Angie Abner, a paramedic and emergency room nurse at St. John’s Regional Medical Center in Joplin, MO, was on duty when the tornado tore through the city. In an interview with National Public Radio (NPR), Abner shared her story about how she was in the triage department of the emergency room when the storm came. Abner said the hospital informed staff of a “Condition Gray,” which told staff what to do., and they had 10 minutes to get...  Read More »

The American Nurses Association (ANA) has chosen a winner for its first video contest on nurse leadership. The winner, Mandy Mayer, RN, BSN, won with a video portraying her role as a school nurse. Click here to read the ANA’s press release and view the winning video.   Read More »

Virtual technology at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, TN, is allowing nurses to interact as avatars with each other and with patients using the website Second Life. Vanderbilt was given $1.6 million by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to create and launch the project through the agency’s Nurse Education Technologies program, reports The Tennessean. Right now, the project is only a pilot while the university conducts...  Read More »

Imagine being a premature baby. How does it feel to go from a safe, comfortable uterus to the bright, loud, and often painful world of a hospital’s Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU)? Neonatal nurses at Martin Memorial Health Center in Palm City, FL, got a chance to find out when they partook in a program called “Preemie for a Day.” The educational program let nurses experience what it was like to go from birth to admission into...  Read More »

As a nurse, have you ever been praised for your work with a patient? The Boston Globe is holding a Salute to Nurses award program for people to nominate local nurses who have exceeded their usual duties and provided noteworthy care. The nurses’ stories will be told through stories, photos, and videos. The awards will be announced in early May. Check out the site to read some of the heartfelt stories from previous years’ winners. Does...  Read More »

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...  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...  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...  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...  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...  Read More »