Nurse Mentor

OK nurse friends and colleagues, can you find your passion and have a greater impact than you already do? Go for it!   See this story for an example of how to get started.   Passionate nurses at every level, from the front lines everywhere to management and academia are what attracts people to our profession and taking advantage of the many career options available to nurses in the United States and many other countries.

NY Times 10/15/2013 October is Breast Cancer Awareness month.  Over the last few years, I have too many friends diagnosed with breast cancer under the age of 50.  I'm sure you've seen all the ads on TV, heard them on the radio, gotten hits from internet ads about breast cancer awareness in the United States. What you probably don't hear too much about is the global burden of the disease.  The New York Times highlighted the issue with an excellent report about the challenges low and middle income countries face when trying to treat the disease and its after effects.  The infographic above  comes from the article and shows the scope of the disease. You'll need to scroll down a bit in the article to get to this graphic and the others that further explain its pattern.  Cancer's impact goes just beyond the individual.  Much like the cellular mutations that generate the disease, it touches the individual, family, community, and national heal...

Every so often a news story linked to a research study comes out with health care statistics that blow my mind.  I read a lot of research so when that happens, it's pretty rare. Kaiser Health News released this story about "super utilizers" in the US healthcare system.  A "super utilizer" is an economic term for a patient who is constantly using healthcare services.  This happens because they do not have good care coordination, lack health insurance, and often have multiple chronic disease conditions that are costly to treat.  Key quote from the article: "These patients are among the 1 percent whose ranks no one wants to join: the costly cohort battling multiple chronic illnesses who consumed 21 percent of the nearly $1.3 trillion Americans spent on health care in 2010, at a cost of nearly $88,000 per person. Five percent of patients accounted for 50 percent of all health-care expenditures. By contrast, the bottom 50 percent of patients accounted for j...

My favorite shift, evening shift that ran from 3-11:30pm or 4p-12:30am, is disappearing from US hospitals. Evening shift was great.  If morning is not your best time of day, you can be assured that evening shift is your friend.  It gave you time to sleep and refresh from the evening before and attend to life's needs before going to work.  If the shift was crazy, you had time to calm down and still get sleep during normal sleeping hours.  During the shift, it might be admission or post-op care central as patients came in from the ED or back from the OR.  Nurses who worked evening shifts liked them, so you often had a steadier group of co-workers.  Working only 8 hours also meant you had more opportunities to get the same assignment of patients, get to know them, and improve continuity of care. Evening shifts have gone by the wayside because most nurses seem to prefer working 12 hour shifts and management likes them because there is a 4 hour window for extr...

Greetings All! I didn't intend to take a summer hiatus but it just kind of happened.  Nonetheless, I'm back with an invitation for you to get on the phone with VP Biden and learn about what the Affordable Care Act (a.k.a. Obamacare) means for US nurses.  Info located below. Friends, You and fellow members of the nursing community are invited to join Vice President Joe Biden and Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius for a conference call on September 26 at 4:30 PM EDT to discuss the October launch of the new Health Insurance Marketplace. Vice President Biden wanted to personally reach out and thank all of the nurses across the country who are gearing up to help millions of Americans access affordable, high quality health coverage. This is your opportunity to hear from him directly about the work ahead. We hope you will be able to join us. WHEN: Date: Thursday, September 26, 2013 Time: 4:30PM E...

USAID recently published this infographic from their work through the " Deliver Project ".  Their research and program development work adopts a variety of approaches to help people in low and middle-income countries have planned pregnancies. What happens when mothers survive childbirth and can space their pregnancies appropriately? * Children are more likely to live to adulthood and create a sustainable workforce. * Children are more likely to go to school, develop literacy and numeracy skills, and become contributing members to society and economic development. * Children are less likely to grow up with one parent or become orphans because their mothers survive child birth. What's more amazing is we know how to solve these problems.  We have the science and the technology available.  The research-based has captured what we need to do to create behavior change that promotes mother and child survival. Yes, it is complicated and each effort needs to be count...

From the latest  US nursing workforce report from the Health Research Services Administration in the US, this striking graph should get more attention.  The plunging pass rates of internationally educated nurses (IEN) on the NCLEX-RN exam have big implications for global health workforce policy. The first thing you need to know is that the National Council of State Boards of Nursing (NCSBN) changed the format and content of the NCLEX-RN exam in 2008.  The test designers added new testing methods that better validate the actual knowledge, skills, and abilities of internationally educated candidates.  This also occurred during growing global outcry of high income countries contributing to "brain drain" in low and middle-income countries.  The impact of the change on internationally educated nurses is clear and has reduced the number of viable candidates who would be eligible for practice in the US. At the same time, NCSBN data also show that the overall nu...