I grew up in Kansas City, on both the Kansas and Missouri sides of the state line and smack dab in the middle of Tornado Alley. One of my earliest memories is of my dad, my three older brothers and me scrambling to get out of our station wagon and getting down into a ditch along the side of a highway to try and protect us from a twister ...

If you haven’t been vaccinated for the flu yet, it should be on your weekend to-do list. October is the unofficial start of flu season, and you don’t want to come down with the nasty virus — or have your kids miss school because of it. Only 46% of Americans get the flu shot every year, according to CDC statistics, but there are so many reasons why ...

Even in this tough economy, the healthcare sector has managed to create 169,800 jobs in the first quarter of 2012 alone, which accounts for one out of every five jobs created, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. But a recent report released by the American Hospital Association (AHA), the American Medical Association (AMA) and the American ...

As I search the Internet for information on the contributions of great African American nurses in history, I find myself wishing I had more time. More time to learn more about people like Mary Eliza Mahoney, RN, (1845-1926), who in 1879 became America’s first African-American graduate nurse. According to the Bridgewater (MA) State University ...

The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices of the CDC is endorsing vaccinations against human papillomavirus (HPV) for boys of ages 11 and 12. This announcement comes on the heels of new research that reportedly documents the rise in cancers caused by HPV Research published recently in the Journal of Clinical Oncology shows HPV-16, the ...

Those of you who’ve had long careers in acute care were probably the only members of the reading public who weren’t surprised by the Chicago Tribune’s report that 85 percent of hospital complaints were ignored by the state of Illinois last year. Grievances ranged from dirty needles, medication errors, sexual assault, and patient neglect. ...

On my morning drive into work today I heard a radio report that, rather nonchalantly, described the increasing incidence of community-associated MRSA - explaining that the condition is more treatable than the hospital-acquired variety, which was said to also be more dangerous specifically because it largely affects older patients. While this all ...

Quality is the name of the game in healthcare, and nurses are consistently seen as playing a major role in improving hospital quality. As the demand and requirement from payers (both governmental and private) for high quality healthcare delivery grows, so will the pushback on nurses to find more and creative ways to up their game while cutting ...

Doyle Byrnes, a 22-year-old nursing student at Johnson County Community College in Overland Park, KS,  is suing the school in federal court for dismissing her from its registered nursing program in response to a photo she posted on her Facebook page showing her posing with a human placenta in a lab class, according to a ...

What for many workers used to be a fall rite of completing paperwork and possibly adjusting to a new health insurance plan has become a harrowing tally of higher costs and reduced benefits. This year, it hit close to home: My weekly deduction for employer-provided health and dental coverage zoomed from less than $20 to more than $70 per week, a ...