- Guest Post by Carol Gino, Nurse, #1 New York Times Bestselling Author, and blogger at The Hopeful Healer.
When I was working the night shift, one of my patients- a 44 year old man, had just gone for an angiogram. He had been brought back to the floor afterwards, but began hemorrhaging from his femoral artery. I’d added pressure dressings, laid on heavier sandbags, and then called the intern.
The intern took a while to get to the floor and all the while the patient kept bleeding heavily. When the intern just shook his head and did nothing, I called his resident. When the resident didn’t respond, I called the attending. Now I knew I was in big trouble. It didn’t matter that the patient’s blood pressure was 60/40 by the time I called, it mattered that I had broken protocol.
Feel free to re-post these letters and please write or call the Arizona State Board of Nursing to ask them to drop all complaints against Amanda Trujillo. Please click here for my original blog post containing all case details.
You know I am always on the look-out for awesome entrepreneurial healthcare-related companies, right? Well, I just found one that I’m really excited about!
So even though the company’s founder isn’t a nurse per se, he’s an EMS and a fellow health care entrepreneur and his product line rocks. The smart and funny, Mr. Avi Goldstein, has created a clever little solution to the age-old “where do I stash my tape?” problem for nurses, docs, and first responders of every stripe.
Guest Post by New York Times #1 Bestselling Author and Registered Nurse, Carol Gino
Okay, so after about 10 hours stiffening into stone sitting in front of a computer screen, I finally decided to get up and move inside, away from reading anything about healthcare. I want light, mindless entertainment. So I flop down on the couch and pick up the remote to begin scanning tonight’s programs. I click through the stations like a man. But the remote always returns to the same station.
Oh God! Grey’s Anatomy. I love Grey’s Anatomy. Why do I love it? There’s nothing like it in the real world. But that’s why I love it. It’s so romantic. It paints such heroes. Heroes I believed in when I was a teenager. Doctors who fall apart when a patient dies, doctors who smooth a patient’s brow for long minutes, doctors who forego dinner at the local pub with their friends in order to play checkers with a patient…..What?
There are more and more nurses leaving bedside nursing and starting their own businesses. Have you wondered if this is something you should be considering? This isn’t necessarily the answer for every nurse. Before you make this decision, think about the questions that follow:
After a 2 month hiatus, the EntrepreNurse Summit Replay is FINALLY available.
Next week, for 37 straight hours, we are opening the vault and making the webinar series “Escape the Bedside, Make a Difference & (finally) Earn What You’re Worth” - with it’s 5 hours of FREE training on how to become a Nurse Entrepreneur – available as our holiday gift to you.
Hope you’re all enjoying the holidays as much as I am!
Boy, I’ve been hitting the cake and eggnog a little hard these days – I won’t lie, the pants are definitely fitting a little tighter than usual – so it’s back to the gym with a vengeance for me in January!
Anyway, I wanted to give you guys links to 2 guest blog posts I wrote in the last week, so you didn’t miss out on these nuggets!
What an absolutely fantastic way of following her passion to create a business based around her hobby that has generated international success for this nurse!
You know, sometimes, being a nurse entrepreneur doesn’t have to have ANYTHING to do with nursing whatsoever. Sometimes, it’s just about following your heart and doing what you love to do! In a way, that’s the ultimate in self-care, isn’t it?
Wow! This article seems to have struck a nerve and generated a ton of controversy over at the PBS website.
I’m super interested in what you guys think!
Wearing the 2 hats of “nurse” and “nurse entrepreneur,” my thoughts on this article are varied…and almost conflicting at times.
Also, what do you guys think when the media uses the term “nursing shortage?”
I’m curious to hear your feelings…
—
PBS Reports: “Surge of Young Nurses Could Help Reverse Shortage”
BY: JASON KANE
Breathe a little easier, baby boomers. The nursing shortage that looked like it might deepen just in time for your retirement may not be so certain after all.
According to a report published Monday in the journal Health Affairs, young registered nurses are now entering the workforce at a rate not seen since the 1970s.
After peaking at 190,000 in 1979, the number of RNs between the ages of 23 and 26 plummeted below 110,000 in the early ’90s. That’s a drop of about 50 percent, bottoming out at 102,000 in 2002.
Graphic courtesy Health Affairs.
Then, unexpectedly, everything changed. Between 2002 and 2009, the number of mid-20-something RNs jumped by 62 percent. According to the report, “If these young nurses follow the same life-cycle employment patterns as those who preceded them — as they appear to be thus far — then they will be the largest cohort of registered nurses ever observed.”
But if your local hospital already has a shortage of nurses, it might be a little early to celebrate the trend. A second Health Affairs study published Monday found that nurses rarely move very far for a job. In fact, 52.5 percent of nurses work within 40 miles of where they attended high school.
Next to teaching, the report shows, nursing is one of the least-mobile professions for women. Without intervention, areas currently struggling to produce RNs probably won’t be seeing an upswing in their numbers any time soon.
The increased numbers also won’t automatically translate to enough nurses who specialize in geriatrics. That, too, will take work.
So what does all that mean for an aging U.S. population? Susan Dentzer, editor-in-chief of Health Affairs and former NewsHour health correspondent, answers our questions below.
These numbers seem relatively optimistic. How will they relate to the nursing shortage?
