NurseZone Blog: RN Talk

Hospital’s Weighty Hiring Policy No Longer Excludes the Obese

2012-05-14T20:24:00.002-07:00

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Nursing’s Future: Where Are You in the Big Picture?

2012-05-01T17:12:00.001-07:00

Just for the heck of it, I recently decided to Google the word “nurses” and see what would pop up. One of the first links sent me to the Occupational Outlook Handbook compiled by the U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), and surprisingly, it made for interesting reading. I was quickly drawn to “What Do Registered Nurses Do?” and I was pleased with what I read. Right at the

Willingness More Important than Age for Nurses Learning New Tricks

2012-05-01T15:05:00.001-07:00

I recently had a chat with a nurse who has been working on a hospital unit for more than 40 years. She said that she’s happy to still be working, but confessed that she entertains the notion of retiring “about every other day.” That’s because she is finding that working with electronic medical records and all other aspects of the digital age within the hospital might be more of a challenge that

Mandated Nurse-to-Patient Ratios? The Debate Continues at State and Federal Levels

2012-04-14T10:03:00.001-07:00

Tenacity.That’s what it’s going to take to get nurse-to-patient ratio legislation passed at the federal level, according to those who know their way around the nation’s Capitol."In California, it took us 12 years to get safe staffing legislation passed," DeAnn McEwen, MSN, RN, president of the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee told a nurses’ trade publication

The Nurse Who Became an Icon

2012-04-11T09:17:00.005-07:00

Nurses who visit San Diego must not miss seeing what is probably the biggest nurse in the world. She is part of a 25-foot sculpture that stands harborside, next to the U.S.S. Midway – an aircraft carrier-turned-museum that attracts millions of visitors each year.Visitors will You’ll quickly recognize the giant foam-and-urethane creation as a depiction of the famous photo taken by Alfred

AHRQ Report: Shame-and-Blame Culture Still Prevalent in Many Hospitals

2012-03-31T20:44:00.001-07:00

It’s been five years since the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) dispensed its first report on patient-safety culture in hospitals. In that 2007 report, AHRQ said that hospitals should shed the shame-and-blame philosophy in dealing with errors and adopt a “culture of safety” that encourages employees to discuss mistakes openly. Most nurses, doctors and pharmacists, however,

Nurses Have Known All Along: Everyone Needs Health Care Insurance

2012-03-27T15:01:00.001-07:00

I don’t know about you, but I’m hanging on almost every word, opinion and explanation of the case that is before the Supreme Court this week. Nine justices are hearing the arguments for and against mandated health care coverage; whether the federal government is “coercing” states into expanding Medicaid; and whether the rest of the Affordable Care Act is valid if the individual mandate is struck

Happy Nurses Make For Happy Patients

2012-03-18T16:46:00.000-07:00

It was recently announced that our local hospital is going to spend $1 million to increase its patient-satisfaction scores. This is what a consulting firm is charging for a three-year community campaign “aimed at improving the hospital’s patient satisfaction scores as reported by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.” According to the news story, the patient satisfaction scores at this

Good Deeds Benefit Nurse-Volunteers, Too

2012-03-13T10:31:00.004-07:00

Good deeds usually have a ripple effect, and sometimes that effect comes right back to those who do the good deed.Here’s an example: I recently read in the U-T San Diego newspaper about a group of nurses who traveled to Haiti to provide relief for a hospital staff that wanted to attend an educational conference. It turns out that these U.S. nurses, mostly graduate students, also got some

Tell Your Story About Bullying

2012-03-12T17:31:00.000-07:00

Bullying is a nasty phenomenon, and the last place we should expect to find it is in a workplace full of nurses. After all, we are healers, nurturers and advocates. But sadly, bullying among nurses is not uncommon. A 2006 survey of more than 4,000 critical care nurses in this country (published in Critical Care Nurse) found that 18 percent had experienced verbal abuse from another nurse. More

Shake, Bake and Burn Centers: The New Explosion in Homemade Meth

2012-03-07T14:24:00.000-08:00

When I fly, I need to take pseudoephedrine to avoid a lot of ear pain. The last time I purchased it, I had to ask the pharmacist, even though it is an over-the-counter drug. It’s been that way for a couple of years, because pseudoephedrine is one of the ingredients in homemade methamphetamine. By limiting access to pseudoephedrine, authorities reason, they make it harder to manufacture meth and

Unforgettable Patients, That’s What They Are

2012-02-29T15:06:00.001-08:00

Imagine how shocked the nurses and doctors at Palos Community Hospital, in Orland Park, Ill., were when they looked at the X-ray of Dante Aurullo’s head and discovered a 3.5-inch nail embedded in his brain.The 32-year-old man had been working in his garage the day before and had accidently shot himself in the head with a nail gun. According to recent news stories, a sensor on the gun made it fire

Nurses Are Ideal Researchers When It Comes to Patient Safety

2012-02-23T14:01:00.003-08:00

Looking for a research project?How about studying the problem of safety in ambulatory health care settings?Apparently there is little data on this, according to a commentary in the Dec. 14 edition of the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA). It’s been more than a decade since the experts at the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality issued a report that noted the lack of

Who’s Keeping Watch Over California's Nurses?

2012-02-07T15:42:00.000-08:00

Does it matter who monitors, licenses and investigates nurses as long as someone does it? That’s the question that some nurses are asking in California, and the answer depends upon who you ask.There’s a battle raging in California over who is best equipped to safeguard the public when it comes to the actions of registered nurses, but the average nurse and members of the public probably aren’t

Social Media’s Potential in Health Care

2012-02-03T13:51:00.000-08:00

Every day I wake up and wonder how far behind I am in the social media arena.While I’ve obviously embraced the practice of blogging, I’m not even sure I know what all the major social networking vehicles are. I know about Twitter and Facebook. I’ve refused to join the latter, not because I’m some dinosaur, but because I’d like to hang on to the last shred of privacy and control that I might have.

The New Year Is the Time to Take Stock

2012-01-10T16:21:00.000-08:00

I’m not sure what it is about the completion of the earth’s revolution around the sun that prompts us to make resolutions for the coming year, but it’s probably not a bad idea. Even if we don’t keep every resolution – or any, for that matter – it’s a good practice to take stock of our lives every once in a while. Most of us would like to try to make life better for ourselves and those we love,

2011-12-25T19:18:00.000-08:00

Kudos to Nurses as NHS ParticipantsI recently received my semi-annual newsletter from the long-running, three-part Nurses’ Health Study, conducted by Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston.The Nurses’ Health Study 1 (NHS1) began in 1976 with more than 120,000 RNs, ages 30 to 55. Its goal was to examine how lifestyle affects the risk of developing cancer and the

Too Few Nurses, Too Little Time

2011-12-21T11:06:00.000-08:00

I have this theory that if we could get everyone to live healthy lifestyles and give health care providers more time to spend with patients, we could eliminate a huge portion of this country’s health problems. Just think about it: many of our illnesses are caused by a poor diet and lack of exercise, and another bunch are caused by patients’ confusion about things that require more time to

Sometimes It Takes Whatever It Takes

2011-12-16T10:37:00.000-08:00

Sometimes It Takes Whatever It TakesWhen all else fails, there is always bribery.Or call it an incentive, if you like.Either way, getting middle school students to update their vaccines by offering a chance to win a free iPod did the trick, thanks to a nurse in a San Diego County school district.California law requires that all students in seventh grade and higher must have their diphtheria,

What Do Nurses Want?

2011-12-10T08:44:00.001-08:00

I received an email recently from a nurse friend and former co-worker from whom I hadn’t heard in a long time. Since we last communicated, she has had several jobs. What caught my attention, though, is why she left one job when it seemed perfect because of her expertise in maternal and child health.She wrote that the clinic was poorly managed and the doctors treated the nurses poorly. The bottom

Nurses Can Navigate Through the Health Care Maze

2011-12-06T13:20:00.001-08:00

I recently read about a new hospital position that has “RN” written all over it. It’s called “patient navigator,” and as some of my nurse friends pointed out, we’ve been doing this job informally for a long time for our patients, our family and friends. A patient navigator is one who helps guide patients through “difficult medical journeys.” Navigators aren’t always nurses, but in most cases they

Whose Responsibility Is It, Anyway?

2011-12-01T11:29:00.000-08:00

It seems that hardly a day goes by that you don’t see the word “obesity” in the news, but the topic takes on a new dimension when you are talking about children.Experts on the topic of childhood obesity are meeting in Baltimore and they say that the problem has reached crisis stage. “The childhood obesity problem is becoming entirely too common,” said Jay A. Perman, MD, a pediatrician with the

Of Viruses, Vaccinations and Veracity

2011-12-01T11:22:00.000-08:00

This story must be relegated to the “What are –they thinking?” file.According to a recent Associated Press news story, some anti-vaccination parents in Arizona and Tennessee are trying to increase their children’s immunity to chickenpox in an unconventional way. They are buying lollipops that have purportedly been licked by children who have chickenpox, and the parents are obtaining these

Life Lessons: A Valuable Gift from Our Elders

2011-11-17T09:40:00.000-08:00

It was a chance encounter some years ago with “an extraordinary” 90-year-old woman that prompted a college professor to think about what priceless insights older people have garnered during their lifetimes and what we could learn from them. That led Karl Pillemer, a professor of human development in the College of Human Ecology at Cornell University and a professor of gerontology at the Weill

‘“You Can Call Me ____________’”

2011-11-11T08:07:00.000-08:00

It could be the debate that never ends, and it may get pretty heated as time goes by. The question: What do you call the nurse who has earned a doctorate in clinical practice?Doctor-nurse? Nurse PhD? Nurse-who-has-earned-her-doctorate?Does it matter? Apparently so. I’ve been following some of the online discussions on the topic and opinions vary greatly.Some argue that since the nurse has put in