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From Fertilizer Plant Explosion to Tornado Response: No Rest for this Red...
By Debra E. Williams, MSN, RN, American Red Cross full-time volunteer nurse leader in national and state positions. Her past professional experience includes work as an ARNP and CNS in several...
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House of Death, House of Life: Reflections of a Hospice Volunteer
Perhaps the fundamental requirement for hospice volunteers is an open mind. Assumptions and first impressions rarely predict reality. I met a soft-spoken woman who was once a nun, then later became a...
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Ebola Changes You: Reflections of a Nurse Upon Return from Liberia
By Deborah Wilson, RN. The author is currently an IV infusion therapist with the Berkshire Visiting Nurses Association in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, and is completing her BSN at UMass Amherst. In...
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Nurses Getting Things Done: A Red Cross Volunteer’s Experience
Providing support after a local disaster. Red Cross volunteer nurse Debby Dailey hugging her client, Janetta Sconiers. Photo by Eddie Zamora for the American Red Cross Most people are aware of the...
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How to Know When to Go: One Nurse’s Approach to the Retirement Question
Many possible takes on ‘retirement.’ When I meet many of my nursing school mates from (too many) years ago, conversation inevitably turns toward talk of retirement. There are many angles to this, from...
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The First Injection
A nursing professor, now administering Covid-19 vaccinations as a volunteer, looks back on her 40 years of giving injections. The first one was the hardest. ‘I could have easily given up that day.’ I...
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‘Right Under Our Noses’: Nightmarish Nursing Home Conditions During the Pandemic
As vaccinations increase and COVID-19 infection rates in nursing homes plummet, it’s easy to forget just how bad things got in many of them and how ill-equipped many were in the the early months of the...
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Built for This: One NP’s Revitalized Practice
March 30, 2020, was the first day working at this clinic; it was the same day I was supposed to be returning from my honeymoon in Panama. That’s from our May Reflections essay, “Built for This,” which...
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Not to Save the World, But to Care, One Life at a Time
A nurse ponders the question of what makes her work matter. Illustration by Janet Hamlin for AJN. The Reflections column in AJN‘s August issue, “To Care When There Isn’t Enough,” is by Alison...
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