Nurse Mentor

“I Can Never Be Too Comfortable”: Race, Gender, and Emotion at the Hospital Bedside That's the title of a new study that just came out in Qualitative Health Research . The study of bedside nurses' diaries of their experiences reveals how nurses experience racism on the job. It comes not just from patients, but also from peers and management. We have to talk about this more folks. It's time we deal with it better, in every setting.

I recently served as the Chair of the Search committee for my College. It was a great experience and very enlightening to be on the "other" side of the search process. We had a very successful year of recruitment and I learned a lot. Here's some tips if you're considering entering the academic job market in nursing. Most of these will apply largely to Research I universities, but may apply elsewhere. 1.   Do your homework:  Come to the interview showing that you have done some research about the place where you're applying. Know the faculty members who might be good collaborators or mentors. The interview process is as much about you feeling a place out as it is about them figuring out if you're going to be a good match. Well prepared candidates always get more positive feedback than those who are not. 2. Identify where you can teach in their programs - and not just in the PhD program: Reality of most US nursing programs is they need people who can teach

In almost every health care setting in the United States (US) these days, nurses and other health care providers are dealing with language barriers as part of care delivery more than ever before. In fact, most countries in the world run into some kind of language barrier issue in the health care setting. Global migration means more tourists and immigrants for every country in the world.  In the US, language access--meaning the availability of interpreters and their services-- is a civil right. The Affordable Care Act (ACA) also added new provisions for health care services providers around language access that are important for you to know. From CME Learning : New rules on language access were implemented on July 18, 2016 . These changes are sweeping in scope as they apply to “every [federal] health program or activity, any part of which receives Federal financial assistance.”  Section 1557 is a “non-discrimination” provision that broadly prohibits discrimination in health care o

Perhaps you have been a straight A student all your life. Perhaps you had one subject you struggled with, got Bs in it, but mostly As in the rest of your classes. Then you started nursing school. Most students quickly discover that nursing is one of the hardest majors at any university. Not only do you have a lot of time in class, your "lab" equivalent involves learning how to care for really sick people. Most nursing students spend between 24 to 30 hours per week in class --and THEN have lots of reading and other assignments they need to do to prepare for their "labs." After all, in a chemistry lab you probably won't harm or kill anyone due to the highly controlled conditions. When any health profession student is learning, there is always the risk for mistakes and it's why they are so closely supervised. Inevitably, every nursing student gets their definition of a "bad" grade. For some, this is an actual failure of a class and that can ha

I've worked in or been on research studies that cover 30 countries to date. With that global experience, I frequently do lectures about global health issues at the undergraduate and graduate levels. Millenials want to get out there and see the world and Gen X and Boomers are looking for meaningful career changes. The theme is common: They want to help the less fortunate in other countries. It's not to say they don't want to help the less fortunate in their own country; I think it's become something of seeing the consistency of what poverty does to people and the health consequences. With all that in mind, want to know: How do I build a career in global health as a nurse? First question I ask people is: Do you like camping? Surprising question? Not really if you've spent time in the field. Most places where there is a critical need for health services and capacity building efforts don't have things like regular running water, consistent electricity, or comf

Nobody talks about it. Ever. Sure, we talk about how patients face discrimination and the impact on their health. Some schools might even teach about the institutional and structural aspects of society that reinforce racism, sexism, ethnocentrism, and many other -isms. We do talk about how patients say things to us that we may consider to be offensive, and how to handle that. But we don't talk about how we, as nurses, perpetuate discrimination and exclusion within our own profession and toward our patients. Here's a few examples of stories I've heard over the years. A South Asian nurse manager told one of her African-American nursing assistants that she needed to fix her hair because she looked like she came from the jungle. A Jewish nurse was working in a hospital in an area where there weren't a lot of Jewish people. During Hannukah, she wanted to put up a Menorah on her unit amidst all the Christmas decorations so she could clelebrate her faith like everyone