Growing Acceptance of Nurse Practitioners

A recent study in Toronto wanted to gauge the effectiveness and level of acceptance of Nurse Practitioners in a specialty setting.  To do that they looked at 177 patient encounters and found that the nurse practitioner gave exactly the same clinical diagnosis as two orthopedic surgeons 100% of the time. 

They also surveyed the patient afterwards to get their feelings and found that 74% would rather see the nurse practitioner than wait up to a year to see the specialist, and 96 percent were satisfied with her assessment.  Clearly a positive study for advanced practice nurses.

Dr. Yoga Raja Rampersaud said “We believe that our study demonstrates that nurse practitioners can play an effective and efficient role in delivering timely healthcare to patients requiring specific disease management in a specialty setting,”

That could play a huge part in dealing with not only shortages of family practice physicians, but specialties as well.  As more patients enter the American healthcare delivery system, this is bound to be a hot topic in the future.

Are we going to be seeing more acceptance of NP’s in our healthcare delivery system in the future?

Here is the full story at MSNBC’s site.

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About Me:  I’m one of the Career Agents at Clear Medical Agency and am also the editor of the Clear Nursing Matters blog.  I work with a lot of great nursing professionals, and find that many interesting topics come up.  This blog will be one way to share my experiences and funny stuff that comes up.  Feel free to email me at  Steve@ClearMedicalSolutions.com and don’t forget to subscribe to the blog.  It will make it easier to keep up on current nursing news and ideas.

Smartphone Apps for Healthcare

With the wild popularity of phones like the Android, Blackberry, and iPhone, more and more applications (aka Apps) have been developed for these phones.   There are over 100,000 apps for the Android alone!  With all of these apps, there have been some great ones for healthcare.  Here are some of the best free apps I found.

1. Epocrates Rx.  This app is continuously updating its drug database for doctors, nurses and all other healthcare professionals to use.  It has the side effects, photos and database of approximate retail price for around 3,000 drugs.
2. Calculate by QxMD.  This calculator includes; Cardio Calc, Neph Calc, GL Calc, Heme Calc and Pregnancy Wheel .  This calculator helps clinicians determine patient risk factors, diagnose certain conditions, make prognoses and  guide treatment process.
3. Mini Nurse-Lite.  This app is for nursing students that offers medical abbreviations, dosage calculations and other medical facts.  This app might not be as effective for more experienced nurses, but great for a nursing students.

These apps can make the life of a healthcare professional a little easier, with so much information right at your fingertips!

Have you seen anyone in your facility using apps to help them with their work?

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About Me: I’m one of the Career Agents at Clear Medical Agency and am also the editor of the Clear Nursing Matters blog.  I work with a lot of great nursing professionals, and find that many interesting topics come up.  This blog will be one way to share my experiences and funny stuff that comes up.  Feel free to email me at  Steve@ClearMedicalSolutions.com and don’t forget to subscribe to the blog.  It will make it easier to stay in touch

Energy Drinks and Nursing?

Sometimes on those long 12 hour shifts you need a pick me up to get through the shift.   What do you turn to?

Coffee is sort of the gateway, but I am sure some of us have turned to that Red Bull, Monster, Rockstar, Amp, or some other energy drink to give us that little extra pick-me-up.  Is that really the healthiest thing to turn to when we are running around all day or night?

I know I am guilty of this myself.  Sometimes I feel like I need that extra energy drink to help me stay on task and keep a high level of energy.

But, now the question for me, Is that really what my body needs and is it safe?

John Higgins, M.D., lead author from The University of Texas Medical School in Houston says “One can of an energy beverage during one session of exercise is safe for most healthy individuals,.” Since nurses are running all over the place, helping patients, their body is losing water.  So we need to be careful to return to the body the water it is losing.

An overuse of energy drinks can increase anxiety, give you “the shakes”, and can be harmful to your health.  Most energy drinks contain caffeine, which ranges from 50 milligrams (mg) to 505 mg per 16-ounce serving.  To put those numbers in perspective an average cup of coffee contains 90 mg- 150 mg.

So next time you go to grab that second or third energy drink, just think of what your body really needs.

Do you see excessive use of energy drinks by healthcare professionals?

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About Me: I’m one of the Career Agents at Clear Medical Agency and am also the editor of the Clear Nursing Matters blog.  I work with a lot of great nursing professionals, and find that many interesting topics come up.  This blog will be one way to share my experiences and funny stuff that comes up.  Feel free to email me at  Steve@ClearMedicalSolutions.com and don’t forget to subscribe to the blog.  It will make it easier to stay in touch

 

Eliminating 12 Hour Shifts

I just read an article about the correlation between nursing errors and fatigue related to 12 hour shifts.  I got to thinking, instead of working three straight traditional 12 hour shifts; we might want to consider some alternatives to help reduce errors.

We all know nursing is very stressful and demanding.  12 hour shifts can be exhausting while dealing with families, on your feet the whole time, lifting patients, changing dressings, inserting IV’s and directing patient care.  Oh and then let’s not forget staying late to finish charting.

Now repeat that again the next day…and the day after…

It is no wonder that nurses are so exhausted!

An Idea:  Instead of working three 12 hour shifts in a row, how about limiting it to only two 12 hour shifts back to back, fitting in two eight hour shifts later.  That would still leave three days off.

Another solution would be actually enforce break times and schedule variety into the shift.  Such as, nine hours of patient care, two hours of precepting and monitoring new nurses, and an hour in committee work (just examples).

What are some ideas that you have had or heard of that can help reduce fatigue and decrease the number of errors that occur.

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About Me: I’m one of the Career Agents at Clear Medical Agency and am also the editor of the Clear Nursing Matters blog.  I work with a lot of great nursing professionals, and find that many interesting topics come up.  This blog will be one way to share my experiences and funny stuff that comes up.  Feel free to email me at  Steve@ClearMedicalSolutions.com and don’t forget to subscribe to the blog.  It will make it easier to stay in touch

Things I Would Not Say To a Patient

The other day I stumbled across an article that was titled “8 Things You Should Never Say To a Patient”.  I read the list and had to laugh at a couple of the statements.  Sometimes in the heat of the moment a comment slips out and you realize it may have not been the best thing to say.

Some of my favorites were:

“I can’t seem to find your records.”

“We’re very busy, please wait.”

“It could be worse.”

and

“Whoops!”

I would like to know what you heard that was said to a patient that was…..well, just not the best way to put it.  If you want to see all eight, check out http://tinyurl.com/284up7d.

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About Me: I’m one of the Career Agents at Clear Medical Agency and am also the editor of the Clear Nursing Matters blog.  I work with a lot of great nursing professionals, and find that many interesting topics come up.  This blog will be one way to share my experiences and funny stuff that comes up.  Feel free to email me at  Steve@ClearMedicalSolutions.com and don’t forget to subscribe to the blog.  It will make it easier to stay in touch

Nurses Tweeting On The Unit

I’m a big fan of twitter.  (Along with 165,000,000 other people)

While following nurses and other medical “tweeple”, I’ve noticed that some nurses are actually tweeting while on the floor.

One nurse was tweeting about how hard it can be to keep your composure around certain patients.  Others tweet about funny things that happen or challenges they’re facing.

I wanted to hear your thoughts on Twitter.  Is it good to have nurses tweeting while on the floor?

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About Me: I’m one of the agents over at Clear Medical Agency and am also the editor of the Clear Nursing Matters blog.  I work with a lot of great nursing professionals, and find that many interesting topics come up.  This blog will be one way to share my experiences and funny stuff that comes up.  Feel free to email me at Steve@ClearMedicalSolutions.com and don’t forget to subscribe to the blog.  It will make it easier to stay in touch.

Social Surgery? Your Patient is “Tweeting” About You… (via Clear Matters)

Seems to be big news out there.  Are your patients tweeting about you?

 Your patient is in surgery right now, and all day he’s been tweeting about your nurses, doctors, signage, and even your EMR.  He’s also posting pictures of your facilities, equipment, and gowns as well as checking in on FourSquare for his 832 facebook friends to see.  

Is he a patient at your hospital?

 http://www.Twiter.com/TRCochran

Our world has changed…

via Clear Matters

Why Did You Choose Nursing?

We all know how difficult it is to be a nurse, probably one of the most stressful jobs one could choose.

It makes me wonder, why did you choose nursing?

With all the negative stories about no jobs in nursing, burnout, etc., I think we need to have some positive stories to share with new or future nurses.

Everyone has their story.  For some it was because they love helping people, or because family members were nurses.  For one nurse I work with, she went on a field trip during elementary school and has been inspired ever since.

Why did you get into nursing?  Please comment below to share your story with others.

Nurses vs. Stress: Round 1

We all know that nursing is one of the most stressful careers out there, but how do we cope with that?

Here are five activities that you can do at work, if you can get someone to cover you for five minutes or so:

• Take a walk to a quiet place (chapel, courtyard, empty room) or ride the elevator while you do some deep breathing exercises.
• Go to the lounge and tidy it up.  This will take your mind off of what’s going on while you focus on organizing the magazines, straightening the chairs, and tidying up a bit.
• Go into the nurses lounge/break room, shut the door, and listen to your favorite song while you sing along or even dance to it.  This will put a smile on your face and you will be ready to get back on the floor.
• Talk to the funniest person you can find.  They will make you smile and it will relax you mentally and give you positive energy.  (Don’t have a funny friend?  Email me at Steve@ClearMedicalSolutions.com and I’ll send you some jokes)
• Take an UnNap.  If you’re not sure what an UnNap is, check out this article at http://goo.gl/N8jV
• Plan a Nurses Night Out!  A bunch of nurses have gotten together on facebook (http://www.facebook.com/NursesNightOut) to plan outings together and invite others from the area to join.  Lot’s of fun!

Everyone copes with stress differently, some people go to shooting ranges, some do yoga, and some just sleep it off.  Sometimes we get so caught up in the fast paced world that we miss the great things around us!  We need to slow down sometimes, look at the clouds, the stars, the leaves changing…these ideas will help us relieve stress and feel more refreshed for our patients on the next shift.

Hang in there.

 

(I’m curious what you do to relieve stress, and I’m going to ask the Nurse Circle on facebook at http://www.facebook.com/NurseCircle to post the question for discussion.  I’ll be writing a follow up to this blog, so let me know what you think.)

 

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About Me: I’m one of the agents over at Clear Medical Agency and am also the editor of the Clear Nursing Matters blog.  I work with a lot of great nursing professionals, and find that many interesting topics come up.  This blog will be one way to share my experiences and funny stuff that comes up.  Feel free to email me at Steve@ClearMedicalSolutions.com and don’t forget to subscribe to the blog.  It will make it easier to stay in touch.

Don’t Ask Don’t Tell in Nursing

(Update: Just before I went published this, on one of my colleagues told me that the ruling came that she is to be reinstated into the Air Force).

A hot topic in the news today is the recent vote to repeal the Don’t Ask Don’t Tell (DADT) law in the military. One story that caught my eye was regarding a Flight Nurse in the US Air Force. She was discharged after over 18 years of service, because a commander learned of her relationship with a civilian woman.

The debate over if DADT should be removed from law has taken center stage in congress, where last week the Republicans won the vote, keeping DADT in tack.

Late this afternoon, U.S. District Judge Ronald Leighton ruled that Maj. Margaret Witt be reinstated to the Air Force. According to the Associated Press, “after a six-day trial, the judge said testimony proved Witt was an outstanding nurse and her reinstatement would do nothing to hurt unit morale.”

Obviously this is a hot topic in current events, and one that will lead to many more months of discussion.

What are your thoughts on DADT for Nurses or other Healthcare professionals in the Military?