So there’s this thing in Quebec which I’m sure my Canadian readers have heard of and maybe also a few of my American readers, which involves the Quebec government devising some legislation called the Charter of Quebec Values. I have to say “charters” and “values” are nice happy positive words,
Continue readingTag: Good Nursing Practice is Practising with the Heart and Mind
Those Emergency Blues: Where does the Rot Start in Nursing Home Abuse?
This story has been bouncing around the Canadian media since last May. Camille Parent, the son of a nursing home resident, set up a hidden camera in his mother’s room for four days after she (the nursing home claimed) was assaulted by another patient. The results were appalling. Watch here:
Continue readingThose Emergency Blues: A Blogger, Allegedly
So, it’s been awhile, eh? It was Chuck Norris who found me. To everyone who emailed and texted and Tweeted, thanks. Everything is hunky and dory. I’m not dead, ok? Let’s get that out of the way. Nor am I afflicted with a Chronic Debilitating Illness, unless you count members of my family. (That
Continue readingThose Emergency Blues: Privacy, judgment and ethics aside, I have caring to do.
A few years ago I cared for an acquaintance. She was a friend of a friend who had been living out of the country for several years, but had come home to visit family friends. She was rushed in to the ED and before I even knew who she was
Continue readingThose Emergency Blues: Treat the Patient Not the Disease
Abscesses and wounds, and especially abscesses and wounds which are infected, suppurative, purulent, and generally awful, are embarrassing for patients and difficult for nurses. Embarrassing for patients because they are disfiguring and smell badly, and difficult for nurses for really the same reasons. Personally I don’t mind caring for and
Continue readingThose Emergency Blues: Generation Gaps
I recently took a course with nurses of varied years of experience and ages, but it was primarily made up of fairly new graduate nurses within the last year or two. During one lecture the facilitator was speaking about the future of nursing and how we need to address the
Continue readingThose Emergency Blues: How Nurses Practice
Working on a PowerPoint presentation, and did up this (yet to be formatted) slide: Which column do you think represents the current state of nursing practice? Filed under: Good Nursing Practice is Practising with the Heart and Mind, Nursing Naval Gazing Tagged: good nursing practice, Nurses, Nursing
Continue readingThose Emergency Blues: Guest Post: How We Can Fix the Malaise in the Nursing Profession
Nurse Practitioner (Photo credit: ekea7) by Amanda Trujillo If the newer generations of nurses out there are more confused than ever about their roles in healthcare — they should be. I’m one of the newer generations of nurses and I — AM — CONFUSED. Seriously. Think about it. We are taught
Continue readingThose Emergency Blues: Nurses Practice Beyond Their Scope — And It’s Not a Bad Thing
A very good, if obvious, idea on the use of RNs: nurses should be used to the full extent of their abilities. From the Toronto Star (and kudos to the paper for their Nursing Week insert in Saturday’s edition): “The bottom line is that we’re wasting valuable resources with our
Continue readingThose Emergency Blues: Nurses Grieve Too
An underexplored or ignored aspect of nursing professional life: how nurses working in a Labour and Delivery unit grieve over the loss of their patients, and how this grief affects care and support of survivors. What is really striking about the film is the culture of mutual support and respect
Continue readingThose Emergency Blues: What I Have Learned from Nursing
The world of nursing on a couple of dozen flash cards. From The Nursing Channel on YouTube. While I don’t agree necessarily with every card — some of them, I think, play into some old stereotypes on how nurses behave — it’s still a fresh perspective on nursing. What do
Continue readingThose Emergency Blues: Nurse Love, The Real Kind
Some real nurse love — and incidentally reminding us why we have the most tremendous profession in the world and how we each day make a powerful difference in the lives of our patients. Via the blog The Spohrs are Multiplying, Mike Spohr writes about the day his child died:
Continue readingThose Emergency Blues: Breastfeeding Makes Sane People Crazy
Why does any discussion of breastfeeding makes people a little insane? I don’t exclude myself: even I get a little agitated. Here are some examples of what I mean: Exhibit A: a recent post on breastfeeding at KevinMD.com sparked a small flame war in the comments. Barbara Bronson, an RN wrote there: A
Continue readingThose Emergency Blues: More on When Labelling Patients Causes Patients to Die
In the comments WhiteCoat (of WhiteCoat’s Call Room fame) strenuously objects to my take on the Anna Brown case: Wow. Someone on my blog suggested that I check out this post after I just posted about this story yesterday. To all of you who think “something more should have been
Continue readingThose Emergency Blues: On Your Feet, Nurse, the Doctor’s Here!
Should nurses give up their chairs for physicians? A nursing professor named Susan Kieffer writing at NurseTogether.com thinks so: If you have been a nurse for any length of time, you know how precious the seats at the nurses’ station really are. These seats are a rare commodity; one to
Continue readingThose Emergency Blues: Easter 2012
Happy Easter. One thing you may or may not know about me, dear readers, is that I’m a retired Catholic. Like many other people, I left because what some Catholics would call “below-the-belt” issues, but also because the (ongoing) sexual abuse scandals, the treatment of women, and the utter hatred
Continue readingThose Emergency Blues: When Labelling Patients Causes Patients to Die
I found this story how a homeless woman died very disturbing: Anna Brown wasn’t leaving the emergency room quietly. She yelled from a wheelchair at St. Mary’s Health Center security personnel and Richmond Heights police officers that her legs hurt so badly she couldn’t stand. She had already been to
Continue readingThose Emergency Blues: Arizona is Where Educating Patients is Bad, Bad, Bad: An Amanda Trujillo Update
Just a few words about Amanda Trujillo. Jennifer Olin at RNCentral.com has detailed at the latest twists and turns of her case. I won’t repeat everything, but I want to comment instead on the Arizona State Board of Nursing’s latest action. The BoN has added a further charge that Trujillo
Continue readingThose Emergency Blues: Scripting Nurses is Bad for Patient Care
This might be a new low in nursing management. Instead of actually providing caring, empathy and compassion, some hospitals would like nurses to provide a simulacrum of caring, empathy and compassion, believing patients are stupid enough not to tell the difference: Nurses unions say an increasing number of hospitals nationwide are asking
Continue readingThose Emergency Blues: Nursing Makes Nurses Less Empathetic
Irony alert! The best way to decrease empathy in nurses, apparently, is to actually practice nursing. A new study of nursing students found that as students gained more clinical exposure, they demonstrated a much greater decline in empathy scores over the year than did those with limited clinical experience during
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