Aim: Throughout their careers, nurses must deal with patients that may invoke feelings of dejection, repulsion, or distress. This abjection of the patient is a real issue already established within the literature. This article seeks to enlighten what continues to be silenced in nursing practice. Approach: This article will present a paradigm of the nurse, patient’s body, and professional caring through the lens of abjection as theoretically defined by Julia Kristeva, using body hair in women as a forum for discussion. Conclusion: Abjection is linked, by its very nature, to the definitions of professional caring. The ability to read a body through the abjection of one’s own self is a rite of passage for most nurses.

A language that characterizes the work of informal caregivers as burdensome dominates the academic literature on dementia caregiving. Informal caregiving is a socially important activity of significant economic benefit that is both gendered female and primarily carried out by women. Words collocated with caregiving and caregivers were extracted from a sub-set of recent professional journal articles on dementia caregiving. Collocations were numerically described and grouped into three categories: (1) recipient (or what caregivers receive as a result of caregiving), (2) generative (what caregivers do or generate as a result of caregiving), and (3) demographic (the general context of caregivers and caregiving). Collocations in the recipient category were most numerous followed by demographic and generative collocations. Overall collocations suggested dementia caregiver/caregiving passivity in the context of an unrewarding, burdensome experience. Questions raised in relation to findings focus on whether the view of caregiving revealed may further inscribe oppressive practices related to disabilities, age, and gender roles.

Confronting global health crises requires nurses who demonstrate leadership and the ability to collaborate with other disciplines. Regional partnerships can act as “accelerant synergists” to develop the capacity of nurses locally benefiting the region as a whole.

Mexican American elders have higher levels of functional impairment and chronic illness, yet they use formal home care services less than do non-Hispanic White elders. This article describes the processes by which Mexican American elders and their caregivers decide to use home care services. Interviews were conducted with Mexican American elders (n = 11) and family caregivers (n = 12) for a sample of 23 individuals. The emerging substantive grounded theory included three stages that described the process of deciding to use home care services: Taking Care of our Own, Acknowledging Options, and Becoming Empowered. The processes describe how Mexican American families eventually accept home care services while maintaining their cultural norm of taking care of elders. The theory gives voice to both elders and caregivers in this process, adds to extant knowledge, and shapes interventions to support traditional Mexican American family values such as elders’ staying at home as long as possible. The theory meets nursing’s goals of reducing health care disparities by improving or sustaining elders’ health and functional ability, decreasing the caregiving burden, and reducing health care costs.

According to National Institute of Health Pathways to Prevention Workshop (2014), chronic pain affects an estimated 100 million Americans, with approximately 25 million people experiencing moderate to severe chronic pain, which negatively impacts their ability to function leading to a diminished quality of life. Pain is the primary reason Americans are on disability, which adds to the economic and social burden of suffering for the nation. Chronic pain costs are estimated to be between $560 and $630 billion per year. An estimated 5 to 8 million Americans use opioids for long-term management of chronic pain, which can have deleterious effects on their lives including addiction. Recent evidence suggests that acupuncture, a treatment modality that has been used worldwide for over 2,000 years, may provide a useful pain management option for those who suffer from chronic pain. The investigation into its mechanism of action and efficacy remains elusive, but promising.

The review of acute pain describes the problem of unresolved pain and its effects on the neural, autonomic, and immune systems. Conceptualizations and mechanisms of pain are reviewed as well as theories of pain management. Descriptive studies of patient and nurse factors that inhibit effective pain management are discussed, followed by studies of pharmacological and nonpharmacological interventions. Critical analysis reveals that most studies were atheoretical, and therefore, this proliferation of information lacked conceptual coherence and organization. Furthermore, the nature and extent of barriers to pain management were described, but few intervention studies have been devised, as yet, to modify the knowledge, beliefs, and attitudes of nurses and patients that are barriers to pain management. Although some of the complementary therapies have sufficient research sup port to be used in clinical pain management, the physiological mechanisms and outcomes need to be studied. It is critical at this time to design studies of interventions to improve assessment, decision making, attentive care, and patient teaching.

This article is a study of the experiences of community based nurses; specifically, their ratings of the adequacy of time they had to complete treatment and prevention activities. Perception of adequacy of time to complete job functions is important because of its links to job satisfaction and job stress. The largest predictor of a sense of inadequate time was visit characteristics. Specifically, it was the mental health speciality team which was most likely to experience inadequate time to deliver treatment and prevention activities. Possible explanations include the time required to deliver care to this patient population, and/or the greater travelling distances and coordination activities linked to provision of services to this patient population. Nurse characteristics were also important in the analysis. Nurses with an RN designation were less likely to report stress with the time they had to complete their activities. Years of community nursing experience was also an important predictor; individuals with greater community experience were less likely to report inadequate time for their duties.