I Love Nursing...I want Nurses to Want More...

What Nursing can Mean Part III

As noted previously, nursing is one of the most compassionate, rewarding and enjoyable professions in this world. It is also demanding of knowledge, experience, and the ability to make life-altering rapid-fire decisions and all of the stress that that can entail. Nursing often requires more than adequate amounts of time, the time to assess patients’ thoroughly and accurately. In this way, nurses are more likely to note a deteriorating condition before it becomes life threatening as well as perhaps having the time to interview patients more carefully, thereby, determining issues that may present problems while they are caring for them.

More and more what a patient deserves is going to be in the manner that they are going to be lucky to get only what they need the most. Numbers show that in 10-20 years there will be a shortage of at least 800,000-1.2 million nurses in this country alone. Nurses continue to leave the profession or are moving into areas away from the bedside, sometimes through increasing education or taking jobs in other, often, less critical areas, or moving out of the profession altogether. Many facilities seem to be pinning their hopes on graduating nurses who have no experience or gut feelings that can prevent patient events. The fact of the matter is that without experienced and satisfied nurses the mortality and morbidity of patients will only escalate. Admittedly, more nurses graduating and getting experience will help with some of the increasing shortage, but working to keep and satisfy nurses who have been loyal and committed to a workplace should also be a high-level goal. Due to past business crises, many hospitals have decreased or eliminated the benefits that nurses received in the past and may be looking to decrease them further. This is the time to improve benefits and tuition reimbursement if these facilities want the better-educated nurses at the bedside. Better retirement packages should be implemented, whether on a hospital-to-hospital level or at the state and national levels. Increasing the salaries would also be of benefit. There should be no salary cap for nurses who continue to be educated. On not only a yearly basis but also many are back in college, obtaining higher levels of degrees and certification. Facilities should be just as concerned at rewarding their loyal and experienced nurses as well as encouraging new nurses. There should be no limit on how many years a nurse can earn a raise; they have only continued learning throughout their career. The fact that many new nurses are paid very close to the same salary as a nurse with 20 years of experience says a great deal about who hospitals and other facilities value.

 

Re-Post

I do Love this Profession and Always Want More for every Nurse

What Nursing can Mean Part II

Many nurses find themselves in this situation today. Patients are increasingly sicker when they come into the hospital, with greater demands in regards to their care and needs. Their potential to arrest or just begin the often agonizingly slow spiral towards the light is when they need nurses with the time to assess and re-assess their situation. Time that can make the difference with an experienced and astute nurse caring for this patient, this nurse can maybe delay or prevent a sentinel event from occurring. This nurse uses years of learning to know the signs that indicate a significant occurrence is heading towards this patient. Often it may just be a gut reaction, but the chance to head off disaster is in the hands of this nurse who knows the warning signs and what to do to keep the pending arrest at bay and turn the tide when provided the time to care for this patient in a safe and uncompromised manner. This is the time that many nurses rarely have in an age where staffing ratios have not changed for the better in well over a decade. Most facilities’ ratios are built on the budget and the decreasing number of nurses, not the increased acuity of the worsening patients’ health characteristics. Standards need to be set based on the patients’ level of illness and the increased workload that illness places on the nursing staff to give them the care they need and deserve.

Re-post and still True

I Love Nursing and Will Always Want More...

What Nursing can Mean

Nursing is many things to many people. It is often a profession, a career, a calling and to some, just a job. To love this job is to learn early on that when the rewards do not outweigh the negatives it may be time to re-evaluate. In the current nursing shortage/crisis, whatever some may call it, many are re-evaluating what this profession means to them. Every day they drive to work, often wondering, what the day may bring. Each day is often very different.

Will you have those few patients that make it all worthwhile, the 2-year-old that, once her fever has broken, follows you around holding your hand? She lets you know with her innocent trust, that you helped her feel better and that she has just made your shift a brighter piece of time, this is the one, that while you may not really have the time to play, you decide it’s a good time to make time. Is it the older woman with multiple organ disease and a loving family, who just wants her to be able to go gently into the night? Her family understands her desires and needs for a peaceful end; so, you soothe her with cool cloths and keep her as comfortable as possible, leaving the family the chance to share her final moments in time. While this may not be a physically busy patient, the emotional investments it generates, play a different havoc with your coping mechanisms on a busy shift. On the other hand, will it be that man, that, though seemingly sailing along on the road to recovery, the inexplicable occurrence happens. You find yourself and many others on the medical team, fighting to save this man from the circling four horsemen, whose dogs are nipping at his heels. When you pull him back from the breach, will you have the staff to cover his increased level of need? Will it have been another day of coming in only to find that there are not enough nurses on the floor and that the intensive care unit is currently full, but they are trying to find a bed?

Re-Post

Political Possibilities -- Still the same issues today

POLITICAL POSSIBILITIES

Everyday in the practice of Nursing, I see RISKS. Nurses across the country work in precarious situations, not only a danger to patient safety, but to their licenses and livelihood. These situations occur due to staffing issues and patient acuity. The population is aging and health is deteriorating for many of these individuals. The responsibilities of nurses are increasing everyday and the higher acuities make it worse and more dangerous for nurses to provide even adequate care.

The nursing shortage is already at dangerous levels and is only going to increase. The changes are not occurring rapidly enough and they are rarely directed in the right paths.

I propose and hope to see in my lifetime these changes and I am HOPING that you will HELP me.

1) A federally funded nursing retirement plan: This could not only improve the influx of people into the profession, but also be a great benefit to nurse retention, especially if it includes past service and years of experience. This could bring nurses back to the bedside; if they were assured of having a dedicated plan for the years of service (Nurses who have left the profession after i.e. 12 years of service come back for eight years and have a full retirement). AARP recently noted that less than 60% of nurses have retirement plans. This federal plan would be portable from job to job. Facilities could enhance retirement benefits or provide other inducements to the profession with the funds currently in use. IF railroad employees, teachers, firefighters, and police officers can have full retirement after 20 years, WHY have nurses been left out? The nurses I have presented this idea to most frequently ask me that question. WHY is this idea not already in practice?

2) Increased political awareness and interest for nurses. Facilities should have a dedicated position related to nursing politics. I have talked to many coworkers and they agree that knowing more about how their local, state, and federal politicians vote on issues regarding nursing would affect not only their voting participation but how and who they voted for. (i.e. IF you believe patients and families have a right to know what SAFE staffing ratios are and how those ratios affect patient safety and care, in addition to how the facility they are currently admitted to staffs their floors, then a politician votes against a bill that promotes these issues, Would you vote for that politician??).

3) An agency that monitors the dangers and RISKS that nurses are often subjected to: to have written protocols and standards of what constitutes patient safety in relation to acuity and ratios. (i.e. What constitutes a 1:1 patient, a 2:1 patient, a 4:1 patient???). One that monitors how often those standards are not met and why. How to make it better to keep nurses at the bedside.

4) National Nursing Licensure

5) Better Health Care Coverage—since we provide so much of it, it should be a reward.

So much more, these are only a few of the issues I would like to see instituted and implemented and truly believe it will affect the future of nursing. So many agencies and groups protect patient safety and there are no real protectors of nurses and their work conditions. Such an agency will only enhance patient safety. The CAN (Center for American Nurses, part of the ANA) is a start, but so far, no one is really affecting change in workforce conditions, thus the NURSING SHORTAGE.

 

Re-post from 2011

Another issue that just won't change...

Laws that NEED to be Enacted in FLA

Do you ever wonder why the Southeast often seems behind in nursing practice issues.

Florida is the last state to STILL refuse to pass the LAW that allows ARNP's to write all levels of narcotic prescriptions...

How do you spell Ludicrous?? FLA??? ;-)

Come on and make the change FLA, time too loosen the strangleholds of the AMA and the AHA,

Join the rest of the country and let ARNPs, BE all that they can be...

Think about where many Nurse Practitioner's Practice, Have a Clue??? In Nursing Homes and special needs facilities, including long term care...WHERE PEOPLE NEED all levels of pain relief and pain management...

Not only does NOT Passing this law limit the care nurse practitioner's can provide, it makes pain relief more slowly provided than necessary to patient's, NOT RIGHT...

Law Maker's In FLA--Get over the delay and PASS the BILL...

Please folk's write the Senators and Congress of FLA, Let them know what you think of such backward progress...

http://dlis.dos.state.fl.us/fgils/government.html

 

This is another issue spoken about recently and this is a repost from 2011 that won't change without better support from the nurses it affects.

Laws that are still waiting for support from the Nurses they are meant to aid

Laws that NEED to be Enacted in FLA

Did you know???

There are many bills in the FLA Legislature that can promote the improvement of nurses workforce situations, that can protect the health and well-being of nurses, and that can promote nursing autonomy.

Many bills just never get the support they need to be passed into law.

In the recent past there have been bills that make it very important to include the staff nurse (aka: nurse at the bedside) in the decision making process regarding changes and new procedures and protocols in the workplace.

WOW, What a novel concept to include the one doing the work and providing the care (24/7) in the decision making process. It could be great progress to include these nurses in the process of changes rather than just expecting them to add something new (without their input) to already stressful workloads. And how much safer could it be? For patients and staff????

Things that make you go HMMMMMMMM.....

 

ANA Government Affairs @ http://www.rnaction.org/takeaction can get you where you need to see issues and contact your representatives..

 

This is a Re-post from 2011 and these issues are still in need of support, because work situations and the support of your management are not the way it should be...

 

Please Get Involved in Making your Practice the Best it can be...Should Already BE!!!!

 

RN Retirements—Tsunami warning!--Follow the link below and get involved...

An e-mail I received is below and I followed easy directions to POINT-AND-CLICK and reach my representatives about these Oh so serious situations our profession is in:

Dear Theresa,

A health economist at the American Nurses Association sounded a warning in his recent blog post:

RN Retirements—Tsunami warning!

The Department of Labor Bureau of Labor Statistics updated its Employment Projections for 2012-2022. It is predicted that 555,100 RNs and APRNs will retire or leave the workforce by 2022—a tsunami of retirements. And that’s not all. In addition to retirements, we will need an additional 574,400 new nursing jobs to keep up with the aging population. These are staggering numbers to digest.

As a current or soon-to-be RN, it’s our job to make the profession safe and appealing to those considering this career. ANA works on your behalf to keep the health care environment safe for you and your patients.

Safe staffing. Safe Patient Handling & Mobility. Home Health. Durable Medical EquipmentIf this passed today, it would help shape the profession tomorrow.

Together let's make nursing the best it can be.

Today and tomorrow,
Your Government Affairs Team

This is exactly what I have been saying and it is NOT getting fixed...

Get Involved to protect yourself and Nursing's Future...

PLEASE...

The Death of the Bedside Nurse...

There is a nursing shortage and a greater one looming as the experienced nurses working today will be the ones to retire tomorrow.

The world needs bedside nurses and the nursing situations many nurses currently find themselves working in too frequently involves unsafe staffing with little or NO ancillary staff to ease the burden. This, along with perpetual increases in responsibilities and expectations in our practice put the bedside nurse in a less than enviable position too many nights in a row. Patient care suffers when there is not enough staff. Patient satisfaction dwindles in relation to increased nursing pressures and decreased nursing satisfaction. Study after study has shown this.

The nurses graduating so easily and frequently in what is supposed to be a solution to the nursing shortage are not staying at the bedside. So, when the nurses you work with today retire and the new nurses move on to the very many opportunities now available, who will be the bedside nurse?

Older nurses have weathered and tolerated the "nurses are easily replaceable and of little value" attitudes of those in power many times over the decades. Each time nursing schools mass produce new nurses, managers actually do all they can to devalue their experienced nurses, thinking that all the new nurses will be the replacements. However, time after time, the experienced nurses have stayed and the new ones have left for often easier and greener pastures. Now they don't even have to leave the profession but obtain higher education that only gets easier and easier. When they "Don't Like it" today they very easily leave. WHO will be the bedside nurse?

WHO will be the Bedside Nurse?

PASSION for Nursing...And all that it can be...

I am so passionate about this being one of the best professions in the world...Everyday, just the care I give, the patient I help keep alive and the ones I give comfort and relief to, makes me proud to be the nurse that I am. Giving excellent care is the reason I go in everyday. I LOVE what I do at the bedside. I HATE the lack of support of those who should be making my job easier.

The politics and managerial decisions frequently being made around me are the things that drive me crazy. Nurses need the support of their leaders, not derisive and apathetic leadership styles. The "LIKE it or LEAVE it"  attitude of so many so-called leaders are the epitome of ridiculous. Not only do they NOT care about their nurses, they are actually driving nurses away from the bedside. One manager recently told a group of nurses that if they do not like the way things are going, they should REFLECT if this is a good fit. This is in situations that are supporting unsafe staffing ratios with plans to make it even worse with no support staff and no relief if more critical situations develop within a shift. These less than adequate leaders should REFLECT on why they have such a poor level of respect for the nurses who care so much for the sick and injured.

And guess what? The new nurses that they keep heaping responsibilities on with minimal training and education; all of these nurses are the ones that are already in the process of moving on as quickly as possible away from the bedside. This type of management is driving nurses away and this will continue if nursing satisfaction is not made a priority...The nursing shortage is only going to get worse by these ATTITUDES...LIKE IT OR LEAVE IT management is KILLING the BEDSIDE NURSE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!