After being exposed to it for a while you begin to think ''medical English'' is your actual language, whereby everything you learned in school becomes a second language that you have to use with patients. This really gives ''English as a second language'' new meaning. I recently saw a license plate that read ''HCT436,'' and immediately saw it as ...

I once saw an ad on TV showing a postoperative patient returning from surgery and being told ''the surgery went well, but you have cancer'' by her physician, who promptly leaves the patient in the hallway.  As nurses, part of your job will be to dispel any misconceptions patients are left with after their encounters with their physicians. ...

It can be the irate, highly credentialed surgeon who throws an instrument tray at a questioning nurse; it can be the staff nurse who bullies a new grad; or it could be the lab tech who berates a member of the housekeeping staff. These types of disruptive and intimidating behaviors affect everyone, at all levels of a healthcare organization, and ...

Since becoming the editor of ADVANCE in 2000, the thought has often occurred to me that PTs and PTAs are a surprisingly well-informed and opinionated bunch. But they are also a lot of fun as well. This was proved to me on June 13 at the annual APTA conference in San Antonio, as APTA premiered its first Oxford Debate. PT experts on both sides ...

Many of my friends, colleagues and family members have been working, on an average, more than 30 years in their various professions. Although most of their jobs have much to offer employees and the community, none is as diversified and challenging as the healthcare profession, nursing in particular. Most of the baby boomer generation's parents ...

I was on the ADVANCE site recently to read my fellow bloggers' thoughts. I'm enjoying them, and I started thinking:  ''I wonder what people think of a blog dedicated exclusively to HIV/AIDS awareness and education when there are so many diseases that affect people's lives?'' There are several reasons I chose to devote my career to HIV/AIDS. ...

For every nurse who had to go through the student lab multiple times until you learned how to open a sterile package without contaminating it, you'll appreciate this description  of a program to teach residents how to do procedures, What is innovative in academic medicine has been a standard of nursing education for almost ever, If you're not ...

Last week my oldest daughter looked at our dining table centerpiece and asked, ''Mom, if you went in someone's home and they had this much dust, what would you say?''  I told her if I knew they'd had a month like we just had, I'd give them a pass.  Long story short, our May is devoted to spring cleaning...amazingly my 12-year-old is ...

I received my jury duty notice in the mail a while ago.  After sitting in a crowded room for what seemed like days several of us potential jurors were sent to a courtroom. After painfully long instructions we were asked several questions about our families, children and whether we could be fair jurors in this case.  I answered ...

I have only anecdotal evidence, but it seems that there are a lot of new NP practices opening out there. In the past few weeks, I've received four Practice Snapshot surveys from NPs who've been in business just since the end of 2007 — two of whom I convinced to help me launch a private practice blog on this site, so stay tuned. I've also already ...