Reducing Stress in Nurses
There are patients in stretchers throughout the hallways of the hospital. Waiting rooms are full of patients in need of care. During your 12-hour shift, you might not even get the chance to use the bathroom, eat, or drink. As soon as you finish seeing one patient, there is another one waiting for you. As the stress in nurses builds, ultimately, it negatively impacts patient care. Nurses need help. With a nursing shortage underway,...
Traumatic Incidents: Preparing for the Worst
Nursing can be one of the most rewarding professions out there – helping patients, achieving career goals, and working toward better health for the public can all really make the job worth your while. There’s good job security, the demand for nurses is growing, and healthcare is ever evolving, yet not every situation you’ll encounter is ideal. In fact, dealing with traumatic incidents is one of the most challenging...
Addiction in Nurses: Recognizing Impaired Colleagues
You’ve been working with one of your nursing colleagues for some time now. They have an excellent background and skillset. They finished nursing school at the top of their class. They come to work early, stay late and are always willing to pick up an extra shift. They seem to be almost super human, going above and beyond the call of duty as a nurse. You have no idea you could be working with an impaired nurse because recognizing...
New Proposal to Up First-Year Resident Hours
A new proposal from the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) is seeking to increase the limit of consecutive hours that first-year medical residents can work from the current 16 to a total of 28. At face value, it might seem like this proposal would do little to help with a resident’s already exhausting schedule and demands. There are already many mixed feelings and polarized opinions as to how such a...
The Nurse Scheduling Crisis
America’s aging population is increasing at alarming rates. As we are currently in a physician shortage, it is only a matter of time before there won’t be enough RNs available to keep up with the increasing demand. Nurses make up the largest segment in the healthcare sector, according to the American Nursing Association, and they are about to be stretched thin. Now is the time for solutions, especially those that make a nurse’s job...
A Nurse’s Role in the Opioid Crisis
About 78 people die from opioid overdose every day. Since 2000, the total death count has accumulated to nearly a half a million people. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) also reports that out of all opioid overdose deaths, nearly half are a result of prescription opioids. In order to address the opioid crisis, medical professionals and patients must be properly educated on the matter. WHAT NURSES CAN DO No pressure,...