When you left nursing school and went out into the nursing world, was there anything you experienced that the professors didn’t tell you about? In any profession, experiencing things firsthand is always different than what you learned about in a classroom. In the nursing world, experience is key. Nursing blogger The Nerdy Nurse isn’t ashamed to admit what she wasn’t taught in nursing school. In her blog post “Things they don’t tell you when you’re...  Read More »

Many nurses are concerned about the portrayal of their profession in the media and the public’s understanding of nursing’s role. The media portrays nurses in a variety of ways, sometimes positive, often negative. On television, shows like Nurse Jackie and HawthoRNe often feature positive portrayals, while shows like HOUSE and ER show physicians doing nurses’ jobs or just don’t show nurses at all. The public’s perception of nurses can also be affected...  Read More »

A new policy at Ottawa Hospital in Canada has nurses angry about being forced to ditch their cartoon, colorful scrubs for a standard version. The hospital’s Chief Nursing Executive Ginette Rodger says the new dress code is meant to make it easier on patients to distinguish nurses from other hospital staff, reports Canada.com. The new policy also includes lab coats that must show the title of practitioners and have to be worn whenever practitioners are out...  Read More »

“You’re gonna have to man up here and take some of the pain because we can’t give you a lot of medication.” That’s what Sarah May Casareto, RN, is alleged to have said to a patient who screamed in pain during his November 8 surgery at Abbot Northwestern Hospital in Minneapolis. Turns out, she couldn’t give him more of his medication because she had taken it herself prior to surgery. The patient, undergoing surgery for kidney stones,...  Read More »

Researchers from Purdue University in West Lafayette, IN, are looking to use robotic “nurses” in operating rooms by using a hand gesture recognition system. The hand gesture recognition system uses a camera and a formula that finds the location of the surgeon’s head and triggers where the robot’s hands will go, reported Daily Tech. Researchers hope that the new technology will decrease the length of surgeries. Juan Pablo Wachs, an assistant professor...  Read More »

Every nurse knows the line “If it isn’t charted, it isn’t done.” Theresa Brown, RN, writes this week about how the burden of charting takes a toll on time spent with patients in The New York Times Well blog. Brown recounts how she sat at a conference and experienced something akin to envy as she listened to a Navy commander speak of his time spent with American soldiers in Afghanistan who had been injured. Brown noted the amount of quality time, unencumbered...  Read More »