Nursing Profession and OBGYN.net Nursing

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Barbara Nesbitt: "Hi, I'm Barbara Nesbitt and I'm at the American Society of Reproductive Medicine in Toronto. I have the really great pleasure of talking with Mary Juneau-Norcross, who is a nurse practitioner, and who is at the Harvard Van Guard Medical Associates group. But the best thing of all is she's from Boston, and you all know that's where I'm from. So what we're really here today to talk about is the new section on OBGYN.net that my heart belongs to - the OBGYN.net Nursing. I'm going to turn it over now to Mary because she has some marvelous ideas, and Mary's going to be the Chairman of the Editorial Advisory Board. Mary, tell me about some of your ideas. You see this as a exciting thing?"

Mary Juneau-Norcross, NP: "I think it's very exciting. I think that nurses are networking people; we're people that like to talk to other nurses - we network. We like to make sure that we're an inclusive group, and the Internet, I think, is a perfect opportunity for us to reach out to other nurses. I think, the other thing is that it's a great opportunity for education for nursing. It's a great way for people in satellites to keep in contact with the centralized nursing office, so everybody who can't come to conferences can still get the information that's sent to them. We use e-mail a lot and we communicate very easily with each other. One of the problems that we've had is not being able to necessarily talk to each other, and that's a void that, hopefully, can be filled by something like a nursing network, that discussion group."

Barbara Nesbitt:: "I talked to Bruce Speyer who's one of the owners - both of us did a little while ago - and Bruce is going to build a forum. You had told me you're a long time user of the OB-GYN-L list that Dr. Klein started with, and suppose we build a similar type forum. We were talking about using this for a starting point to communicate with nurses, get them on there, and have them be actively involved in letting you and us know what they want on that section of OBGYN.net. We have oncology we're going to build, we have menopause, infertility, and all those disciplines - labor, delivery, that we have on the website now to be able to reach out to all the nurses that work in those fields. It is a wonderful thing."

Mary Juneau-Norcross, NP: "Absolutely."

Barbara Nesbitt: "And it's a great undertaking on your part, but I think it's an exciting one, don't you think?"

Mary Juneau-Norcross, NP: "Definitely, you can see here they've asked me to do this same conference - the round table - for several years in a row now because it's a very popular event; everyone loves it. The exhibitors have a lot of hands on for the clients to take a look at for the doctors and nurses."

Barbara Nesbitt: "Nursing has come a long way. I worked briefly as a nurse, but nursing has come a long way, and a lot of nurses are far more educated than they were 10, 15, 20 years ago. They're taking, as yourself a nurse practitioner, a far more active role in the care of the patient - correct?

Mary Juneau-Norcross, NP: "Right."

Barbara Nesbitt: "Your knowledge base is much greater, and therefore, you have a lot more to share with patients and with nurses in other countries. I think it's a wonderful thing."

Mary Juneau-Norcross, NP: "Especially with infertility nursing because it's all cutting edge, and it's so great to be able to communicate with people to find out what's working and what's not working. For instance, one of the new things that came out was a product called "Crinone," which is a vaginal jell. We had started to use it, we had some questions about it, and we work with a lot of patients but we were getting some strange side effects; and it would be great to talk to other nurses to see if they were having the same side effects. Also, education material can be shared with each other, you can share educational material, this…"

Barbara Nesbitt: "The Internet has - I don't mean to interrupt you - you said educational, the Internet has the ability, if you have pamphlets that are good that you want to share, they can download those pamphlets right off the Internet. If somebody writes an article that is pertinent to something that someone's interested in - they can download that. We know there is no end to what this Internet can do. Another area that I think, and it just came to me, I think it would be nice if we could pull in psychiatric nurses because you have menopause - you have women that go into depression; you have pregnancy and birth - your post-partum depression; and infertility - from the little bit I've gathered, those women can get extremely depressed especially when things don't work out and they don't have a baby. So do you think that that might be a nice compliment?"

Mary Juneau-Norcross, NP: "Absolutely, the difficulty that our patients have - the pain that they have - is overwhelming. The psychiatric part we have built into our program, we were the first department - and oncology came after us - to have it built into our service. We have two psychologists and a nurse practitioner who specializes in mental health, and that's a big part of our program. Everybody who goes into assisted reproductive technology has to have a visit, and now with all of the donor egg, donor sperm, embryo donation - all of that is becoming a big issue, and psychologically it's good."

Barbara Nesbitt: "I read Dr. Sandra Carson's book on the plane over, she wrote a book for the association, and in there she talks a lot - and I think this goes with infertility, miscarriage, or any of those things that don't turn out well - about how couples can almost become at odds with each other while they're going through this. They want a baby, and they end up and they don't even like each other. And they do need someone to pick up that that's happening."

Mary Juneau-Norcross, NP: "Right. It's well known that there's a real dissonance between the men and the women that takes the men to be at the same psychological place that their wives are at - it's almost two to three years before they're at the same place. So there really is a dissonance for couples, and a lot of them don't know that. I always tell my patients - you're going to be at one spot and he's not there yet - because they have a much higher belief in technology and the women are …."

Barbara Nesbitt: "Women are more patient, men - in some areas - they want technology to work."

Mary Juneau-Norcross, NP: "Right, and it will work but the women have less faith."

Barbara Nesbitt: "So I digress when I brought you over in that direction, but I think what I was trying to say is psychiatric nursing is an area that I might have forgotten about until we sat here today and talked. I'd like to see nurse practitioners and general nurses that work with women my age - their kids are all grown, husband has passed away, whatever - there is another life. I just see it as a very exciting, interesting section of OBGYN.net."

Mary Juneau-Norcross, NP: "Absolutely."

Barbara Nesbitt: "Mary, do you have anything else you want to say?"

Mary Juneau-Norcross, NP: "No, I think that, again, a nurses network that's what we do very well. I think being able to reach nurses in different parts of the country will be wonderful."

Barbara Nesbitt: "And educational and the more anybody - patient or caregiver - knows the better for everyone. Thank you, Mary."

Mary Juneau-Norcross, NP: "You're welcome."

Barbara Nesbitt: "We're going to work on it."