A Washington DC hospital’s decision to fire 21 hospital employees-15 of whom were nurses-for missing work during the blizzards that occurred between Feb. 5 and Feb. 11 has drawn attention from Nurses United of the National Capital Region and the American Nurses Association (ANA), reports Joe Cantlupe, for HealthLeaders Media. The dismissals at Washington Hospital Center, the largest private nonprofit hospital in the DC area, have...  Read More »

If you’re a young nurse, I’m sure you rely on older, more experienced nurses for help. Not only is their expertise valuable, but older nurses make up so much of the nursing workforce that hospitals need them. The nursing shortage is certainly looming, making it more important than ever to ensure that older nurses who wish to stay working beyond retirement age can do so, reports Rebecca Hendren for HealthLeaders Media in her latest...  Read More »

The Well blog in the New York Times this week explores an interesting and ever-present topic: why nurses bully each other, or “eat their young,” as many nurses call it. In it, Seattle nurse, consultant, and author Kathleen Bartholomew is mentioned-she literally wrote the book on the topic, which might be worth checking out: Ending Nurse-to-Nurse Hostility: Why Nurses Eat Their Young. The blog explores the reasons behind such...  Read More »

An interesting piece written by Rebecca Hendren for HealthLeaders Media bridges nurse retention and sleeping. The article highlights a new graduate nurse retention program in Lynchburg, VA, that offers a formal sleep education class that explains how to get better sleep and why sleep is important. The program was created after the nurse retention coordinator, Cheryl Burnette, began to see a potential tie between nurse retention of new graduates...  Read More »

Nurse retention is often achieved by nurse satisfaction—but how do you achieve true job satisfaction in a hectic healthcare environment? One answer might be medical mission trips. An interesting piece written for HealthLeaders Media by Rebecca Hendren explores what medical mission trips can do for RNs by profiling a nurse who went to Haiti with a group of healthcare professionals.  Though salary is an obvious factor in job satisfaction,...  Read More »

Texas Health Resources has launched a program that aims to prepare high school students for nursing careers, reports KDAF news. Fourteen Dallas-Fort Worth-area hospitals are operated by Texas Health Resources, which offers the program to 25 high school graduates. The program, called the Prodigy Program, hopes to create interest in nursing early, and help fill a shortage of nurses. It also ensures that those nurses are cheaper to higher....  Read More »