Category: Employment

Nurses comprise the largest workforce in the hospitals and are highly trained.  Yet, in your practice, I’m sure you feel that the nursing shortage is not only here but is with us in full force.  We are asked to do more with less. Mandatory staffing initiatives that went before a number of state legislatures were struck down due to creative […]

As we celebrate Nurses Week, Business Insider recently published an article titled “Then and Now: Here’s How Being a Nurse Has Changed in The Last 50 Year.” 1.      In 2019, nurses not only make up the largest work force in health care but it is one of the fastest growing industries in the country. 2.      In the 1960s, nurses were […]

On April 18, 2019, Maureen Walsh, a senator in the Washington state legislature, stuck her foot in her mouth.  No, not literally but figuratively. Not since comedian and TV host Joy Behar said to a nurse wearing a stethoscope, “What is that thingy around your neck?” has such a gaffe on our profession been made publicly. When arguing about legislation […]

Surely this can’t be happening to me.  I love what I do.  Yet the signs were so insidious and I thought, as most nurses do, that I could do it all.  In the beginning, I stopped doing yoga, then meditation and then eating properly.  My self-care went down the drain.  I was irritable with my children and frustrated with myself.  […]

As much as we may believe nursing is all about the care, health care these days basically has taken most of the “care” out of nursing.  We have devices like the one that can take blood pressure and put those readings into the medical record.  We also have machines that dispense medications. While nurses are more than just machines, we […]

LAB:   Hey, everybody.  It’s Lorie Brown with empowerednurses.org and today’s special guest is Blayne Miley, Director of Policy and Advocacy for the Indiana State Nurses Association.  Blayne also is an attorney so I’m really excited to be with him because I want him to hear about how nurses can go about making change, how nurses can be active in the […]

Lorie Brown, Nurse Attorney, discusses her recent informal survey on Show Me Your Stethoscope on the 1 thing that Nurses would change in Nursing. The results may surprise you – or maybe not! If you are interested in reading the Empowered Nurses’ Bill of Rights, you can click on this link: https://empowerednurses.org/nurses-bedside/empowered-nurses-bill-of-rights/

In 1999, a seminal study was performed by the Institute of Medicine which identified that 44,000 to 98,000 deaths each year result from medical errors.  Unfortunately, over the almost 2 decades since, not much progress has been made.  It seems that despite our high-tech society, we are losing our touch. A review study revealed that a majority of those deaths […]

Were you aware that 69% of all workplace violence and injuries were suffered by healthcare and social service workers?  This is terrifying. And it isn’t only patients who are causing the violence.  Recently a nurse in an operating room was choked not by a patient, but by an anesthesiologist!  [Link to article]  He is facing second-degree assault charges and reportedly […]

In the recent Midterm Election, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts had on its ballot a referendum proposing mandatory nurse staffing.  Unfortunately, the measure was defeated with only 30 percent of the electorate in favor of the measure. Question: Where were the nurses? If Massachusetts has 125,000 registered nurses with an additional 25,000 Licensed Vocational Nurses, where were the nurses? So, what […]