If I could give any future medical student advice about the ER, my three most important words would be: Vicks Vapor Rub. When I first entered the ER, I was prepared to be jaded, but I was not prepared for the smells: abscesses, STDs, rotten teeth, body odor, mildewed t-shirts, alcoholics, chain smokers, drug-addicts, and diarrhea diapers, to ...

There have been times in my nursing career when I have put the pieces of a clinical picture together only to see something entirely different than the treating physician. The picture I would see was not based only on the lab work, or clinical manifestations of an illness, but was guided by the narrative of the ...

Last week, readers commented on two of our recent orthopedic articles. In response to ''After Your Patient's Knee Replacement,'' reader Thomas said, ''Nice article Jennifer - I had my TKR in 2010 and you described my overall experience quite well. Patients do really tend to forget that they lost their joint mobility slowly over a sustained time ...

On Monday, October 17, 2011, I started my NP job at the Martin-Tyrrell-Washington District Health Department. Over the 5 days of my first week on the job, I rotated to all three HDs in the district and attended the October 17th grand opening of Martin County HD’s grant-funded satellite clinic in Oak City, North Carolina. I will be the sole primary ...

In watching the practice of prescribing psychotropic medications I am very hesitant about my own prescriptive practices and keenly observant of other practitioners. I am acutely sensitive to the issue. It seems like every other patient I see, irrespective of the setting, is prescribed SSRIs and benzodiazepines, and almost none of them are also ...