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: Nursing Naval Gazing
Those 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: We Get No Respect
From Ian Miller at ImpactedNurse.com, a few thoughts on under-utilized and under-recognized senior nurses who are leaking out of the profession: Nursing has few opportunities for promotion and recognition of senior expertise within the clinical setting. How often have you watched senior (and I’m talking about years of experience here) nurses
Continue readingThose Emergency Blues: Do Not Fold, Spindle or Mutilate the Nurse
An unpleasant, no, ugly and unfortunate situation at Victoria General Hospital is preventing a woman from seeing her son. From the National Post article: A 73-year-old woman who travelled to Victoria from South Africa to care for her seriously ill son has been banned from Victoria General Hospital after she
Continue readingThose Emergency Blues: A Nurse Contemplates Leaving the Profession
Dinner last night with an old friend who toils in the mines of Labour and Delivery. She has worked there for four years. She told me of an incident not too long ago working the night shift, faced with a post-partum patient who was bleeding, hypotensive, and tachycardic, in short,
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: Nursing Week Ain’t What It Used to Be
My Nurses Week joy was shattered last night when the son of a patient reamed me out for discussing the patient’s condition and treatment plan — wait for it — with the patient. He thought his father, who was a rather elderly but very independent and shrewd man who still
Continue readingThose Emergency Blues: How Nurses View Themselves
A selection of “What I Actually Do” meme posters” related to nursing, which have been making the rounds on the Interwebs. Some of them, I guess, are funny and clever, and they’re meant (I suppose) to educate the public at large about the realities of nursing. But what I think
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: 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
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