Alexander Raths/ Fotolia California has a strict nurse-to-patient ratio law, but since there haven't really been any penalties for failing to adhere to it, the law has been hard to enforce. A measure to give the department of public health more authority to crack down on hospitals that don't obey th...
Read more →VILevi/ Fotolia Consider the following scenario: It is a typical busy morning on the ward. The unit is full to capacity. One of the nurses called in sick prior to the beginning of the shift, and thus far no replacement has been found. The other nurses have had to pick up the slack, increasing their...
Read more →Are nurses at the manager level barriers to the implementation of nursing care based on best practice? A survey published in the Journal of Nursing Administration seems to suggest so. The survey, which was answered by 1,015 American Nurses Association members, found that there many barriers to the i...
Read more →Junial Enterprises – Fotolia.com When nurses are happier and healthier, their patients have better medical outcomes. So it makes sense that the opposite is true as well — that unhappy, burned-out nurses have patients who are at higher risk for health-care associated infection rates. Burned-out nurse...
Read more →Alexander Raths – Fotolia.com A nurse will typically lift 1.8 tons in the course of a normal day, according to this article in USA Today. Not a day as the guest star in the circus freak show — just a regular, ordinary, eight-hour day at the hospital. As a result, nurses have suffered back injuries a...
Read more →Nurses make up the largest group of health care providers, working in many different venues, from doctors’ offices to biotech firms. They regularly score very high on trustworthiness, and they have a huge impact on how health care is delivered and defined. But it’s a tough job. Especially when they...
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Soldiers do so much to take care of us — we need to make sure we’re taking care of them, too. This observation is made by a nurse named Beverly Malone, in this article in the Chicago Tribune. It is about the need to ensure that nursing students know more about how to provide the best medical care to...
Read more →Junial Enterprises – Fotolia.com When people talk about violence in the workplace, they don’t often think of the healthcare field. While post offices are the most stereotypical place for violent events, (lending us the phrase “going postal”) other locations that are usually considered to be more vio...
Read more →It’s not all bad on the night shift. Night shift nurses don’t have to deal with visitors, doctors or supervisors, and have fewer interruptions. The night hours may work best for a nurse’s family situation as well. But could working at night, when 80 percent of the world sleeps, actually be hazardous...
Read more →Hakan Kiziltan – Fotolia Some tests are life-savers, but some are worthless. A campaign called Choosing Wisely has been launched by nine national medical groups, with the goal of getting U.S. doctors to tell the difference. Specifically, Choosing Wisely wants health care providers to back of on 45 d...
Read more →© iceteastock – Fotolia.com Theresa Brown, an oncology nurse, is concerned about surveys that ask patients about their hospital experience. For many years, hospitals have been collecting data regarding patient satisfaction, and now the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services developed the Hospita...
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Image courtesy of markhillary via Flickr A study from France has found that a shortage of beds in hospital intensive care units may mean that more patients die. An article from Reuters reports on the study, which focused on 10 hospitals in western France. The researchers found that almost 15% of the...
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