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Ebola in Texas

A man sickened with Ebola in Texas has already made international news and the implications of case have multiple implications not only in healthcare, but in society and politics as well. The first and most important thing is that Texas grossly underfunds public health in the state.  Under funding public health care means that citizens are at higher risk for falling victim to an epidemic disease like Ebola because there are insufficient resources (including training for the emergency room hospital workers to be able to recognize the disease's symptoms) to respond to the epidemic early and contain it. Texas Republicans have cut back public health funding, undoubtedly because they see it as big government, to the point where the state with one of the fastest growing populations in the country ranks 34th nationally , according to a 2013 report by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation . This is not new news. Texas gubernatorial candidate Wendy Davis gets the gift of a new talking poi

How the Affordable Care Act (a.k.a. Obamacare) is Helping Reduce Latino Health Disparities - Except in Florida and Texas

PhD or DNP?

I've been thinking about this topic for a long time.  It's one where I get the most questions from students about which doctoral degree to do in their future career path. The short answer comes with questions: What do you want to do with your doctoral degree?  Do you want to design and conduct research?  Do you want to focus on applying and testing evidence in clinical practice?  Your answer to that question will determine your educational program choice. Let's start with why you would choose a PhD. Around the world, everyone knows what a PhD is as a degree.  Doesn't matter where you got it from, with a PhD after your name people will recognize you spent a lot of time in school and must have passed some higher standard of educational preparation.   Outside the United States, except for maybe Canada, no one knows what a DNP degree is or what you can do with it.   It will take decades before that happens.  If you think you want a career with an internationally recogn

Reports from the Job Search Frontiers for US New Grads

About this time of year emails start coming in from students about those who have gotten jobs after passing NCLEX-RN.  In the past few years, reports have shown anywhere from 5 to 8 months to get a job right out of school.  Students who moved out of their home training area were more likely to have a job in 5 months or less. Here's what I'm hearing from former students since graduation season: Most students have a job within 5 months of passing NCLEX with interviews often coming before the exam is taken.  This is a big change and may reflect what's going on with the implementation of the Affordable Care Act (a.k.a. Obamacare). New York, Philadephia, Boston, and San Francisco remain the toughest job markets for inexperienced nurses. Jobs are readily available in the US South, Midwest, and Southwest. Most students who have gotten a job in 3 months or less have moved to one of those areas of the country. Message: You might need to move to get that first job. Willingnes

Health Workforce Research - The Priority for the Next 25 Years

Greetings from Coimbra, Portugal where I am attending the World Health Organization's (WHO) meeting of the Nursing and Midwifery Collaborating Centers . The purpose of the WHO-CC for Nursing and Midwifery is to  his network works toward the maximization of the contribution of nursing and midwifery in order to advance Health for All in partnership with WHO and its Member States, member centres, NGOs, and others interested in promoting the health of populations.  The network carries out advocacy and evidence based policy activities within the framework of WHA resolutions and the WHO programme of Work.   An impressive amount of work, research, and capacity building is completed by the Nursing & Midwifery centers. What's clear from this meeting is that the future of research in healthcare lies predominantly on the health workforce. We can develop lots of interventions, but if there are no health workers to implement them they will not matter nor be as effective as the randomi

Turnover in Nursing Staff at the Unit Level: The Single Best Indicator of Manager Performance?

Recently I had lunch with a former student who was passing through town. Lisa graduated a little over two years ago and was one of the lucky ones who found a job fairly quickly. What was most interesting about our conversation was the turnover rate on her unit. In 15 months, 15 nurses have left. The most recent was a group of five experienced night shift nurses, the kind any manager is loathe to lose. They left, according to the student, because they were tired of how they were treated.  Lisa is now the most experienced person on night shift at two years out of school. The loss of 15 nurses on one unit has also cost the organization nearly a million dollars. In an era of cost tightening, that is a steep price. Acknowledging that this is only a report from one person, there is still something that rings true in her story: Well managed patient care units do not have high turnover rates of staff. So let's think about what constitutes turnover in nursing staff and it's causes. G

Research Rankings - US Nursing Schools

The 2013 results are in!  Which US universities with research intensive nursing programs made the top ten in US National Institutes for Health Funding?  Here's the list: 1.  UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA SAN FRANCISCO 2.  UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS 3.  UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON 4.  JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY 5.  UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH AT PITTSBURGH 6.  NEW YORK UNIVERSITY 7.  UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES 8.  UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA 9.  UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND BALTIMORE 10.  EMORY UNIVERSITY So what does this mean? If you are a newly minted PhD or Post-Doc and you want to get your research career off the ground, applying for a job at one of those institutions will give you a good shot at developing your career. If you are looking for a PhD program or a Post-Doctoral Fellowship, one of those schools would probably be the best place to look for opportunities and mentoring.  Nursing schools in universities that can consistently obtain funding mean that they h

Welcome to 2014, Most Trusted Professionals in the US!

Welcome to 2014!  What does the new year have in store for you?  As you've figured out about US nursing by now, there are so many possibilities.  Maybe it's time for a career change?  To go back to school?  To move on from your current job into something else?  Hopefully a little mentoring can help you get there. Meanwhile, pat yourselves on the back again nurses.  In 2013, the US public voted nurses the most trusted of all the service professionals in the country, with 85% indicating high levels of trustworthiness and dedication to ethics.  This was our highest ranking ever!  So if you've had one of those days at work, take a moment to pat yourselves on the back. In the US, nurses are lucky enough to be held in such high esteem.  That's not the case in every country.  In fact, nursing is undergoing a transition around the world. Nurses are doing more in many countries due to personnel shortages.  You know what its like to work with too few nurses on staff in your

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