A hopeful sign? The Voice of America reports that a group of former auto workers in Michigan, where the nursing shortage is acute, are training to be nurses. Says one, “I don’t have to come home smelling like oil.” The story doesn’t tell us what percentage of these former auto workers are men and what percentage women, but it might be interesting to know. –Jacob M., AJN senior editor
This post is a bit of a departure for the Word Curmudgeon (in that it’s neither very curmudgeonly nor about some arcane word usage question), but I think it’s a worthy departure and of particular relevance to both military nurses (abroad and stateside) and nonmilitary nurses—anyone, in fact, who treats women who’ve served in the U.S. military. […]
The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation is supporting a new Institute of Medicine (IOM) Commission on the Future of Nursing. The chairperson will be University of Miami President Donna Shalala (also former Secretary of Health and Human Services under the Clinton Administration); the commission will include a few nurses but also others from various private and public sectors. The foundation has been investing significantly in nursing in recent years, with projects such as the Executive Nurse Fellowships, an interdisciplinary nursing research initiative, Transforming Care At the Bedside, and the AARP Center to Champion Nursing.
The commission is not expected to start its work until later this year, but nursing should applaud the RWJ Foundation for recognizing the importance of nursing and being willing to invest in it. My money is betting that this commission will result in significant recommendations—instead of unread and tepid reports designed to collect dust.
-Diana Mason, AJN editor-in-chief
Today on a national news program, a nurse was given credit for something pretty outstanding. One of the first words Charla Nash spoke upon emerging from a medically induced coma was “Lisa,” the name of one of her nurses, according to one of her brothers on the Today Show this morning. The Connecticut woman, who was mauled by her friend’s chimpanzee in February, sustained horrific injuries, so bad in fact that according to the Daily News the nurses and physicians who treated her were offered counseling afterward. She has since been recovering at the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio, the first hospital to perform a face transplantation in this country. Nash’s prognosis was pretty bleak for a while, but this morning her brothers said that she’s now able to sit up and to speak with the aid of an artificial voice box. Steve Nash attributed her response to the nurse to the fact that the nurses “had always talked to [Charla] as if she were awake.” If you would like to learn more about Charla Nash—the person, mother, sister, and friend—and send her an e-mail of encouragement, go to www.friendsofcharlienash.com, which has been set up by her family.
–Christine Moffa, MS, RN, AJN clinical editor
“In the name of prevention, millions of Americans have accepted the idea that it’s reasonable to treat a risk factor such as bone loss or high cholesterol as if it were a disease,” writes Maryann Napoli, associate director of the Center for Medical Consumers, in her April AJN article, “Marketing Osteoporosis.” […]
