A growing popularity of book clubs is hitting the medical field. This ABC News report explores why literature is beneficial for physicians, nurses, and any other caretaker. Reading literature written from a patient’s point of view, such as The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, the memoir of the late French Elle Editor-in-Chief Jean-Dominique Bauby (who essentially wrote the book through blinking after a stroke left him almost completely...  Read More »

The National Council of State Boards of Nursing, Inc., otherwise known as NCSBN, has raised the passing standard for the NCLEX-RN Exam. The new passing standard is -0.16 logits (the unit of measure for the exam) on the logistics scale. The standard is 0.05 logits higher than the previous standard of -0.21. The new standard takes effect on April 1, 2010. The standard is reviewed by the NCSBN Board of Directors every three years. The Board...  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 »

A nursing school in downtown Atlanta has created a win-win situation for the Atlanta community: Nursing students get practical experience and the residents of a local homeless shelter get medical care. The partnership between Emory University’s Nell Hodgson Woodruff School of Nursing and the Gateway Center in downtown Atlanta provides nursing students with opportunities for service learning and, for more experienced students, hands-on...  Read More »

By Charlene Gordon, RN Ever have a patient go bad and just wish at the end of the day you could get a chance to replay it and fix what went wrong? I just finished a three-day WMD (weapons of mass destruction) course that had a robot for a victim. And this guy was so real, it was scary. “The guy” was a mannequin that blinked, had pupils that were reactive to light, and emitted pulses from every place a real person would. He made...  Read More »

After much anticipation, the newest Stressed Out book will arrive this week. Stressed Out About Pharmacology features information about everything from learning strategies, to drugs (of course), to patient safety tips that will combine to make you feel prepared in your career as a nurse. We’ve looked at how to keep up your learning hygiene, spent some time with neoplastic medications, and taken it to a higher level of patient safety....  Read More »

A couple of weeks ago, we introduced you to Joye. Our new friend is like many of you–or at least in a place where many of you have been in your lives. She is a new nursing graduate. In the first chapter, Joye took us back in time a couple of years. She had just found out she didn’t get into nursing school and was turning to a brownie for some comfort. Now, let’s rejoin her: It’s 8:30 a.m. on March 16, two years ago...  Read More »