Nurse Mentor

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 heal...

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...