Nurse Mentor

Every month I spend a few hours talking to students, both graduate and undergraduate, about what to do next in their careers. I have these conversations enough that I've started to think that the half-life of a bedside nurse in any clinical setting is about 15 years, though there is no research to support this (yet).  Colleagues at the RN Work Project  just might figure it out as they study new graduate career patterns. Anyway, the central theme of most of these discussion is the patients that care for or finding that patient population that makes them happy in their jobs. Sometimes its about creating the conditions that make for happy nurses caring for satisfied patients. The central question is: How can you create a patient-centered career path? Let's walk through a few questions to ask yourself. I'll use examples from my own career to illustrate. Q: Who are the patients you love to work with and in which clinical setting? A: I started off my career in...

A zetabyte generated between 2012-2014! Think about what this might mean for our work.

You've probably noticed an uptick in the blog posts this past week. That's because I'm spending the week at the National Institute for Nursing Research learning all about Big Data and it's quite inspiring. One topic that consistently comes up in how to better integrate nursing documentation data into large datasets so we can figure out how to improve patient outcomes using real bedside data. By now you should know you're always learning something new as a nurse. This is even more true once you have a PhD when you learn about how little you really know about anything. As we've listened to really interesting speakers this past week, a few things have come up that relate directly to you, the frontline nurse. Here's probably the most important. That electronic health record (EHR) where you document your work may actually affect your paycheck. No, not because you have to spend so much time filling everything in that you're staying late and getting over...

This graphic from Nature gives nurses lots to think about. The blue people are the ones for whom the medication actually works well for while the red represents the ones that have bad side effects. How can we encourage adherence to medication regimens with these kinds of facts?