“A perfect storm is coming for nurses,” we wrote last week. Right when the number of senior citizens who need complex medical care is about to rise sharply, a million baby boomer RNs with a deep and long experience in nursing are set to leave the profession. The costs could be enormous. But they can...
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What if you knew about a problem that makes patients have to stay in hospitals longer, suffer more infections, and make it more likely they’ll need to come back for more treatment? That makes nurses unhappier at their work, and more likely to suffer burnout? That actually makes more patients die? Wh...
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If you are a nurse in the US, you are likely familiar with “do not resuscitate” (DNR) orders. If you work in a hospital, you are likely aware of their policies and procedures related to DNR orders. But do you know what to do if your patient’s DNR order is not written on a piece of paper but permanen...
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This open letter was also sent to Salt Lake City Police Chief Mike Brown at his public email address ([email protected]). Mike Brown, I am writing to you about the recent disturbing news that one of your SLCPD officers, Jeff Payne, arrested and roughed up a nurse for refusing to allow him to dr...
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“This is supposed to be a place where we save and heal people,” Donna Lee Peterkin told a news conference this week. She is a registered nurse at Bronx-Lebanon Hospital Center in New York City, and recounted what she did when Henry Bello went on his brutal shooting spree exactly one week ago. She wa...
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Every day, nurses spend a lot of time on their feet – but it's rare for them to march! The last time nurses took to the streets in a nationally organized protest for better, safer working conditions for themselves and their patients was back in 1995. That year, over 35,000 nurses from around the cou...
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That’s what Alexandra Robbins wrote in an opinion piece in the Washington Post last week (“Nurses make fun of their dying patients. That’s okay.”): “Humor has a place in hospitals, even if it’s dark, even if it’s derogatory — as long as it isn’t cruel.” Do you agree? And if you agree, how do you dra...
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National Public Radio conducted an impressively in-depth, four-part report about the working conditions and health risks of nurses, full of worrying statistical data and heartbreaking personal stories. The short of it: “nursing employees suffer more debilitating back and other injuries than almost a...
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Receiving chemotherapy is no fun for anyone and can be a particularly difficult experience for children. However, international ad agency JWT Brazil and film studio Warner Brothers recently teamed up with the A.C. Camargo Cancer Center in São Paulo, Brazil to develop a campaign, "Super forumula to f...
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Nurses, like everyone else, are subject to health problems. In fact, they may be more prone to health problems, given their long hours, shift work, odd eating patterns and high stress levels. According to an article from Nurse.com, many healthcare institutions are searching for ways to improve the h...
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Andrew Gentry/ Fotolia Higher nurse workloads due to inadequate staffing have a direct impact on patient outcomes after surgery, a new study has found. The large-scale study from the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing showed that higher nurse workloads negatively impacted all patients, but...
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Norman Pogson/ Fotolia We are all familiar with the end-of-shift “report”, in which patient care is handed off from the departing to the oncoming shift. This has traditionally involved a verbal report given at the beginning of the shift, detailing the particulars of each patient’s care since admissi...
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