Nursing

One nurse for 4,000 pupils isn’t the healthiest arrangement

Policy
November 3, 2017

During a 15-minute recess, the elementary school students trooped from the playground toward nurse Catherin Crofton’s office — one with a bloody nose, a second with a scraped knee and a third with a headache.

Kids quickly filled a row of chairs. Staffers brought paper towels for the bleeders and tried to comfort the crying.

“We’re here for first aid, emergency, counseling,” said Crofton of the Mount Diablo Unified School District. “There …

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A nurse shares who she really is

Conditions
October 4, 2017

How do I tell you who I am in a couple of paragraphs?

Well, I was born in 1955, so that makes me 61 years old. My namesake is probably movie star and America’s sweetheart Debbie Reynolds.

My maternal grandfather was straight from Italy; my paternal grandfather was straight from Ireland. Both crossed the Atlantic and landed on Ellis Island in New York Harbor. It was the promised land.

So, that means I …

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How the nurse makes it possible

Conditions
October 2, 2017

The day drags on; you hang in there until the job is finally complete. You are exhausted, tired, and sure something is clearly wrong. Arriving in the emergency department is never one of those moments you expect. Staff greetings are quickly followed by people taking your vital signs, pressure on various parts of your body, and placing you under X-ray machines. Symptoms come and go, and verdicts are read. Good …

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The familiar voice on the phone made my throat tighten

Conditions
September 22, 2017

As I sit in the exam room waiting for my first patient of the afternoon, the phone rings. It rings four more times before I realize that Amanda Ringwald, our eighty-year-old receptionist, hasn’t come back from taking a rare lunch break.

I pick up the phone and say, “VA Hospital. Marianna Crane.” Oops, I’m not back at the VA anymore. “Senior Clinic,” I quickly add.

“Hello, my friend.”

The familiar voice makes my …

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A nurse returns from vacation. And she’s thankful to the ICU she came back to.

Conditions
September 14, 2017

I’m in the ICU and was just back from an incredible tropical vacation. Nine days of vegging out on the beach. The glistening ocean was just steps away from the five-star hotel I was staying in, where doormen greeted me with fruity daiquiris and a staff that couldn’t wait to serve my every whim.

I was in paradise, and far, far away from the reality of my day-to-day existence as an …

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Here’s why this nurse really retired

Conditions
September 11, 2017

This is by no means a scientific study, just some thoughts on what I have seen in my 22 years as a nurse and the loss of bedside nurses who hate it. I think the advent of nurses leaving the bedside will cause a greater crisis for the nursing profession.

I obtained my ADN in 1995 after having worked as a computer operator for 16 or so years in the defense …

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“You’re making a huge mistake because you’re threatening a nurse.”

Policy
September 1, 2017

Alex Wubbels, the head nurse at the University of Utah Hospital’s burn unit, was arrested for refusing to draw blood from an unconscious patient.   She was absolutely correct, since it was against hospital policy, and constitutional law, to do so.

ZDoggMD dedicated an episode of his Facebook Live show, Incident Report, highlighting the travesty:

“Sir, you’re making a huge mistake because you’re threatening a …

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Nurse practitioners! Tips for negotiating your first job

Policy
August 31, 2017

Congratulations on the new job! After countless, grueling hours of juggling school with the rest of your life, you’ve finished and secured a job, a huge accomplishment indeed.

Negotiating your compensation package can be a nail-biting, heart-racing all around anxiety-producing experience.  While some of this anxiety might just stem from inexperience with negotiating a contract, you might also be worried about not knowing what to ask for as a new nurse …

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A nurse was raped and tortured at her hospital. Here’s what you can do to help.

Video
June 6, 2017

A inmate, while a patient at Delnor Hospital in surburban Chicago, escaped and took two nurses hostage.  One of nurses was raped and tortured at gunpoint.  There is little mention of this horrific story in mainstream media.  Violence against health care workers cannot remain silent.

ZDoggMD recently spoke with this individual, who shared her story. #silentnomore

Please send your notes of support to her:

Delnor Nurse
PO Box …

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Nurses make me a better doctor

Physician
May 11, 2017

It was a case that every physician dreads. I took a deep breath, mustered up some courage and walked towards my patient’s room. When I entered, I saw an apprehensive and anxious family who was patiently waiting for some answers. The mother was sitting at bedside with eyes closed, hands clung to a rosary and lips whispering a prayer. The patient’s sister was standing by the window, looking out with …

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An ode to the nurse who saved Jimmy Kimmel’s baby

Conditions
May 8, 2017

Recently, a nurse at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles noticed that comedian Jimmy Kimmel’s newborn baby had a murmur and was cyanotic and brought it to the newborn intensive care unit for further evaluation. That triggered a rush of activity that led to a diagnosis of a congenital heart defect and heart valve problem and surgery to save the baby’s life.

Here’s what the public doesn’t understand: Nurses do this every day. …

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Words of wisdom for new nurses

Education
February 13, 2017

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 …

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A startling end to nurse turf wars

Conditions
November 28, 2016

We fought. And we fought hard. We were smarter and quicker and we could multi-task, and critically think beyond any MD or NP or PA or beyond any cardiovascular ICU (CVICU) nurse.

We always thought we had the higher acuities. We had the critical patients. The multi-system failure patients. The hemodynamically unstable patients.

We had to figure out the lungs, the heart, the kidneys, the brain, the pancreas, the gallbladder, the liver.

And …

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Does practice really make perfect?

Physician
November 1, 2016

It is one of the most boring truisms on the planet: “Practice makes perfect.” It is also one of the most misleading. Practice merely ingrains certain patterns after deciding on the best course of action after constant criticism and problem-solving. Performance requires that the body forget the work required to ingrain the pattern and let the pattern happen. Performance requires that we drop all criticism and technical considerations. These two …

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A new nurse gets a crash course in compassion

Patient
October 14, 2016

“Nursing students needed to work in the University Hospital. Good pay. Orientation.”

As a rising nursing school senior in the 1970s, I naïvely applied for the job above without getting the full details. No one mentioned that I’d be working in a psychiatric unit housing twenty-five aggressive, catatonic or schizophrenic patients, many of whom had been locked away for years.

The entrance sign, which should have read “Locked Psych/Med/Surg Unit,” said simply, …

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We are not taking care of nurses. Who will heal the healers?

Physician
October 3, 2016

On the day that I penned this post, I rounded at our community hospital.   My first patient was in the step-down unit, which houses patients who are too ill for the regular hospital floor.   I spoke to the nurse in order to be briefed on my patient’s status.  I learned that this nurse was assigned six patients to care for — an absurd patient volume for a step-down unit.

“Why so …

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How nurses and law enforcement can work together

Conditions
September 7, 2016

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 …

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