Category: Employment

I am deeply concerned about the status of our health care system.  Massive nonprofit hospital systems pay no taxes as they have tax exempt status and they put the profits back into the system to continue their growth. Health care was originally designed to provide medical care to citizens in our community.  Churches and counties then owned the hospital to […]

In 2018, Tina Suckow, LPN, a nurse for over 30 years, had been working at a mental health hospital in Iowa for the four previous years.  One day, patient became violent and she was brutally assaulted.  She was severely injured and required multiple surgeries.  After her FMLA and accrued medical leave had been exhausted, the facility fired her.  What a […]

Have you seen the eerie movie titled “The Stepford Wives”?  The original 1975 film takes place in a small community where all the wives are p-e-r-f-e-c-t!  They look great, keep the home looking immaculate, make fabulous meals and, most obviously, provide their husbands with exceptional care. The reason for the ladies’ perfection is that they actually weren’t ladies at all […]

Ballard Health, located in east Tennessee and southwest Virginia, announced during Nurses Week that it was putting a massive investment of 10 million dollars to increase the wages for all direct patient care nursing and supporting back wages for acute care registered nurses, licensed practice nurses and nursing assistants with primary responsibility in providing direct patient care.  The announcement read: […]

Many have dreams of starting their own business.  Some act on those dreams while most don’t.  The ones who act may send out some mailings a couple of times, not get the results they seek and then quit.  That is not hunger, it’s called desire. In order to have a successful business, you have to be hungry.  You have to […]

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 […]