The American Journal of Nursing wrote a blog post about my recent essay, “The Traumatized Patient.” You can read it here on the journal’s website, “Off the Charts.”

My essay, “The Traumatized Patient,” is out this month in the American Journal of Nursing. “The Traumatized Patient” is an essay about those patients whose trauma histories have lead to or exacerbated somatic complaints, often eclipsing that which we can easily treat with traditional western medicine. Originally drafted when I was a student nurse practitioner on one of my earliest rotations, I finished this essay a little over a year into my practice for the American Journal of Nursing‘s Reflections column.

The American Journal of Nursing is the oldest and most honored broad-based nursing journal in the world. It is considered the profession’s premier journal, and it is an honor to have my writing included in it.

Two years after conducting this community assessment in Baltimore, my paper, Connecting Hispanic Women in Baltimore to the Mercy Medical Center Sexual Assault Forensic Examiners/Forensic Nurse Examiners Program: A Preliminary Assessment of Service Utilization and Community Awareness, has been published in the Journal of Forensic Nursing.

ABSTRACT: Sexual violence and gender-based violence represent a major public health problem causing significant negative mental, physical, and social outcomes for victims. The rapidly growing population of Hispanic women in Baltimore are both more vulnerable to sexual assault and less able to access postassault services. In an effort to assess service utilization and community awareness of the Mercy Medical Center Sexual Assault Forensic Examiners/Forensic Nurse Examiners Program, we conducted a retrospective chart review of 2,322 women who were seen by the program between 2010 and 2013 and found that only 2.5% of the women were identified as Hispanic, about half of what Baltimore City demographic data would predict. This exploratory pilot project, augmented by key informant interviews, reveals that Hispanic women are underutilizing sexual assault services. Multiple barriers exist for Hispanic women in obtaining victim services, including lack of awareness within the community that the services exist, cultural factors, language barriers, lack of awareness of legal rights, and a fear of deportation.

For the second week in a row, I’m on the No Extra Words flash fiction podcast. This week’s Episode 46: To Watch You Go opens with an untitled piece of my microfiction.

Here’s the episode blurb.

They also did a blurb about me-on-the-podcast.

As they noted during the episode, this is the first time they’ve aired an author’s work in two back-to-back podcasts!

This week, I have a poem aired on No Extra Words, the weekly flash fiction podcast. This week is the last installment of their poetry month series. My piece- a poem called “Storage“- is about 5:45 minutes into Episode 45: Everything Must Go.

Here’s the episode blurb,

the episode,

and here’s a ‘Meet the Poets’ blurb.

No Extra Words is weekly podcast of great English language short stories under 2,000 words.  Stories come from all over the world. Episodes typically feature 2 to 3 stories, and the producer tries to keep each episode around 15 minutes. The podcast is completely free to listen or subscribe to.

My recent Contributor Spotlight for about my story “Coyotes” in The Bellingham Review can be read here.

Nowhere Is More Important Than Here (NIMTH) has come out with a second volume.

NIMTH Number Two is a 58-page, full-color, advertisement-free magazine featuring pictures and words from Tibet, Vietnam, North Korea, the United States, and more.  I am one of eleven contributors to this volume, with my short story “Past the Breakwaters” about the schooners off of the coast of Maine. You can order a copy online through magcloud, or, if you’re in the Portland area, you can pick it up in person around town.

About the zine:

This magazine is a celebration of place and experience. We provide a space for adventurers to tell their tales, travelers to talk of their struggles, for anyone that has had an eye-opening experience to share their wonder with others. We wish to promote awareness of our world and our place in it, and to appreciate the places we go, the people we meet, and the places we stay, not least of all our own homes.

Multiple volumes of The Delmarva Review are now available on Amazon for online purchase and download to your kindle, iPad, etc.

To read more of my work (and a whole host of other great stories and poems), go to Amazon.com and download:

• The Delmarva Review Vol. 6 and read “Undertow” (fiction)
• The Delmarva Review Vol. 4 and read “Nursing 101” (nonfiction)
• The Delmarva Review Vol. 3 and read “Tetherball” (fiction)