NurseZone Blog: RN Talk

A Salute to Combat Nurses: You Go, Girls and Guys

2009-11-19T07:15:00.000-08:00

We all remember Margaret “Hot Lips” Houlihan from the popular television series M.A.S.H.Sometimes ditzy in the social arena, she was a highly skilled and knowledgeable nurse when it came to performing in the battlefield OR during the Korean War. She and the surgeons sometimes had to operate under perilous conditions, and while the show was a sit com, it made some strong points about the morality

Kicking the Habit: Let Them Know Nurses Care

2009-11-16T12:48:00.000-08:00

The Great American Smokeout is just around the corner. This year the event happens on Nov. 19. The Great American Smokeout has been coming around annually on the third Thursday of November since 1976, but its origins date to 1971. That’s when a man in Massachusetts asked people to give up smoking for one day and donate the savings to a local high school. I’m not sure whether he was thinking more

H1N1: Creating Dilemma On All Sides

2009-10-29T16:14:00.000-07:00

The swine flu and vaccine are presenting some problems for nurses. In New York state, nurses are threatened with job termination if they don’t get vaccinated against H1N1. The state health department is telling all people who work directly with patients and those with whom they come in contact that they must be vaccinated for both the seasonal flu and the H1N1 virus.At least one nurse doesn’t

Cancer Screenings: What Should Nurses Say?

2009-10-28T20:13:00.000-07:00

I know that, because I’m a nurse, I’m going to be asked by more than one person what I think of the American Cancer Society’s new stand on the benefits and problems of screening for some cancers.According to a story by the New York Times, the society is “quietly” preparing a statement that will say that the benefits of screening for prostate and breast cancers may have been overrated. I suppose

Multi-State Licensure Compact - Is It Time?

2009-10-16T16:36:00.000-07:00

When I graduated from nursing school oh-so-many years ago, there was no National Council Licensing Exam.Every state devised its own nursing boards, and states differed on what were passing grades. I sat for my boards in Missouri – a multiple choice test for which we used a pencil to fill in those little bubbles. The exam was a five-parter, taken over two days, and students had to travel to the

Survey Shows the Changing Face of Nursing

2009-10-14T20:05:00.000-07:00

California is often called a bellwether state because trends are likely to begin here and that’s important because it has more than 10 percent of the country’s population. So it was with great interest that I read the results of the recently published California Board of Registered Nursing 2008 Survey of Registered Nurses.There’s a lot of interesting information in this 218-page report, which

Technology: Can't Live With It; Can't Live Without It

2009-10-05T17:22:00.000-07:00

Nurses must embrace technology every day. If they don’t embrace it, they at least must deal with it, so it bodes well to stay on its good side. Pretend technology is your friend. Until the late 1960s, hospital technology was pretty basic. I remember how excited I was in 1968 to learn how to read EKGs, and I worked in one of the first telemetry units in the country. What a great idea, I thought,

Death Panels...Nonsense!

2009-10-01T13:30:00.000-07:00

I don’t like talking about death, especially my own, but when all the rumors about government death panels were flying, I was hoping that the National Hospice and Palliative Care Association would use the opportunity to discuss the wisdom of life/death planning. Perhaps they did and I missed it; if not, what I wanted to see was hospice nurses speaking loudly and clearly to dispel the ridiculous

Would $2.3 Million Reach to the Moon and Back?

2009-09-21T13:58:00.000-07:00

Every day I wake up to a plethora of headlines and editorials examining and opining on health care in this country. The other week there was a story about federal prosecutors levying a $2.3 billion fine on Pfizer Inc.(which makes Bextra, Lyrica, Lipitor and Viagra among many others) for several infractions, including promoting the off-label use of several drugs.According to the Justice Department

Sometimes Nurses Can’t Really Help; We Just Have to Hope

2009-09-16T10:41:00.000-07:00

Today we are eight years out from Sept. 11, 2001.In some ways, it’s been a short eight years since the tragedy that happened in New York City, Washington, D.C. and Somerset County, Pennsylvania; in other ways, it’s been a long eight years. I still find it difficult to look at pictures from that day – the burning World Trade Center towers, the disbelief and fear in the faces of New Yorkers as they

Sometimes Nurses Can’t Really Help; We Just Have to Hope

2009-09-16T10:34:00.000-07:00

Nursing Shortages: If Not Now, Soon

2009-09-02T16:47:00.000-07:00

Believe me, I’m not an ageist.I think anyone who can do the work and wants to should, but I have little pangs of concern and sympathy for folks in their 20s and all new graduates who are looking for employment and can’t find it.There are reasons for fewer positions.One, of course, is that companies are downsizing. Another is that the boomers (and those beyond age 63) are holding onto their jobs.

The Perfect Storm: Too Few Nurses; Too Many Sick Kids

2009-08-27T09:46:00.000-07:00

It’s like the perfect storm waiting to happen.There’s that creepy thing out there hiding in the shadows called swine flu (H1N1) and way too few school nurses on the front lines to take care of all those kids who are possibly going to contract it. In a perfect world, says the National Association of School Nurses, there would be one nurse for every 225 students in schools that require "daily

Sick Celebs and the Web Site That Loves Them

2009-08-25T10:55:00.000-07:00

I flew home from the Midwest earlier this week and on the first leg of the trip, an announcement came over the intercom. Was there a doctor or a nurse in the house – uh, plane?The woman next to me hopped out of her seat, as did three others, so I didn’t bother joining the crowd at the rear of the plane. I peaked back a couple of times and it didn’t appear that there was anything urgent happening.

The Debate On Health Care: Let's Start With Some Basic Questions

2009-08-10T10:10:00.001-07:00

Things are getting ugly out there.The debate on health care and health insurance is spawning some really nasty behavior by those opposed to changes in the status quo, according to news reports that are coming fast and furiously via newspaper, television, the Internet and email. The congressional recess is providing time for legislators to return to their home districts and hold town hall meetings

Medically Speaking, the Good Ol' Days Were Not Always So Good

2009-08-03T17:00:00.000-07:00

I just finished watching a three-disk, seven-episode series on the life of John Adams, originally aired by HBO in 2008.It’s a marvelous series and deserved the several awards it received.“John Adams” chronicles the life of our first vice president and second president from prior to the signing of the Declaration of Independence in 1776 to Adams’ death on July 4, 1826 – fittingly the 50th

Have You Heard of the Wellderly Study?

2009-07-27T10:22:00.000-07:00

My father-in-law is a pretty amazing guy.He celebrated his 95th birthday recently and I’m pleased to say that he’s in pretty good health – and always has been.Imagine...a nonagenarian who has never been in the hospital.Dad was a mail carrier for four decades and worked until he was 70. The most serious problem he’s ever had is a couple of bouts with kidney stones. He also had cataract surgery and

We Can't Afford Everything for Everybody

2009-07-25T14:38:00.000-07:00

The debate in Congress over health care insurance is making me crazy – and nervous.Listening to the blow-by-blow daily reports is like reading a suspense novel or watching a serial mystery. How is it all going to turn out? Who’s going to win and who’s going to lose? Which proposals are going to live and which will die? And when it’s all over, are we going to understand what happened and what we

Do As I Say But Don't Ask Me Why

2009-07-21T13:44:00.000-07:00

Apparently a lot of nurses and physicians like their vitamins, minerals and other supplements as much as anyone, and they often recommend that their patients take them, too.This according to a report in the Nutrition Journal, an online publication of BioMed Central.Nine hundred doctors and 277 nurses were polled in 2007 about their use of dietary supplements, but the survey also found that most

Be Good to Nurses and They'll Stick With You

2009-07-14T14:20:00.000-07:00

Even before the recent economic hard times hit, many hospitals and other places that employ nurses were cutting back on paying for continuing education, according to the recently released 2008 Critical Care Nurses’ Work Environments study.The survey of nearly 5,600 critical care nurses found that the number of employers who provided no monetary assistance for continuing education rose from 16

Is the Media Giving a True Picture of Alzheimer's Disease?

2009-07-13T11:11:00.000-07:00

I am frustrated by what I read about Alzheimer’s disease in newspapers and magazines.If you believe the information in the articles, you’d think we could prevent dementia by eating broccoli, staying fit, taking a few vitamins and working crossword puzzles.One recent Associated Press article that sits on my desk cites a British study that suggests that working a few years past the standard

Hidden Illnesses: Looking Good But Feeling Not-So-Fine

2009-06-30T16:54:00.001-07:00

More than 133 million people in the United States suffer from at least one chronic condition, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That’s almost half of our population – a rather shocking number to me because half of our population doesn’t look sick.And therein lies the rub, says Carol Sveilich of San Diego, who has written a book about those living with what she calls “

Taking Care of Number One Is Not a Luxury

2009-06-29T16:59:00.000-07:00

Are nurses more subject to developing depression than other professions?Probably, according to a report published by the U.S. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration in October 2007. The report didn’t single out nurses, but it did find that 9.6 percent of full-time “health care practitioners” between the ages of 18 and 64 suffered from major depression.Compare that to a rate of

A Rose for Nurse-to-Be Jessica

2009-06-24T13:44:00.001-07:00

Here’s to Jessica Terry, an 18-year-old high school student who, despite doctors’ inability to provide a diagnosis for her sometimes severe GI problems, came up with the answer.Terry says she wants to become a nurse and she is just the type of investigator that the profession can use.The Sammamish, Wash., teen has suffered from abdominal pain, diarrhea, vomiting and fever for eight years,

Fair Food: Tastes So Good; Yet So Bad For You

2009-06-15T14:12:00.000-07:00

It’s that time of year when the county fairs begin to appear all over the country, and I’m thinking of all the nurses who are on standby at fair infirmaries, just waiting for the cuts, bruises, heat stroke and gastric catastrophes to come through the door.I’d imagine that if the artery-clogging fair food doesn’t bring on a myocardial infarction, there will at least be a need for vats of Pepto