Monday, November 30, 2009
MBIO
No Way
Florence Nightingale
Florence Nightingale, the daughter of the wealthy landowner, William Nightingale of Embly Park, Hampshire, was born in Florence, Italy, on 12th May, 1820. Her father was a Unitarian and a Whig who was involved in the anti-slavery movement. As a child, Florence was very close to her father, who, without a son, treated her as his friend and companion. He took responsibility for her education and taught her Greek, Latin, French, German, Italian, history, philosophy and mathematics.
At seventeen she felt herself to be called by God to some unnamed great cause. Florence's mother, Fanny Nightingale, also came from a staunch Unitarian family. Fanny was a domineering woman who was primarily concerned with finding her daughter a good husband. She was therefore upset by Florence's decision to reject Lord Houghton's offer of marriage. Florence refused to marry several suitors, and at the age of twenty-five told her parents she wanted to become a nurse. Her parents were totally opposed to the idea as nursing was associated with working class women.
Florence's desire to have a career in medicine was reinforced when she met Elizabeth Blackwell at St. Bartholomew's Hospital in London. Blackwell was the first woman to qualify as a doctor in the United States. Blackwell, who had to overcome considerable prejudice to achieve her ambition, encouraged her to keep trying and in 1851 Florence's father gave her permission to train as a nurse.
Florence, now thirty-one, went to Kaiserwerth, Germany where she studied to become a nurse at the Institute of Protestant Deaconesses. Two years later she was appointed resident lady superintendent of a hospital for invalid women in Harley Street, London.
In March, 1853, Russia invaded Turkey. Britain and France, concerned about the growing power of Russia, went to Turkey's aid. This conflict became known as the Crimean War. Soon after British soldiers arrived in Turkey, they began going down with cholera and malaria. Within a few weeks an estimated 8,000 men were suffering from these two diseases.
Source : http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk
Nurse Practitioner Jobs ARNP Jobs Nov. 28th
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Saturday, November 28, 2009
Why has Nursing care changed?
Somebody actually decided to do a little research into these issues and determine just what exactly is going on.
You won't find any "too posh to wash" "too clever to care" "needs matron to knock them into line" and "it all went downhill when they started training at university" comments here. Not by a long shot. Not by a long shot. The person who wrote this article knows her stuff and did her research.
I won't post the whole article here (edited to add, I should really as this got way longer than expected) but please, please, check it out. So much is similar to what is going on in the UK.
Here are some excerpts in no particular order. These are just paragraphs here and there that I copied and pasted for those who don't click on the article. My comments in blue. I'd do more but I am getting kicked off the pc by the warcraft brigade.
*The burden of care for nurses, patients, and families has demonstrably increased since 1990.
*This situation has three fundamental causes. The first cause is a profound change in the nature of hospitalization, the kinds of illnesses and conditions of patients treated, and the level of care required. The second is the reorganization of hospitals, which has led to a reduction in the amount of time nurses spend in direct care of patients. The third is the lack of broadly accepted expectations about the caregiving responsibilities that family, friends, and patients themselves ought to assume, both in the hospital and at home, about how this care should be coordinated with the work of professional nurses and other nursing personnel, and about the appropriate ratio of direct-care nurses to patients. This report deals with each of these causes in detail.
*Pressures on families are particularly severe when a patient has been sent home from the hospital after a shortened stay or has received outpatient care for problems that were formerly dealt with in hospitals.
*Nurses report increasing dissatisfaction with their work in hospitals that have cut staff, that require frequent overtime, and that have replaced nurses with assistive personnel. Research has shown that these phenomena are related to adverse nurse and patient outcomes.
*This situation has three fundamental causes.
*The first cause is a profound change in the nature of hospitalization, the kinds of illnesses and conditions of patients treated, and the level of care required.
*The second is the reorganization of hospitals, which has led to a reduction in the amount of time nurses spend in direct care of patients. The third is the lack of broadly accepted expectations about the caregiving responsibilities that family, friends, and patients themselves ought to assume, both in the hospital and at home, about how this care should be coordinated with the work of professional nurses and other nursing personnel, and about the appropriate ratio of direct-care nurses to patients. This report deals with each of these causes in detail.
*Hospitals and hospital nursing have changed dramatically since 1990. Changes in reimbursement and demography have, in turn, added to the pressures on hospital systems, on patients, and on caregivers. Inpatient lengths of stay have declined dramatically (by 40 percent between 1980 and 1995) (Reinhardt 1996), and the average acuity of patients is higher in any given unit. Therefore, every patient assigned to an RN requires relatively intensive monitoring and care—a situation that is complicated by the fact that increased demands for documentation mean that caregivers can devote fewer hours to direct care and monitoring. Try telling any of this to these old bats who trained in 1960 and haven't been back since 1962. One stupid bitch said that the problems were down to university educated nurses, and everyone else just repeated that statement like a robot.
*Advances in knowledge and medical and nursing expertise have enabled a greater number of seriously ill patients to survive. The shortened length of hospital stays, resulting from pressure from insurers (Or nu-labour targets), means that more severely ill patients are being discharged sooner to nursing homes, rehabilitation facilities, or their own homes. Moreover, the way hospitalization is financed and the growing number of chronically ill people and the aging of the population in general are also affecting hospitals' inpatient mission.
*Nurses, physicians, patients, and families have formed their expectations about care over many decades. Personal experiences, fictional depictions, and anecdotes from family and friends shape notions about care. The concepts care and nurse are both freighted with complex historical and emotional content. Seldom verbalized, this social legacy contributes to the public's expectations about caregiving. That the nature of hospitalization has changed, that demographic changes have brought different emphases to the health care system, that financial pressures have led to restructured and reorganized systems, and that hospitals have had to alter their mission to suit these financial and demographic shifts—all these developments have been received with gloom and anxiety by patients and potential patients and with concern by nurses and physicians. Well it seems that everyone just blames the nurses for being lazy. Problem solved eh.
*Recent changes in what people can expect from nursing and hospital care have not been widely discussed with the public. Nor have changes been discussed with nurses very often.
**. Nurses represent the primary surveillance system in hospitals 24 hours a day. An adequate surveillance system provides enough nurses to observe patients directly so that they can recognize an impending or actual problem. These nurses are the first to mobilize an intervention that often requires the coordination of the activities of others, including physicians, to save a patient's life. Silber finds nurse staffing even more important than the board certification of physicians, since physicians are usually the second to know about a complication.
*****Consulting firms brought in to help hospitals reengineer their services and achieve cost reductions usually target labor costs. But nurses and physicians often complain that consultants do not seem to understand the complexities of delivering care or to grasp the complex role that nurses play in observing, monitoring, and assessing patients' needs. All too often, cutting professional nursing staff—and replacing nurses with nurses' aides or other assistants—serve as an easy solution to budgetary problems. This is exactly what is happening in the NHS.
*I once had a chance conversation with a man who, I learned, had in the past worked for one of the major consulting companies and had been deeply involved in the restructuring of a number of hospitals. Learning that I was a nurse, he said, somewhat sheepishly, "I'm one of the bad guys." He told me about what he described as his "naive and dangerous period" and was filled with guilt over the restructuring recommendations he had made in his former job. His awakening, he said, had come when his wife had had a baby who required intensive, long-term neonatal care. During the hours and days the couple spent at the hospital visiting their critically vulnerable infant, they had a chance to see nurses at work expertly caring for—and ultimately saving—their child. In the process, he came to understand what nurses do and how important their job is. Well well well. NHS hospitals have been bringing these same kinds of management consultants in for years. Doubt they are remorseful though. They are just out of control. Prejudice against Nurses leads to managers listening to these clueless dipshit management consultants rather than frontline staff who know the score. It's the same everywhere, doesn't matter what country you are in...
*The word care has a variety of meanings, and is used to describe both personal and professional activities. But the professional care that nurses are trained to give is in many respects quite different from the personal sorts of caring that characterize relationships between spouses, parents and children, family members, and friends. Professional caregivers are independent decision-makers, whose autonomy of action is legally defined, and they are highly educated specialists who act in accordance with expert knowledge and in ways appropriate to their responsibilities.
*When a person's daily life is seriously impaired by illness, age, or disability, he or she may require the assistance of nurses—whether in a hospital, a nursing home, or at home. Unfortunately, many ambulatory settings are poorly suited for nursing activity, a situation that calls for an even higher level of professional knowledge and judgment. In other words, care—the kind of care that nurses render, sometimes under difficult circumstances—consists of much more than giving patients confidence, assurance, and comforting words. Nurses base their practice on exacting professional standards.
*The complexity of the care given by professional nurses, however, is only poorly understood by the public at large. . Because "caring" is such a ubiquitous concept, and because the word is used so loosely, nursing care is often seen as intellectually undemanding, a "soft" profession. And this perception has been bolstered by the fact that historically, and in many nations, young men have been forbidden or discouraged from entering nursing, leading people to see nursing as "women's work" and a second-class kind of career. That nursing has been so demeaned has led men and women both to discount it, rejecting careers in professional caring for more powerful, economically rewarding roles.
**Chief nursing officers told Gordon that nurses' greater workloads occurred mainly because patients were in and out of the hospital so quickly. Administrators said the same thing, but their agreement did not seem to translate into support for bedside nurses. Staff nurses complained of a lack of support from nursing administrators and said they felt they were reliving failed nursing delivery models of the past, such as less expensive substitutes and team nursing.(Oh Nurse Anne could tell you all about that) They said administrators blamed them for being inefficient, dismissed them as complainers when they reported problems in patient care, and constantly challenged data culled from their daily experience in providing patient care
*In addition, Sovie's study reported a declining number of RNs involved in direct patient care and a growing number of UAPs participating in patient care. (The study also showed that UAPs are being assigned an expanded role in providing patient care.) Although reductions in the number of RNs were intended to reduce costs, Sovie's findings showed that costs per day/discharge were influenced by hours worked per patient day (HWPPD) and paid full-time equivalents (FTE). Thus FTEs and HWPPD were the expense drivers, not the percentage of RNs. In many instances, as RN percentage went down, both FTEs and HWPPD rose since, with fewer RNs and more unlicensed personnel on staff, it took more people more hours to deliver care.
*The majority of these changes were cost driven; however, costs per day/discharge decreased as the percentage of RNs increased. That reengineering does not necessarily improve performance but can in fact be detrimental to it was also found in a study that examined cost per patient day at 2,306 urban medical/surgical hospitals with 100 or more beds (Walston 1998).
*It is difficult to ascertain the overall skill level of nursing staff at restructured hospitals. The American Hospital Association stopped collecting data on aides in 1993—just as hospitals had begun substituting aides for registered nurses—because, it said, hospitals balked at completing the survey (Aiken 1999). The AHA still collects data on RNs and LPNs, but, as aides are melded with other hospital personnel, it is no longer possible to calculate the nursing-skill mix.
*The training of the aides who are replacing RNs is not regulated by state licensing boards. There are no minimum requirements governing the amount of training aides or "cross-trained" workers must have before they can be redeployed (at least part of the time) to do nursing work. Training periods can range from a few hours to perhaps as long as six weeks. Ninety-nine percent of the hospitals in California reported fewer than 120 hours of on-the-job training for newly hired ancillary nursing personnel. Only 20 percent of those hospitals required such aides to have a high school diploma. The majority of hospitals (59 percent) provided fewer than 20 hours of classroom instruction, and 88 percent provided 40 or fewer hours of instruction time (Institute of Medicine 1996).
*In April 1999, nurses at several New York hospitals went on strike to protest patient loads and work hours that they deemed dangerous. In a complaint to the National Labor Relations Board, the New York State Nurses Association reported that nurses were sometimes working 20 hours out of 24 and caring for as many as 18 patients (New York State Nurses Association 1999). Many other reports tell similar stories: of nurses dealing with ratios of 1 RN to 10 patients on the day shift and 1 to 15 or even 1 to 20 on some shifts (well that sounds almost as bad as what is normal in the UK, those are our regular numbers), of nurses being expected to work double shifts, and of a growing demand that nurses work mandatory overtime.
*Anecdotal reports from nurses, doctors, patients, and families suggest a dramatic decline in the availability of professional nurses to care for acutely ill patients while hospitalized and during the immediate post-discharge period. Most of these anecdotes contain bitter complaints about the lack of nurses to meet the increasingly complex needs of patients and express genuine concern (often outrage) about the decline in the quality of care provided to vulnerable patients. Mostly this outrage is directed straight at nurses who are caring for way too many patients at one time. Nurses are told that the failures in care are down to their laziness, their stupidity, their uncaring slovenly attitude.
* Nurses, physicians, and chief nursing officers all agreed that they could no longer provide the level of care given in the recent past. Both nurses and physicians reported that heavy workloads caused nurses to postpone or miss tasks, and nurses described a troubling erosion of their capacity for empathy because of the difficulty they had finding time to provide even basic physical care. The combination of crowded schedules and inadequate staffing permitted little or no time for education or mentoring of neophyte nurses.
*The experts did, however, make the following positive recommendations for action by public-sector regulators:
Establish standards for safe patient care, while acknowledging the extraordinary difficulty of doing so.
Establish training standards and competency (certification) exams for previously licensed personnel, through both national and hospital-based strategies.
Find new ways to regulate the sites in which nurses practice. Such regulations might include requirements that address the issues discussed in this report (for example, closing beds when RN staff is reduced below a particular level and adding clinical nurse specialists to units).
Require that clinical assignments be given only to persons qualified to perform them.
Require that all staff performing clinical tasks be properly identified.
Encourage state legislatures to establish commissions on nursing to address issues of regulation as well as the adequacy of the supply of nurses, as has occurred, for example, in Maryland and California.
Create a nursing assignment registry that provides information about training and background in ways that earn the respect of members of the profession and others.
Establish licensing requirements that reflect the different capabilities of nurses with different educational credentials, in response to employers of nurses redesigning jobs and rewards that reflect differences in education.
Financing
*The experts offered the following recommendations to address the issues:
Adopt the ANA Principles of Nurse Staffing, either as an industry standard or by regulation.
Require hospitals to report nurse-to-patient ratios publicly on a regular schedule. (Note: This is not a recommendation of required nurse-to-patient ratios.)
Establish protocols to prevent the circumvention of technologies designed to prevent medical errors (for example, turning off alarms that would alert staff to problems).
Establish a more effective standard hierarchy of expertise in nursing service; in particular, establish as a norm the strong presence of persons with substantial recent clinical experience at the highest levels of management as well as in team leadership in patient care areas.
Provide opportunities for education and career progression for all hospital positions. Encourage hospitals to improve working conditions in order to be eligible for Magnet Hospital Recognition, awarded by the American Nurses' Credentialing Center.
The experts recommended that policymakers in government, provider associations, and nursing should:
Improve working conditions, compensation, and benefit packages for nurses to encourage long-term institutional employment, so that nursing can compete more effectively with other professions.
Tie repayment and forgiveness of educational loans and grants to the recipient remaining in nursing, in hospitals and other health care agencies, for periods of time related to the extent of support granted.
Make nursing education more efficient by reducing the number of nursing schools in hospitals and community colleges and increasing capacity in baccalaureate and graduate degree programs. See my posts on patients of degree educated bedside nurses having highter survival rates.
It's an excellent article. It's not that long. You can read it in 5 minutes. Check it out of you get a chance. I am so sick that the changes in nursing care in hospital being blamed on uncaring, overeducated, lazy nurses. Nurses are just a soft target eh? Why is that? Why is it so easy to target Nurses? That answer can easily be found in the history of Nursing. That's a blog post I am still working on.
Thursday, November 26, 2009
Nice Headline about Nurses Daily Mail
With the kind of trained nurse to patient ratios that British nurses are working with I am not surprised. I wouldn't expect a nurse with superpowers to do any better. I have worked in 3 countries as a nurse over a period of 13 years. Let me remind you of something. Nurses in the UK are working with trained nurse to patient ratios that wouldn't be legal in a 3rd world hellhole like Haiti. Not only that, but they have a lot less back up than say a nurse in Canada or Australia would have.
I once asked asked a super american nurse friend of mine if she would take on 15 acute patients. She is a bedside nurse, very well respected and has won multiple awards. She would tell you no way would she take on more than 6 acute patients with no back up because it would be nothing but a total fail, no matter how hard she worked. She would refuse to work in a hospital like mine that can assign a nurse anywhere from 10 to 30 and upwards patients. This statement came from a nurse friend of mine in the North East USA who won an award for most compassionate nurse at her Magnet Hospital. Google Magnet.
No one in their right mind would expect a nurse to be able to function in the conditions that NHS nurses are working in right now. Whether they are angels or devils, they are going to fall flat on their faces and fail. Therefore we can conclude, once again, that most commentators on the daily mail are lunatics.
I'll let my readers take this apart in the comments section. I don't have the energy right now.
What have I learned from this article? Journalists still don't understand that most of these "nurses" are not actually nurses.
12-14 hours without a break or a drink, on your feet while the support assistants stop for tea. It's not like they can help you keep up with the nurse stuff anyway. Remember that most of the readers commenting on this daily fail article probably work 8-9 hour days and get an hour lunch break. Now that is lazy.
Dear Daily Fail,
Interesting piece. I will never so much as have a minute free in shift to screw around with mattresses. If the hospital will provide more staff nurses on shift with me to handle all the drugs, treatments, assessments, orders and accountability then I will happily clean the mattresses. Happily. God I would love a shift spent cleaning and I am very much a degree nurse.
There is a massive difference between a nurse not cleaning a mattress because she is alone and cannot drop the ball on the drugs and the treatments for 30 seconds and a nurse that just doesn't want to do it. The former is a lot more likely and the latter is rare. Cleaning mattresses rather than being the only RN for multiple acutely ill patients sounds rather pleasant to 99.9% of us. You see, we would consider an 8 hour workday without life and death responsibility a vacation day with a paycheck. Especially if it was an 8 hour workday without life and death responsibility and a lunch break. Even if it was only a 10 minute lunch break.
This is what we think of people who work outside of health care and un-registered people who work in health care. You are all having permanent vacation days with paychecks. A nurse I used to work with who left health care to work as a teaching assistant explained it to me that way and so have many others.
An RN can be working at a pace you cannot begin to imagine sometimes for 14 hours straight with no break and still only get through the top 1% of what needs to be done that shift. That means that even if he is working at that kind of pace most of his patients will languish and not get fed or basic care simply down to the fact that the nurse is so outnumbered by people who need help.
I am starting to realise that it won't actually matter if I stop for 5 minutes to get a drink during my 12 hour shift. It won't change a goddamn thing.
Patients are going to suffer whether I do or don't.
Sincerely Yours,
MMN.
PS- no one believes that you care about patients. A sustained media campaign to expose the reality of the situation and staff our hospitals with trained nurses would result in a level of care that would have made the idea of starving neglected patients on filthy wards a distant memory. It would also be cost effective to increase your ratios of trained nurses. But that wouldn't give you sensationalist yellow journalism headlines now would it?
By the way does anyone know of a casualty unit anywhere in the NHS where the actual nurses could afford to be lazy for even 10 seconds and then get out of there without being blamed for someone's death?
Med School Can Only Get Better From Here
11/26 Nurse Practitioner Jobs
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Wednesday, November 25, 2009
Julie's picks from the nursing literature: November
Here are my picks from the recent articles dealing with evidence-based nursing or nursing research. Staff at St. Joseph Hospital in Orange, California and Children's Hospital of Orange County may be able to access the full text of these via the library's website.
1.
An information technology infrastructure to enable evidence-based nursing practice.(includes abstract); Pochciol JM; Warren JI; Nursing Administration Quarterly, 2009 Oct-Dec; 33 (4): 317-24 (journal article - tables/charts) ISSN: 0363-9568 PMID: 19893445 CINAHL AN: 2010435221
2. Nurse-led care was non-inferior to physician-directed care in
symptomatic moderate to severe obstructive sleep apnoea.Floyd JA;
Evidence-BasedNursing, 2009 Oct; 12 (4): 112 (journal article) ISSN:
1367-6539 PMID: 19779079 CINAHL AN: 2010450231
3. Why nursing has not embraced the clinician--scientist role.(includes
abstract); Mackay M; Nursing Philosophy, 2009 Oct; 10 (4): 287-96
(journal article - review) ISSN: 1466-7681 PMID: 19743972 CINAHL AN:
2010412979
4. The meaning of hope in nursing research: a meta-synthesis.(includes
abstract); Hammer K; Mogensen O; Hall EOC; Scandinavian Journal of
Caring Sciences, 2009 Sep; 23 (3): 549-57 (journal article - research,
systematic review, tables/charts) ISSN: 0283-9318 CINAHL AN:
2010378575
5. Evidence-based nursing. Research ambassadors: bringing findings to
the bedside.Larkin ME; Cierpial CL; Vanderboom T; Anspach K; Grealish
K; Ball S; Griffith CA; Nursing Management, 2009 Oct; 40 (10): 20-3
(journal article) ISSN: 0744-6314 CINAHL AN: 2010436208
6. Nurses' role in detecting deterioration in ward patients: systematic
literature review.(includes abstract); Odell M; Victor C; Oliver D;
Journal of Advanced Nursing, 2009 Oct; 65 (10): 1992-2006 (journal
article - research, systematic review, tables/charts) ISSN: 0309-2402
CINAHL AN: 2010413148
7. 28. The utilization of reflective journals to explore nurses' experience
using mobile information technology to access and use research
evidence.Newman K; Doran D; CIN: Computers, Informatics, Nursing, 2009
Sep-Oct; 27 (5): 336 (journal article - abstract, research) ISSN:
1538-2931 CINAHL AN: 2010425595
8. Nurse-led interventions to reduce cardiac risk factors in
adults.Harvey J; Loar R; Joanna Briggs Institute; Best Practice, 2009;
13 (5): 21-4 (journal article) ISSN: 1329-1874 CINAHL AN: 2010447069
9. Accessing pre-appraised evidence: fine-tuning the 5S model into a 6S
model.Dicenso A; Bayley L; Haynes RB; Evidence-BasedNursing, 2009 Oct;
12 (4): 99-101 (journal article) ISSN: 1367-6539 PMID: 19779069 CINAHL
AN: 2010450221
10. Review: little evidence exists for type of dressing or support
surface or for nutritional supplements for pressure ulcers.Bell-Syer
SE; Evidence-BasedNursing, 2009 Oct; 12 (4): 118 (journal article)
ISSN: 1367-6539 PMID: 19779085 CINAHL AN: 2010450237
11. AACN announces new system to rate evidence. AACN Bold Voices, 2009
Sep; 1 (3): 14 (journal article - brief item, tables/charts) ISSN:
1948-7088 CINAHL AN: 2010402603
12. Core measures for developmentally supportive care in neonatal
intensive care units: theory, precedence and practice.(includes
abstract); Coughlin M; Gibbins S; Hoath S; Journal of Advanced
Nursing, 2009 Oct; 65 (10): 2239-48 (journal article - pictorial,
tables/charts) ISSN: 0309-2402 CINAHL AN: 2010413158
13. Searching for evidence: mission-critical tips.Boss C; Wurmser TA;
Nursing Management, 2009 Sep; 40 (9): 12, 14 (journal article) ISSN:
0744-6314 PMID: 19734750 CINAHL AN: 2010414304
14. Overturning barriers to pain relief in older adults.(includes
abstract); D'Arcy Y; Nursing, 2009 Oct; 39 (10): 32-9 (journal article
- CEU, exam questions, nursing interventions, pictorial, review,
tables/charts) ISSN: 0360-4039 CINAHL AN: 2010431004
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Tuesday, November 24, 2009
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Last post on Nurse Degrees....for awhile anyway
But I am posting this next piece because I think the author sums it all up quite nicely. This was written by a colleague of mine.
......................................................................................................................
I'm about a week behind the curve on this one, but I've been browsing through all the blog reactions to the news that all nurses will study for a degree from 2013, and alternately laughing and crying.
This is a desperately unfashionable thing to say, but I actually think it's a good thing. I trained in Wales, where nurse training is already all-degree. The news is only bringing England into line with Scotland and Wales. Contrary to what a lot of commentators are suggesting, doing a degree doesn't mean you spend less time on the wards while studying - whether you do a degree or a diploma, a student nurse has to spend over 2500 hours out on clinical placements before they can qualify.
Here's what Iain Dale (described as "insightful, informative and entertaining" by the Observer) has to say about it, in his insightful and informative way.
I once spent a year working as a nurse. There, that surprised you didn't it? Admittedly it was in Germany and was in a private clinic specialising in spinal injuries, but it was still nursing. I had no qualifications, no training and certainly no degree (it was my gap year).
So, Iain, you weren't a nurse at all. You were a care assistant. Don't get me wrong, I'm not knocking care assistants; many of them are brilliant, but they're not staff nurses.
So when I heard this morning that the NHS was now going to insist on a degree before nurses could train, I was dumbfounded. Not all nurses are academically gifted and would want to do a degree. Does a degree in astronomy make a nurse better able to do his or job, than four years hands on training?Nooo, Iain, they have to do a degree in nursing, not astronomy!
Then there's this guy, who despite being a doctor, still doesn't seem to understand how nurse training works.
The same is the case for nursing training, the ward hours and apprenticeship has been lost at the expense of satisfying politically correct mumbo jumbo spewed forth by educationalists.
But the ward hours and apprenticeship haven't been lost. I'm a degree-educated nurse, and I still had to do my 2500 hours on placements before I could qualify. I spent a hell of a lot of time running around wards doing hands-on nursing to get my degree.
Then I read Melanie Phillips article in the Spectator. Yadda yadda nurses don't want to nurse yadda yadda Florence Nightingale yadda yadda nursing is a vocation not a profession yadda yadda ...then I had to stop before my brain exploded onto my PC monitor. Though I understand this is a fairly usual reaction to reading a Mel Phillips article.
Right now there are many problems with providing nursing care, just to list a few:
- criminally low ratios of nurses to patients on NHS wards. I've heard of some wards where 2 nurses and 2 healthcare assistants were left looking after 35 seriously ill patients.
- more form-filling being forced on nurses in an increasingly lawsuit-happy culture - see also teachers, police officers and social workers
- advances in medicine making the job more technical. Florence Nightingale wasn't running around dealing with IVs, catheters, tracheostomies, all the while mixing potentially lethal medications
- an ageing population making the patients on the wards older and sicker, thus needing more care to keep them alive.
But what is not the problem is that nurses are getting too uppity because they've got degrees. All this is inverse intellectual snobbery that says that clever people can't be good nurses. My experience is that clever people often make for outstanding nurses. They think on their feet, they can problem-solve, they look at new ways to do this, they keep their knowledge and skills updated. All of these things are good qualities in a nurse.
As for the media stereotype of nurses who are too busy daydreaming about their next sociology paper to notice the patient's call bell ringing....they may well exist, but I haven't met any of them. What I have met repeatedly though is nurses who were rubbish at their job because they were ignorant, unimaginative and thick as a plank.
......................................................................................................................
Outstanding.
Melanie Phillips article here. Melanie, your ignorance is shocking. That goes for you too Iain Dale.
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Monday, November 23, 2009
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Veterinary Nurse ----------- 11/13/2009 ----- 20
Theatre Nurse --------------- 11/19/2009 ----- 25
Medical Nurse -------------- 11/19/2009 ----- 25
ICU Nurse -------------------- 11/19/2009 ----- 25
Acute Care Nurse --------- 11/19/2009 ----- 15
NURSE (NICU) ------------- 11/19/2009 ----- 15
For more info on the name of the recruiting agency, its address, and contact infos, just leave your email address, and the position you wish to apply for in the comment section at the end of this article and we will respond to your queries as soon as possible.
Click, Peel, Stick: How to Turn Holiday Cards into a Midwifery Advocacy Activity
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What Mammography and Continuous Electronic Fetal Heart Rate Monitoring Have in Common
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
Nurse Practitioner Jobs ARNP Jobs Nov. 17
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Tuesday, November 17, 2009
A healthier winter for Philadelphia
Approximately 1400 Philadelphians can thank Villanova University nursing students for fewer fevers, coughs, and aches this winter. Flu season just got easier for them after nearly 90 junior students, accompanied by College of Nursing faculty, administered their seasonal flu shots.The junior class participates in the seasonal flu immunization program with the Philadelphia Department of Public Health. During October and November, at 11 locations across the city including senior centers, parishes, and other community sites, the students assessed, educated and immunized vulnerable Philadelphians. The College has served Philadelphia in this manner for at least nine years.
In addition, the College of Nursing is assisting its own community by administering H1N1 vaccines to faculty, staff and students on Villanova’s campus on four days in November. Eleven clinical groups of traditional junior and senior students plus accelerated second degree adult students are being joined by their faculty for the immunization program at Jake Nevin Field House.
In this photo, nursing students Kevin Nusspickel and Kaitlyn Murphy administer flu shots to older Philadelphians at a retirement center on November 2.
It’s Time to Fight For Preemies
Monday, November 16, 2009
Ode to Betty
Nominate your favorite accomplished Villanova Nurse for our Medallion!
Each year the College of Nursing recognizes the achievements of its alumni with its highest award, the College of Nursing Medallion. Recipients are selected from among your nominations, a critical step in the process.We encourage you to take the time to nominate a fellow Villanova Nurse this month. Previous honorees have been nurse managers, executives, clinicians, community volunteers and educators. We look forward to reading your nominations and honoring yet another distinguished group of Villanova Nurses. 11/14 Nurse Practitioner Jobs ARNP Jobs
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