In keeping with the spirit of the recent vampire hype sweeping the nation, we thought we'd write about what doctors of nursing practice and vampires have in common. What on earth, you ask, might they have in common? Well, read on: 1. They've both been around for a long time. Both vampires and DNPs have gotten a lot of attention recently, but ...

It has been a very busy fall for ECFC. In addition to general patient care and all the day-to-day administrative issues, we are faced with another task. The state of MN has mandated that all recipients of state-sponsored health insurance have access to and are members of a state-certified Health Care Home. Eagan Child and Family Care is one of ...

At some point in our lives we'll all want a personal patient safety advocate to stand up for us when we're not receiving the care we need. As nurses, this job often falls in your lap. In fact, you're mandated by your boards of nursing to report substandard care. Simply put, it's your job to protect the patient; even when he needs protection from ...

I am sure that nothing drives home the need for healthcare reform more than being an actual healthcare provider. Of course, I was already aware of the issues being a RN. But a whole new dimension is added as an NP that orders labs, tests and medications. It's constantly on my mind: Does this patient really NEED this lab or x-ray? Did I prescribe ...

On his first nursing mission to Nepal in 2007, Joe Niemczura, MS, RN, wondered how he would make his mark on the indigenous people. ''I wasn't there to do the nursing, I was there to teach the locals what they need to do,'' he explains. But as he arrived at the host hospital in the town of Tansen, he had no idea how he would build ...

  Here's a physician assistant student getting his career off on the right foot. Read the nice things he has to say about nurses.

Writing in today's issue of USA Today, Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell champions nurse practitioners as the means to universal access to healthcare. Together with Tine Hansen-Turton, who is CEO of the National Nursing Centers Consortium headquartered in Philadelphia, Rendell argues that the projected primary care physician shortage could thwart ...

It's odd how things happen coincidentally. As I was reading Saving Lives: Why the Media's Portrayal of Nurses Puts Us All at Risk, which was raising my consciousness as to nursing's image, Nurse Jackie and HawthoRNe debuted on TV. Suddenly nurses from all over the country were weighing in with their opinions on how these two shows portray the ...

Kim McAllister, RN, has worked as a staff nurse in the San Francisco Bay Area emergency departments for the past 17 years. She is the author of Emergiblog.com, a blog about ED nursing. Scary. That was my first response to the results of the study by the Emergency Nurses Association titled ''Violence Against Nurses Working in U.S. Emergency ...

The word ''rude'' in the dictionary means lack refinement, cultural, or elegance. Another definition that I found on the Internet is ''an impolite action, contrary to the usual rules observed in society, committed by one person against another.'' I think this is the best definition to describe the people I am talking about in this post. The ...