Featured Articles
Stuck in a job you hate? Nursing is a career in which the internet can aid you in finding your futur...read more
The road to a nursing career is an inside track which students and those within the healthcare commu...read more
Nursing shows the outcome of so many nutritional deficiencies and diseases made worse or caused outr...read more
Nurses can lose their motivation due to burnout. Many nurses complete their academic work and find w...read more
Occupational challenges in nursing never end. End of shift reports, patient handoffs, and access to ...read more
Posted by nurse on July 10, 2011 under Featured, Nursing Careers, Nursing Schools | 
Stuck in a job you hate? Nursing is a career in which the internet can aid you in finding your future, whether it is as a nurse practitioner or as a nurse with a Master’s degree, or a step-up from an LVN to a RN. Nurses no longer have their promotions decided by an arbitrary staff or immediate group of individuals, they can take hold of their destiny themselves.
The services online have grown from specialty online university courses to accredited and nationally known college and university sponsored medical and nursing classes. But by using the complementary services online for continuing education and further research and study, a nurse candidate or practicing nurse professional can influence their future by themselves. Nurses can also gain independent information sources for daily nursing challenges.
Many students, medical technicians and nursing employees experience a career coma after nursing school graduation and first employment as a nurse. They hit a wall, or touch a ceiling of frustration at one point or another. They find the immediate administrative supervisors unwilling to recommend them for promotion, or hiring in the upper tiers of the hospital ranks closes against newcomers. But today nurses don’t need to get their managers’ approval for upper division courses or advanced education access.
Forty or fifty years ago, a nurse depended on the system to get their superiors to recognize their potential and allow them to study further. Today a nurse can make their own decisions about which career pathway to pursue. Now nurses can get advice and encouragement from qualified people other than their immediate superiors as the only maps to their future in higher levels of nursing responsibility and/or promotions.
The world of online upper level education has progressed from the first launch of about a decade ago. Technology and the bandwidth of the internet even for average connectivity allows a throughput that supports a video interface, a two way question and answer audio/video mode, and testing and module capability that allows nurses to study from home and between nursing shifts to get the future they deserve.
Qualified Nurses can get some traction on their advancement under their own steam instead of waiting for institutional triggers like fast track programs or available positions in higher pay grade nursing positions. Nurses can utilize their spare time online without worrying about additional gas costs, travel times, parking permits or other problems associated with concurrent nursing education with a full time nursing position. While other nurses struggle through traffic and pay full tuition, online courses can qualify a nursing student for a Master’s Degree
This gives nurses from all ethnic backgrounds a equal chance at gaining a upper hand in the crowded nursing job market. Each day can be spent following up educational materials with online seminars or further study. This is a strong motivation for staying with a less than inspirational day job at a clinic or healthcare facility that is not everything they had hoped. Concurrent nursing employment with the higher education degree goal can motivate a nurse to keep plugging at an unfulfilling rotation or less than ideal assignment.
No matter how dull , long, repetitive or taxing the day is, nurses can conclude their week knowing they have advanced their higher nursing education at a professional level. As an added benefit, nurses with higher education at their fingertips can use days off or missed shifts due to dismissed staff (due to low head count) to get caught up on their studies. Instead of wasting free time or spending a fortune in compensatory recreational costs of living, nurses can bring their own advanced education along.
Online education courses can fill gaps in a nursing resume where the employee has skipped around in their occupational pattern. Advanced courses can show the nurse is serious about getting somewhere in the medical world. Any admissions office to a further education degree program in nursing, nurse practitioner and general practice medicine will like to see a nurse with an independent plan for keeping abreast of contemporary nursing issues and exhibiting a forward-facing education plan.
Tags: boss, courses, health, manager, medicine, nurses, nursing, online, physician, practitioner, professional, schools, supervisor
Posted by nurse on January 18, 2011 under Featured, Nursing Careers |
The road to a nursing career is an inside track which students and those within the healthcare community know well. But the public perceive nurses in uniforms and scrubs for the first time. What they say and how they act, even during the course of one visit, can establish the idea of what a nurse can be forever. Nursing is high profile position in a highly visible job in a transparent work environment.
Healthcare is a growing field with expansive room for growth in major metropolitan labor markets. There are technical and pharmaceutical opportunities in nursing with evolving equipment, nursing teaching, and drug research . Marrying a skill set like nursing and new media, nursing and communications, nursing and teaching, or nursing and computer science could have career longevity written all over it.
Educational training, hard work and healing commitment count for a lot.
Dedication to the career in healthcare and wellness may take years, even decades to realize. But online courses, aptitude testing, base high school and community college courses, and higher institutions of nurse learning can form a nurse out of the rawest material. Nurses can choose their setting and vary their chosen specialization to suit their ongoing career interest.
Clinical settings and homecare nursing, assisted living and/or occupational treatment can teach nurses by experience how to save a life or treat a patient who requires immediate care for a standard of life they find acceptable. But religious affiliation can groom a calling to nursing that leads abroad, on missions, to local churches and related organizations. Every skill, interest, or alignment can become an asset for work success.
Those who can apply their personal experiences and knowledge of the human body to their work every day can benefit from long and short term career goal shaping. The methods and practices of any particular health institution will always include a mission statement outlining the commitment to healing and wellness. Each nursing school graduate can find a professional niche that fits their vocational skills and interest.
The commitment to nursing can come in the form of hospital or community care nursing, occupational nursing, emergency care nursing, pediatric or eldercare nursing, and/or specialty nursing and specializations for individual or floor/ward nursing. The general medicine discipline can be a career commitment or a holding pattern until a nursing student becomes focused on a specific area of medical treatment knowledge and practice.
Experience in nursing for an illness specialization like cancer, internal medicine, gerontological disorders, or wound care can benefit many other patient groups over time. Hospital and clinic examinations draw heavily from staff with former specialty treatment experience from other disciplines. Nursing improves the standard of wellness to any degree possible.
Nurses are individuals whose career path has called them to a nursing profession. Dedication to the best nursing standards and practices is required, both by the complexity of the work involved and its impact on individual and groups of patients. Nursing is not a profession that can be faked, purchased by parents with wealth and influence, or lucrative enough to attract phonies. That’s one of the reasons it is so respected.
Posted by nurse on January 12, 2011 under Featured, Uncategorized |
Nursing shows the outcome of so many nutritional deficiencies and diseases made worse or caused outright by lack of proper nutrition. portion sizes, selection, and cost are all factors of how we eat today. The makeup of the body from protein, salt, carbon, and other materials is from food which chosen daily from availability and convenience. Nutrition therapy is a much needed intervention for many patient.
Behavior modification and counseling can effect an intervention in symptom causation and patient stress that reduce risk for many different at risk age groups, genders and ethnically diverse patients whose cultural training and lifestyle do not foster proper nutrition habits.
As children, student commonly learn the basics of nutrition. But not every culture practices this education. The patient may think a bowl or rice, a handful or tortillas, or a plate of mashed vegetables is a proper breakfast. Portion sizes and food combinations may spur weight gain that is unwanted. Furthermore, allergies, vitamin deficiencies, and sleep deprivation may add to weight gain and obesity issues in all patents over time.
Fast food, or any available convenience food, manipulates the perception of nutrition and bulk foods consumed at a certain time, or a reasonable group of foods such as seasoned meat, starches, and vegetables bits as a full meal. But pictures and seasoned items do not actually contribute the necessary dynamics to a growing child, mature woman, or hard working adult man. Eating as a coping device, or at-risk living situations can each furnish a harmful component of nutritional health and and present ongoing danger to the patient.
Assessment of the patient’s diet, diagnosis of eating issues, planning a program f healthy nutrition, and monitoring and evaluating the changing behavior modification can deliver maximum nursing satisfaction and achieve the most wanted result from physician treatment to interested patients. Obesity is a massive epidemic in Western culture today. The patient may be anxiously trying to solve the problem with caffeine, binge eating , or purging.
But nutrition is the key to providing the body with food calories, minerals, and vitamins via food digestion. These processes are necessary to fuel a healthy body with the biological requirements for life. Ongoing nutritional shortfalls in protein, Vitamin C or D, citric acids and other essential dietary elements brings a negative effect into the examination room.
Posted by nurse on December 11, 2010 under Featured, Nursing Careers |
Nurses can lose their motivation due to burnout. Many nurses complete their academic work and find when they enter clinical treatment courses they do not like the active process of community care nursing. The hospital setting can be stressful and after a period of years many nurses look for work outside the formal facility environment. Or it may simply be time for a nursing change of pace.
Events can transpire that change a nurse’s feelings about healthcare organizations, or expected advancement may not happen commensurate with training. Perhaps the available opportunities in their given area of residence do not match standards. Once upon a time, nursing stopped and started at the physician’s side. But today’s nurses have other choices. And online nursing courses can supplement existing education if any additional nursing classes are necessary.
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Training in specific diseases and their ongoing acute and chronic symptoms can prepare home caregivers with additional focus to particular diseases and their patient demographics. Performing nursing duties in assisted care living can relax the nurse after the stress of a high volume inpatient hospital. And individual patients can benefit from the cases admitted to a nursing facility that nurse has seen.
Some patients have living circumstances that do not allow for frequent hospital visits. The underserved may not see the ratio of nurses to individual cases they might like. The call to nursing can be answered by exchanging patient pools for new incidences of disease. The benefit of a real person capable of understanding the challenges of recovery and coping with any disease cannot be overestimated.
A lateral shift to another nursing environment can continue vertical progress to enlarged responsibility or senior status within the nursing community. After a sequence of concentrated single-field nursing in the home or in a community setting for eldercare or even children, the nurse may return to a hospital setting with more focused historical references to specific diseases and conditions.
Thanks to today’s technology, many new options in home caregiving are available. Nurses with the proper training, even licensed vocational nurses (LVN) can become specialized home caregivers or assisted living nurse specialists. Knowledge of long term effects and coping experience can earn a nurse a shot at a more elevated and prestigious hospital position. Some research facilities demand specialized nursing qualifications only immediate disease specific caregiving can confer.
In-home and assisted living patients can have all manner of physical ailments. Patients recovering from surgery, epileptic sufferers, autistic caregiving or dementia nursing can be a valuable part of any nurse’ contribution to the field. Schizophrenics and cancer survivors always need qualified nurse caregivers to cope with daily life or postsurgical or postprocedural events.
Nurses who want more an individual investment in their patient’s well-being can practice online and do telecaregiving. This computer and telephone assisted video conferencing can let nurses anywhere communicate with their patients and keep tabs on their medicines, exercise, sleep, and daily interests. Homebound sufferers of stroke, Alzheimer’s, and other diseases can benefit greatly from at-home caregivers who have been nurses.
Emerging disease problems in several medical populations have provoked a need for nurses with specific skills. Menu planning, daily dialogues, emotional support and caregiving for diabetic patients, obesity caregiving and eldercare are essentially marketable skills in the new nursing economy. Depressives, terminal and respite patients as well as hospice care is always looking for qualified staff.
Occupational nursing has branched out into so many fields a nurse can identify the need that calls them the most and follow it. If the energy is no longer found in day to day emergency nurse care, post operative or surgical care, or even general medicine, the nurse’s abilities may have grown beyond that role. A lateral move to a more specialized nursing position might carve a new path in the traditional nursing career.
Posted by nurse on December 1, 2010 under Critical Care, Featured |
Occupational challenges in nursing never end. End of shift reports, patient handoffs, and access to records can be frustrating barriers to nursing efficiency. Patients can be waiting for a handoff that never happened, or one administrator forgot because another case took immediate precedence. Nurses can come on the opening shift before closing shift nurses have finished their end of day reports and crucial details can be missed.
Handoffs are critical that they maintain smooth flow between admitting patients for examination, waiting for tests, gaining new information about treatment, and completing patient care. Handoffs occur when one supervisor directs a nurse to a new task when his or her duties concerning another patient have not been completed. Suggestions to managers or nursing administrators should be reviewed by all staff for handoff improvement where possible.
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Complicated questions can arise when nursing handoffs are not handled efficiently. The business of nursing is nursing. This means interchange of important information in a timely manner must be routinely forwarded. What type of test is needed, and when was it taken? How much blood is needed, and what type? Who is responsible for moving the patient back to the waiting room, and do they know what they are waiting for?
When large volumes of patients are involved, handoffs can save huge amounts of time communicating between staff regarding patients. Is this patient waiting for lab results? Why is that room still occupied? Is a nurse trying to get an answer regarding previous test cultures, and can the doctor explain them better? Patients can get forgotten and records misplaced when nurses and staff are not clearly tasked.
Follow up reports and notes after patients have left also matter. End of day reporting includes exam room condition checklists and incoming patient preparation surveys. Census data or supply reorder information may need furthering to another contact for time sensitive action. Does the doctor need to work up the chart more for review and filing? Does the sharps container need removal? Is the shredding volume overdo for processing?
Smooth running physician offices, organized admitting wards, hospital emergency or trauma departments and crowded surgical schedules mean that names and test procedures can overlap. Written or taped note to the file may not always work. Access to computerized file information may be slow. Completeness of the information matters. Succinctness does too.
Information during the doctor’s exam, follow up, and staff operations is critical in nursing care. Patient treatment and recovery are at stake with every detail. Quality of care can be lost with one missed handoff. Patients rely on nurses and physicians to manage their internal procedures most efficiently for patient wellness. Don’t let the mistake be yours.
