Welcome to the land of happiness, sadness, confusion, self-doubt, defeat and heroism. You have only just begun. This is not an easy job. And countless times you will say, “What was I thinking?” Or “Why did I do this?”
But it’s not really a job. It is a lifelong sentence. It can be insanely gratifying, or you can throw in the towel.
But be patient. It will consume you, and you will …
The recent horrible events involving racial profiling, excessive force, and gun violence are deeply troubling but not new. Who can forget the Bronx shooting of Amadou Diallo in 1999 when 41 bullets rained down on his unarmed body. I can uniquely identify with the black experience because of my own numerous experiences of being pulled over for no other apparent reason except for being in the wrong neighborhood, wrong state …
The surgeon is doing a tonsillectomy on a 4-year-old boy. Dr. Jones drops an instrument on the floor of the OR. The instrument is now contaminated and has to be sterilized by a special machine called an autoclave. This was a small hospital, so they did not have a large inventory of duplicate surgical instruments. So the circulating nurse put the instrument into the autoclave. As this machine locked in …
Startups looking to partner with health systems: This list is for you.
So often, it seems like new technologies being developed for health care don’t address the areas of largest need. We sat down with nursing leaders at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) to get a sense of what clinical problems could be best addressed by technology.
The following list was compiled from interviews with Sheila Antrum (president and senior …
Three weeks ago, I changed jobs. I left a high-tech, high-volume teaching hospital in one of the largest medical centers in the U.S. for the greener pastures of a small, private community hospital. Why? I needed a less stressful position, lower acuity patients and to be rid of the madness of commuting.
I am a registered nurse with experience in emergency and trauma nursing, critical care, electrophysiology and cardiovascular surgery. I …
Thanks to all the nurses who take care of my patients and every other patient. I may be a doctor, but you are the ones who deliver the care. You give the medications and hang the IV fluids. You wash the patients and turn them. You check their vitals and listen for bowel sounds. You walk with them. You talk with them. You fulfill their needs. And you provide comfort to …
Distinguishing between the terms “bully” and “bullying” is an important step that we can take in order to eliminate or at least minimize any disruptive or undermining behaviors that are often associated with bullying. Yelling at, humiliating, excluding, gossiping about others are a few of ways we humans cleverly demonstrate disrespect for others. And we all know that lack of respect is a persistent and pervasive problem in health care.
As …
One of my most memorable experiences was more than a decade ago while working for a level one trauma center on the East Coast. I was sitting in a hospital break room during one of my breaks as an inventory coordinator when a nurse walked in. I simply asked how her day was going, and she fell into the chair next to me crying.
Surprised by her reaction, I asked, “What’s …
In September 2010, a seasoned pediatric intensive care unit nurse administered an accidental overdose to a critically ill baby, giving ten times the amount of calcium that was prescribed. Five days later, this baby, with an already tenuous heart condition, died. The nurse recognized her mistake immediately, informed her superior, and also told the family and physicians. She was, however, escorted out of the hospital, put on administrative leave, and …
I remember attending an eight-hour seminar on my job, where experts educated new nurses about the transition we would experience in our profession. We learned about the change theory and the different levels of transition, from novice to expert. I remember not taking the two-day session very seriously, thinking that my accelerated three-year nursing degree had prepared me well for the workplace. Now that my one year of practicing as …
A few weeks ago, after feeding my face with rich, dense chocolate cake brought by a truly awesome nurse (for no particular reason other than a warm and generous spirit), I walked back into a room to check on a post-cardiac arrest patient.
After surveying his vitals on the monitor, I turned my attention to two nurses and a pharmacist who were discussing the management of his six drips. He was …
I have been an emergency physician for 12 years. I have had the opportunity to learn from and try to emulate an impressive number of amazing clinical physicians. These doctors seemed god-like at first, but as my training and career progressed, I realized that they were mostly teaching me through their own experiences.
One of my favorite teachers had a humbling saying: “Good …
Nurse Shannon Wilkens on floor 4 west thought she saw someone she knew in scrubs walking into room 414.
“He was tall, I swore he looked familiar. Our charge nurse informed me he was recently hired and volunteered to work nights,” Wilkens recalled. “So being that it was slow, and I had only three patients as opposed to …
When I was in nursing school there was always a lot of eye-rolling when it came time to discuss nursing diagnoses. This was mostly because nursing diagnoses were followed by book-length nursing care plans that we had to produce for various imaginary patients. There was also a faction, including myself, who thought a medical diagnosis was just fine, thank you, no need to reinvent the proverbial wheel.
For example, for a …
Having been both a nurse and a doctor, most of the questions I get from readers have to do with making the decision between nursing and medicine. Let’s lay aside for a moment the reality that the fields are totally different and that direct comparisons are useless.
But people ask me all the time, so, as a little experiment, I …
I really hate it when a nurse practitioner is called a mid-level provider.
“Mid-level provider” isn’t even a legal or academic term. It is slang developed to demean or minimize a health professional, who is not an MD.
The term “mid-level provider” is primarily aimed at nurse practitioners (NPs) as well as physician assistants (PAs) and midwives. It is insulting to health professionals …
I wouldn’t say I’ve had a lot of revelations in my professional life, but there is one that still affects me emotionally to this day, and it’s about nurses.
I had been a PICU doctor for a number of years, and I was rounding on all the patients in the PICU with the rest of the team. The background sounds consisted of the usual beeps, alarms, and humming from the patient’s …
It was recently Nurses Week in early May and there were a lot of adulations being offered on social media and throughout hospitals regarding the appreciation we have for those among us who have chosen to be on the “front lines” of caring for us when ill or injured.
As an emergency physician I could speak about the many times a nurse has grabbed me and pulled me into a room …
As I noted earlier, hospitals permit around-the-clock observation of patients. If you don’t need around-the-clock monitoring, you don’t need to be in the hospital.
Who is doing this around-the-clock monitoring? Nurses.
Therefore, whether you are a patient or a physician, one of the best things you can do is get on the good side of the nurses.
If you are a patient, a nurse watches over …
I hate being told what to do. I will scratch and claw when ordered around. It takes a conscious act of will to smile and say, “sure, I’ll get going on that right now.”
This is a problem since, as an anesthesiologist, I get told what to do all the time. My kids order me around all the time. When I was a nurse I used to bristle at the term …
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