals and organizations measure outcomes with actionable insights and benchmarking capabilities. The knowledge gained from the competency framework will assist nurses in navigating their career path in medical-surgical nursing and aid institutions in making informed decisions and adapting strategies to achieve better outcomes for their patients, organizations, and nurses.

How is AMSN recognizing healthcare organizations in support of the demanding specialty that is medical-surgical nursing?

AMSN earlier this year named Cleveland Clinic as the first recipient of our new Kathleen Singleton Award, which recognizes leading healthcare institutions that provide exemplary support to medical-surgical nursing units.

Cosponsored by Medtronic, Inc., the new annual award launched this year to recognize facilities that demonstrate an outstanding record of promoting a healthy workplace environment that fosters a patient-first philosophy. Cleveland Clinic was chosen for its robust support of nursing education and clinical competency, and for fostering respectful nurse-nurse, nurse-physician, and interprofessional collaborations.

What do you hope to see in continued support of the specialty of medical-surgical nursing?

One of the things that we know about healthcare is that it is a system; it is an environment in which individuals work with other individuals and within teams. These individuals and teams, these fast-moving nursing units, are often called upon to work long, strenuous hours in the support of their mission: to provide superior care to those in the most acute of health crises.

Our hope is that, with this recognition, today’s leading healthcare organizations will support the medical-surgical nursing practice by providing healthy, collaborative, and effectively structured working environments. Safe working environments for nurses, with processes in place for best practices, result in safe patient care outcomes. Medical-surgical nurses carry patient care on their shoulders, but they cannot do it alone. n

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The Modern Solution to Healthcare Staffing That’s a Win for Nurses, Facilities, and Patients Nurses need job �lexibility and healthcare facilities need to �ıll shifts. Now, an app is meeting the needs of both which is a win-win for everyone involved, including patients.

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ntelyCare, a workforce management app that matches nurses with facilities, is a modern solution to a long-standing healthcare staffing problem.

Nurses feel burned out, especially after working long hours and in difficult times during the pandemic. And many are now leaving the profession in droves. Meanwhile, healthcare facilities are always in need of qualified nurses and nursing assistants to staff shifts.

The IntelyCare platform — which gets its name from the idea of intelligent care delivery — uses artificial intelligence and behavioral science with machine learning algorithms to produce optimum pay rates and shift matching for nurses.

The company started in 2016, releasing their first mobile app, which enabled nursing professionals to select

shift work at facility partners. Within a year later, 100 facilities had signed up. By 2019, they had filled 2 million nursing shifts. Fast forward to 2022 and they have filled over 15 million nursing shift hours and are partnering with 1600 facilities in 28 states.

Sta�fing solution During the pandemic, there’s been an increased need for nurses who can travel and work different shifts at different facilities. But getting credentialed can be tedious and takes time.

Enter IntelyCare.

“We have to make it easier for nurses to be able to work cross functionally among systems,” says Rebecca Love, RN, MSN, FIEL, chief clinical officer of IntelyCare. “Credentialing is highly painful.

“The average length of time to credential a nurse into a

system is 90 days. The average system never could do that.

But when you come and work with IntelyCare, we created a credentialing process that is the gold standard across the industry, which allows our nurses and CNAs to be able to work across thousands of different facilities to easily go and meet those needs.”

Perfect job There are 4.3 million registered nurses in America. Rosa Nunez is one of those nurses.

For the past two years, she’s been working full-time with IntelyCare, filling shifts in skilled nursing and long-term care facilities.

A single mother of two teenagers, Nunez is also caring for her mother who has Alzheimer’s disease. It’s a busy life but she loves the flexibility her work schedule offers.

“This job has just been the perfect job for me,” she says.

“I could switch times depending on my plan for the week or the day. For instance, if my mom has an appointment with a doctor for the morning, I could always pick up a shift in the afternoon. I don’t need to request a day off whereas if I was working as a staff nurse in a facility, I’d have to ask permission in advance to arrive late or leave early.”

Love agrees and says the app empowers nurses, who routinely get called in on their days off, to make their own schedule.

“It’s flipping the power,” she says. “You are in control of your schedule in a way that nurses have never had before.”

Nunez prefers to plan her schedule by picking up shifts a week or two in advance. However, she also likes to know that if she needs to book a shift at the

last minute, she can with IntelyCare. She’s been impressed with the pay too, noting it far exceeds what she would get if she worked on staff.

Nunez feels appreciated in this role and looks forward to continuing working with the company.

“What I like about IntelyCare is that every time I go to a different facility, it’s always new faces, new patients, new health conditions, or new treatments that maybe I haven’t done before, and I’m like, ‘wow, this is a big opportunity for me to learn here,’” she says. n Kristen Castillo

Get more information about IntelyCare at intelycare.com

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How Discrimination Hurts the Entire Medical Field Domaine Javier faced discrimination in her nursing training for being transgender, but she fought back.

Domaine Javier had wanted to be a nurse since she was little.

“I had younger twin sisters at the time,” Javier says. “One of them was very sickly.

She had epilepsy and cerebral palsy, and the other one was completely healthy.”

Javier remembers seeing her sister hospitalized many times before she died at a young age. “I remember every time she would be hospitalized, the nurses were always the ones who were showing the best, most compassionate care out of all the medical professionals,” Javier recalls. “I remember watching them, and I thought, I want to be like them. I want to make a difference in someone’s life as much as they are making a difference in mine.”

Facing challenges Many people know Javier from MTV’s “True Life,” but she also made news when she sued California Baptist University in 2013 after they expelled her for not disclosing the fact that she was a trans woman.

“They expelled me for being trans, basically saying that I committed fraud because I put female in my admissions application,” Javier says. “Unfortunately, throughout my career, I have experienced my fair share of discrimination.”

Javier is now an advocate for fighting discrimination in the medical field, especially when it comes to gender. “Nursing is a profession where sex and gender do not matter,” she says. “You can go into a room and take care of your patient regardless of whether you’re male, female, or whatever you identify as. It doesn’t matter. You’re there to provide care, and you took the oath to give care to those who are in need.”

Despite all she has experienced, Javier remains optimistic about nursing.

She hopes to lead by example to end discrimination. “I know one can only dream,” she says. “You think it wouldn’t be so difficult to have simple answers.”

Ross Elliott

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Opportunity Through Adversity The last few years have shed light on the impact nurses possess in healthcare.

Our profession now has an opportunity to reinvent itself to meet the needs of the 21st century.

Just as death and taxes are an unavoidable part of life, so is adversity. We have all faced a magnitude of adversity these last few years that no one could ever have anticipated. As we continue in our lives, adversity will always play a role in that experience. Adversity is an experience that many of us would ideally like to fast-forward; however, it does not need to be a negative experience.

One can argue that it has provided us with an opportunity for growth and development. We, as a profession, chose to face adversity head-on. The challenges we have met have gained us valuable experiences and leveraged our strengths to find value we would have never thought possible.

If these last few years have taught anything to the healthcare industry, it’s that the most valu-

able asset of healthcare is the personnel — and the largest sector of that personnel is the nursing workforce. We as leaders must reimagine the future of what the healthcare team structure looks like to be sustainable for the 21st century. This review includes a global look at the roles and responsibilities of nursing to execute comprehensive care while also being fiscally responsible. The healthcare team structure of the past is not sustainable for the future.

Defying traditional gender roles The current environment of our profession must evolve to realize the future we desire for inclusivity. Traditional gender roles have shaped nursing for over the past 150 years. Barriers based on traditional norms are not exclusive to nursing. Over time, many professions have found the benefit of breaking down long-standing conventional role norms. Business, medicine, engineering, and law enforcement are only a few examples that have broken traditional image perceptions of

the public and have successfully recruited based on skills and character capacity and not by demographic descriptors. For the nursing culture to evolve, we must first focus on developing a renewed professional climate.

To evolve the current deeply held values, beliefs, assumptions, and rituals of nursing culture, recurring patterns of behavior, attitudes, and feelings that characterize the climate in our profession have to change. More simply put, we must change the perception of who a nurse is to the public.

We must emphasize what defines a nurse, not just the imagery you see in a magazine or TV show. We as a profession must understand that compassion, empathy, and caring can manifest in so many diverse ways, and our patient’s expectations of the delivery of those actions are just as diverse. We must seek parity in the profession and not equality in numbers to meet this challenge. Seeking parity based on how our workforce reflects the local communities we serve, not a specific threshold

percentage of each gender, race, or ethnicity, is the benefit our communities are looking for from our industry. The percentages will be supportive outcomes of our success, not hollow goals of the journey expecting a different culture only because a different volume of individuals exists. We should stop solely focusing on percentages and work on changing the image of nursing so that anyone can see a reflection of themselves in their caregiver.

We must also create the climate to provide an equal opportunity so anyone can become a nurse if she/he/they possess the passion, commitment, competency, and capacity to serve others. When you see yourself in the one you aspire to, it becomes the most powerful recruitment tool. If we work with a genuine unity of purpose, we will make the impossible possible for anyone and everyone who aspires to do something bigger than themselves. n Blake K. Smith MSN, RN, President, American Association for Men in Nursing

Nursing Certifications Enhance Nursing Careers A certified nurse is one who is building a commitment to lifelong learning. Certification builds a nurse’s career opportunities, supporting professional growth while equipping the nurse with skills and specialties to provide their patients with a higher quality of care.

Why is it important for nurses to get certifications?

• Certifications demonstrate a nurse’s commitment to growing competencies and enhancing their areas of specialty, expanding and strengthening opportunities for upward career mobility while also elevating a nurse’s confidence.

• Certifications — from medical-surgical nursing certifications to critical care certifications to nephrology nursing certifications and many more — elevate patient outcomes, institutional reputation, and, for the nurse, avenues to high career fulfillment.

• Certifications result in better job prospects by raising professional credibility, validating specialized practice knowledge, and proving a higher level of clinical competence, all of which can result in higher salary opportunities for competitive nurses.

What does the NNCC do to support certification pathways for nurses?

The Nephrology Nursing Certification Commission (NNCC) exists to establish credentialing mechanisms to promote patient safety and to improve the

quality of care provided to nephrology patients.

• NNCC supports the philosophy that there should be a diversity of examinations that will effectively provide the opportunity for certification at various levels of education, experience, and areas of practice within nephrology nursing.

• It is the goal of NNCC to promote the highest standards of nephrology nursing practice through the development, implementation, and evaluation of all aspects of the certification and re-certification processes.

• The NNCC is national in scope and works collaboratively with professional nephrology organizations to promote, advertise, and implement certification examinations as well as to recognize certified individuals.

What is nephrology nursing?

Nephrology nurses were at the front lines of patient care during the pandemic.

A high percentage of patients hospitalized with COVID-19 suffer from acute kidney injury because the virus damages blood flow to the kidneys and attacks the kidneys directly. Dialysis machines, artificial kidneys, and blood tubing supplies have been in short supply, necessitating innovation and flexibility by nephrology nurses.

Patients with chronic kidney disease and kidney failure on chronic dialysis are at increased risk for hospitalization due to COVID-19 because of their immunocompromised state.

Unfortunately, these patients with kidney disease were not prioritized to receive the COVID-19 vaccines when

they were first released, despite their vulnerability and the likelihood of high mortality if they contract COVID19. The strain on nephrology nurses was palpable.

At this time, opportunities for nurses practicing in nephrology are numerous and rewarding. Nephrology patients range from newborns to the elderly, and nephrology nurses today work in many places, including clinics, hospitals, education, research, and the community. Through certification pathways, nephrology nurses can truly grow in this vital specialty — ready to serve during times of normalcy and times of crisis. n Sandy Bodin, President, and Kathy Houle, Executive Director, Nephrology Nursing Certification Commission (NNCC)

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