Why the Recruitment Experience of Foreign-Educated Nurses Matters for Us All

There’s been talk of a coming nursing shortage for a number of years. A recent report from the US Department of Health and Human Services National Center for Health Workforce Analysis found that of the 3.9 million RNs, the average age is 50, meaning many will retire in the next decade as they reach 65. And this is coming at the same time the number of Americans over 85 years of age is expected to double, from 6.3 million in 2015 to 13 million by 2035.

These data indicate that there may be fewer nurses, particularly in some regions of the country and in some areas of care, at a time when the need for nursing care is increasing. As with other nursing shortages, when schools are unable to graduate enough nurses to fill the gap (the shortage of qualified faculty continues to force schools to turn away qualified students), some hospitals will turn to recruiting foreign-educated nurses (FEN), many of whom are experienced and and have at least a bachelor’s degree in nursing. […]

2020-02-12T11:02:50-05:00February 12th, 2020|Nursing, nursing research|1 Comment
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Serious Mental Health Issues: No Room for System Errors

I knew that my patients were once without mental illness, just like my little sister Doris had been before her diagnosis 10 years before, and I always tried to picture them like that, each their own best version of themselves.

A sister’s preventable death.

In this month’s Reflections column, “No Room for Error: Reflections on My Sister,” family nurse practitioner Kelly Vaez shares the story of the unexpected death of her sister, who had been diagnosed with schizophrenia ten years earlier. It’s particularly heart-wrenching to be able to see clearly, in retrospect, the ways in which our rushed, fragmented, and mental-health-unfriendly health care system contributed to what was probably an easily preventable death.

A dentist prescribed an unusually long course of antibiotics after a routine tooth extraction. The primary care team seemed unaware of the antibiotic therapy. No one made the connection between Doris’ diarrhea and this antibiotic, a frequent cause of C.diff infection.

And finally, loperamide—a drug that should never, ever be given for diarrhea that might be caused by C. diff—was prescribed with what seems to have been minimal assessment for the cause of the diarrhea. Was this last because the patient was a young adult with schizophrenia, and […]

2020-02-10T10:13:29-05:00February 10th, 2020|mental illness, Nursing|1 Comment
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Recent Data on Physical Inactivity Points to a More Active Role for Nurses

“. . .more attention should be given to considering total daily sitting time and to understanding the individual, social, occupational, and community environments that contribute to [it]. Nurses have a pivotal role to play in increasing public awareness about the potential adverse effects of high-volume and prolonged uninterrupted sitting.” –“Too Much Sitting: A Newly Recognized Health Risk”

“Often when I ask patients about their lifestyle, they are quick to admit they need more exercise. As a nurse, I view such conversations as opportunities to discuss and encourage physical activity.” –“The Evolution of Physical Activity Promotion”

According to recently released data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), more than 15% of U.S. adults say they don’t engage in any physical activity.

Health effects of being physically inactive.

Leading a sedentary lifestyle can lead to well-documented detrimental health effects, including an increased risk of developing cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, and certain types of cancer. The World Health Organization estimates that insufficient physical activity results in 3.2 million deaths annually.

Sedentary behavior varies based on location and race/ethnicity.

Using data collected from 2015 to 2018 as part of the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System, the CDC notes that inactivity levels range from an estimated 17.3%  to 47.7%, depending on the […]

2020-02-05T10:52:46-05:00February 5th, 2020|exercise, Nursing, personal health practices, Public health|0 Comments
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Polypharmacy in the Elderly: The Risks Often Outweigh the Benefits

“…the single greatest adverse drug event risk factor is the number of medications a patient takes.”

Lessons from speaking to elders about their medications.

Early in my career, I taught groups of seniors about common medications as part of a hospital-based community health program. I traveled around the Chicago area, speaking to groups at senior centers, apartment buildings, and places of worship about their health and medications.

As part of our program’s mandate to educate physicians and nurses as well, we interviewed many elders on film, asking them to tell us about their medications. I will always remember one lady, relating a friend’s problems with adverse drug effects. “He’s dead now,” she stated with finality. She made it clear that she blamed his demise on the drugs his doctor had prescribed.

My experience in the Chicago medication education program influenced my pharmacology lectures to nursing students. Students may remember me most for the many times I repeated this statement: “The first sign of an adverse drug reaction in an older person is often a change in mental function.” This is a central reality of drug effects on the elderly.

Paying attention to unexplained cognitive changes.

Yet even today, the default response of many prescribers […]

2020-02-03T08:54:32-05:00February 3rd, 2020|Nursing|0 Comments
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Late January Friday Health Care and Nursing Stories of Note

Here’s a brief Friday update on health care news and nursing matters of interest.

Latest nursing workforce sample survey results.

The newly released results of the 2018 National Sample Survey of Registered Nurses (produced by the Health Resources and Services Administration) will interest nurses and others for a variety of reasons. A few details:

  • Telehealth becoming an essential tool: In 2018, 50.3 percent of nurses used telehealth in their practice in some capacity. This number will continue to grow.
  • Diversity increases: as summarized by the Campaign for Action, “the percentage of the RN workforce that is Hispanic has almost tripled, from 3.6 percent to 10.2 percent. There has also been a notable increase in the percent of black RNs and a decrease in the percent of white RNs in the past decade.”
  • Education level increases: Also, again according to the Campaign for Nursing, “RNs who have bachelor and higher degrees has increased from 50 percent in 2008 to 64 percent in 2018.”
  • More men: The gender imbalance in nursing has changed for the better, as well, though by no means radically: “Male RNs in 2018 represented 9.6 percent of the nursing population, up from 7.1 percent in the 2008 study.”

The novel coronavirus.

The novel […]

2020-01-31T13:03:15-05:00January 31st, 2020|Nursing|0 Comments
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Views expressed on the blog are solely those of the authors or persons quoted. They do not necessarily reflect AJN’s views or those of Wolters Kluwer Health/Lippincott Williams and Wilkins.
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