- 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.
If you don’t know who embattled Nurse Amanda Trujillo is, well, you’ve probably been living under a rock, or maybe you just worked 3 in a row…in either case, you’re forgiven.
Before you listen to her audio interview though, check out my 2 previous posts about her dire situation here and here.
Once you understand her case, you’ll also understand it’s far-reaching implications for the Nursing profession and a patient’s right to informed consent and right to determine the course of their own care.
Let that all sink in for a bit and then listen to Amanda explain her case in her own words in this very special interview:
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.
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…
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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?
Check out this link to a video on YouTube showing an Australian nurse who was sick of running back and forth to grab all her supplies all the time. She just wanted to have everything handy and save herself all the walking, so she invented a type of Nursing Toolbelt called the “Nurses’ Joey” and it’s taking off like wildfire!
I love it’s simplicity and functionality!
Check out the video and let me know what you think?
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If you guys like this post, feel free to re-post it on Facebook or Twitter! Let’s make this nurse entrepreneur thing go viral!
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In this post, I just want to open up a little and allow you to get to know me better. I don’t want to be just another blogger hiding behind a website or just another “gooroo” whom you never really get to know.
I’ve learned that business is just like life, whether it’s online or off it’s ALL about one thing: RELATIONSHIPS!
And I want you guys to know that I’m here to help you out in any way I can, but in addition to that, I really just want to connect and build a relationship with you. Hopefully, out of those relationships, together we can build a fun, caring and supportive community.
So below you will find a few things you may not know about me. Really, I just want to pull back the curtain and let you know what I’m about.
1. I was born and raised in sunny Miami, FL and was the only “gringa” in my entire class the whole way through elementary school. Needless to say, I learned Spanglish fast and can now hold my own.
2. I’m a Gen X-er. I was born on August 26, 1975. (The same date in history that the 19th amendment to the U.S. Constitution passed, giving women the right to vote.) I guess they knew I was coming!
3. “Planes, Trains and Automobiles” is my all-time favorite movie, and I can recite every line from it that’s worth reciting.
4. I’m starting to go gray and I can’t decide whether I want to run away and bury my head in the sand and cry, or suck it up, hold my graying head up high and pretend it looks distinguished.
5. I have a birthmark on the inside of my left thigh; it looks like a rocket ship.
I have fun playing Texas Hold ‘Em with friends. Did you know that playing the game or watching shows like World Tour of Poker can help you succeed in business?
I didn’t realize that while I was learning to play, I was gaining valuable business skills that have translated into money in my pocket. (And no, I don’t mean by gambling).
Let me explain. I learned the four following things from playing poker.
First, I learned how to make the best of the cards I was dealt.
I learned when to play a hand, when to take risks, and when to throw the cards away and wait to act with better ones. This kind of discernment helps a business owner make sound decisions about working with assets and when to cut a project loose if it’s not producing good results.
I found that when starting your own business, you will invest 2 assets—your time and your money. Depending on where you start, you’ll use one of these assets more than the other. A realistic understanding of which asset you’re working from can help you make the most of what you’ve got.
The second lesson I learned from poker is that you’ve got to use a strategy to win.
Good players spend years learning from each other and developing a strategy that’s right for them. Their strategy is reliable and flexible enough to adapt to new situations.
They learn something new from each game, and they actively look for the lessons when they lose a hand. They know how much they’re willing to bet in an evening, and they aren’t pushed off course by setbacks because their strategy takes the slow time into account.
Nurses have been at the forefront of patient care for a long time. This uniquely positions us within our nursing jobs to ask some of the most vital, creative and high-quality questions in healthcare. And as the great Tony Robbins once said, “Quality questions create a quality life.”
So what does being uniquely positioned to ask good questions mean to the average nurse?
Well, asking the right kind of questions, can lead to some pretty creative thinking about the real-world answers to those questions. And, as many Nurse Entrepreneurs have discovered, answering the most common questions or solving the most common problems in healthcare can not only be a great service to patients, families and healthcare providers, but it can also be a very lucrative endeavor.
Terms such as EntrepreNurse™, Nurse Entrepreneur and Nurse Leader are becoming more common and serve as important new topics for discussion, even though many are not familiar with what these relatively new concepts mean.
