After the NCLEX: Surviving the Wait
While many nurses cite the NCLEX exam as one of the most intense and stressful experiences of their life, oftentimes the wait between finishing the exam and finding out the results can be just as brutal. Luckily for you, we have a few tips to help occupy your time and keep you from pacing circles and chewing your nails. Take a mini vacation You deserve it! Those late nights of studying fueled by coffee and anxiety have...
The Discharge Issue: When a Patient is Truly Ready
The transition from a hospital stay, to at-home care can be a tricky one. Deciding the proper time to discharge the patient is crucial, so it’s important to be able to make the right call when it’s time for your patient to come home. A few recent studies have shown that patients who are discharged too early can be at risk for a variety of health complications. Discharges are so difficult simply because the patient plays a major role...
When Sunburn Goes Too Far: The Nursing Edition
Many of us strive for that perfect tan. The kind that lasts well into the winter and makes your peers jealous. Unfortunately, while some do actually achieve that perfect shade of brown, others will end up a shade between The Pink Panther and Mr. Krabs. However, Sunburn is no joke, with over 5.4 million cases of nonmelanoma skin cancer treated each year, it’s important to know when, and how to handle sunburn when it goes too far. When...
Ethical Nursing: Treating Family
In medical facilities across the country, nurses face ethical dilemmas that challenge their training and personal morality everyday. As with many cases of ethics, there is rarely a perfect solution to a problem. Decisions may be reached on the basis that a procedure will be beneficial or causes no harm, yet matters are hardly black and white. There are many issues of ethics that nurses may encounter, though one that is continually...
Breaking Bad News in Nursing
Although nursing can have its joys and sense of accomplishment, it’s not unlikely that you’ll be breaking bad news to patients and their families. Not everything always goes according to plan, and for many people receiving information about a poor diagnosis or prognosis this process can be particularly difficult. The traditional view of this situation involved a nurse and doctor sitting down with the patient and their families...
Language Barriers: Travel Nurse Edition
Language barriers are a problem in any industry because they prevent effective communication. With nursing, and travel nursing more specifically, language barriers, and the methods to overcome them, can substantially impact the quality of care you can provide. A Barrier to More than Just Language When you think about a language barrier, you usually think about a spoken communication block, but it is more than that. It also includes...