Nurse Mentor

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 univer...

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...

The American Association of Colleges of Nursing is the organization that accredits baccalaureate nursing programs in the United States.  They do a really great job of ensuring that nursing education programs in the US produce the best possible graduates. They also track hiring patterns among new graduates.  Here are some key results from their most recent survey of May 2013 graduates: 59% of new BSN graduates had job offers at the time of graduation. At four to six months after graduation, the survey found that 89% of new BSN graduates had secured employment in nursing. The percentage of BSN graduates with job offers at graduation varied by region of the country, from 68% in the South, to 59% in the Midwest, to 50% in the Northeast, to 47% in the West. The job offer rate for new nurses at the 4-6 month mark also varied by region from 93% in the South, to 90% in the Midwest, to 82% in the Northeast and West. So what does this mean for you, December 2013 or May ...

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...