Criminal Nurses: Who’s Looking Out for the Public’s Safety?

Journalists Charles Ornstein and Tracy Weber have continued their expose of the California Board of Registered Nursing's (CBRN) delays in investigating and acting on complaints against nurses. The role of this and other state boards is to protect the public from unsafe nurses. Ornstein and Weber show that nurses who are incompetent or engage in criminal activities are able to go from one workplace to another, sometimes harming patients, because the board fails to meet its obligation to the public in a timely fashion.

2016-11-21T13:25:42-05:00July 13th, 2009|nursing research|2 Comments
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What’s It Gonna Take to Improve Nurse Staffing?

From otisarchives4, via Flickr

It’s easy to forget that nurses are the ones who will continue to provide most of the care in whatever health care system we end up with in the coming years. Unfortunately, two recent announcements about how nurses rated staffing and workloads gave me a nasty sense of déjà vu.

On July 6, the American Nurses Association (ANA) announced the results of an online survey it conducted for several months last year: 70% of the 10,000 plus respondents say staffing is insufficient; 52% said they are considering leaving their job (of these, 42% say it’s because of inadequate staffing). Slightly more than 35% say they “rarely or never” are able to take full meal breaks. Over half say the quality of care has declined and almost half (49.5%) are unsure if they’d want someone they care about treated in the facility in which they work. […]

2016-11-21T13:25:43-05:00July 10th, 2009|health care policy, nursing research, safe staffing|2 Comments
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Flu Preparedness Summit Issues Warning–But What Should Nurses Know?

“The Obama administration warned Americans on Thursday to be ready for an aggressive return of the swine flu virus in the fall, announcing plans to begin vaccinations in October and offering states and hospitals money to help them prepare.”

(Here’s the NY Times article quoted above. And here’s the flu preparedness summit held today by major players in the U.S. government, with archived video footage. Also: guidance for nurses, provided to AJN by the CDC in late April. We’ll be checking in with them soon for an update.)
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2009-07-09T17:24:42-04:00July 9th, 2009|Nursing|1 Comment
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Web Roundup: The Nursosphere, Dying Nuns, Transparency in Medical Pricing

emergiblogscreenshotJuly09We do our best to keep up with the nurse blogosphere, but it really helps to have regular help from Kim at Emergiblog, who has posted a fantastically varied and snappy roundup of recent blog posts by nurses in her latest edition of “Change of Shift.” (And thanks, Kim, as always, for the mention of Off the Charts.)

A while back, we noted a news story about parish nurses, and asked whether spirituality and nursing are a good fit—so it seems appropriate to mention two stories with some bearing on health care and its intersection with spiritual or religious matters. Daily Dose, the Washington Post blog “tracking the debate over health care reform,” writes that faith groups are increasingly engaged on the health care reform issue and are “pressing the moral urgency” for reform. And the NY Times has a thought-provoking article about nuns at one convent who are facing death “with dignity and reverence” while often eschewing aggressive treatment.

A convent is a world apart, unduplicable. But the Sisters of St. Joseph, a congregation in this Rochester suburb, animate many factors that studies say contribute to successful aging and a gentle death — none of which require this special setting. These include a large social network, intellectual stimulation, continued engagement in life and spiritual beliefs, as well as health care guided by […]

2016-11-21T13:25:47-05:00July 9th, 2009|nursing perspective|0 Comments
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Useful Links for Understanding Health Care Reform

At Slate, a guide of sources to help those of you who’ve got the gumption (and time) begin to navigate the overwhelming amount of information and misinformation about health care reform.
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2009-07-08T16:58:45-04:00July 8th, 2009|health care policy|1 Comment
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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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