A nurse is confronted with a situation that involves performing a procedure they are unfamiliar with. What is the most appropriate first step according to the Nurse Practice Act?

A. Providing skilled medical interventions: While hospice nurses do provide symptom management and medical care, this scenario focuses on emotional and psychosocial support rather than direct clinical interventions. Medical care is secondary to the family’s need for guidance.

B. Coordinating indirect care services: Indirect services such as arranging equipment or home support are part of hospice care but do not address the family’s emotional transition and acceptance of death.

C. Enhancing quality of life: Hospice aims to enhance quality of life, but this statement is broad. The scenario specifically highlights supporting the family’s emotional adjustment rather than general life quality measures.

D. Helping the family transition from recovery to acceptance: Hospice care includes assisting families in understanding and accepting the dying process, coping with anticipatory grief, and preparing for the loss. This scenario exemplifies the nurse’s role in guiding emotional and psychological adjustment to impending death.

A. The first formally educated Black nurse in the United States: Mary Eliza Mahoney graduated from the New England Hospital for Women and Children Training School for Nurses in 1879. She is celebrated as the first African American to complete formal professional nursing education in the U.S., paving the way for diversity in the profession.

B. The first nurse appointed to the Army Nurse Corps: This distinction belongs to Annie W. Goodrich, who helped establish and lead the Army Nurse Corps. It is not associated with Mary Mahoney.

C. The first woman to establish a nursing school in the United States: Florence Nightingale inspired nursing education reforms, and several American pioneers established nursing schools, but Mary Mahoney did not found a school.

D. The founder of the first public health nursing program: Lillian Wald is credited with founding the Henry Street Settlement and initiating public health nursing. Mary Mahoney’s primary contribution was as a trailblazer in professional nursing education.