Category: Empowered Nurses

As I mentioned in last week’s article, which you can find by clicking here, the son of comedian and late night talk show host Jimmy Kimmel was born with a birth defect in his heart.  An attending nurse was astute enough to notice the infant’s condition and basically saved the life of Kimmel’s son. Several days later on the national […]

I am not one to jump on the bandwagon when something pops up in the news.  However, the recent Jimmy Kimmel matter does deserve some attention. After Kimmel’s wife gave birth to their son at Cedar Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles, an astute nurse noticed the infant had a heart murmur.  Heart murmurs in babies can be normal but the […]

It gets so hectic during the holiday season, with frantically buying gifts on our list and checking it twice.  Sometimes we forget to take time for ourselves. One of the best things that I learned, that helped me decrease my stress level is to take 5 minutes of joy each day. At first, I had trouble finding something that causes […]

Just about every day I hear that nurses cannot take their required breaks.  If they do take a break, it puts their patients at risk by giving the other nurses more patients to watch. In fact, several lawsuits have been filed against health care institutions claiming that nurses were not getting the breaks there were supposed to take and, even […]

Intention is a predetermined outcome.  Remember when you thought about getting started in this profession that you would do anything you could to get into nursing school?  Once you were admitted to school, you would do anything you could to complete the program.  Then when you completed that program, you would do anything you could to pass the NCLEX exam. […]

As nurses, we see the most difficult things in humanity.  We see people suffering, we are privy to their difficult family situations, we basically have a very privileged look into the details of our patients’ lives.  We see their hopes, their fears, their sadness and their joy. But all this does not come without a price.  When I was a […]

I recently had a trial and while the outcome was favorable, there were many learning opportunities presented to me. Along with 2 other attorneys, I was co-counseling this case.  Though we all are very experienced attorneys, we each had our own style and our own way of doing things. I found as I witnessed their approaches during the trial thinking […]

  A Houston, Texas nurse has filed suit against her employer because she was not given her lunchbreaks.  Even though she worked when she should have been eating her lunch, she was NOT paid for that time.  She was deprived of her break and forced to work for free. This facility had a policy that you only clocked in when […]

When I feel like I am in a situation where I don’t have choice, it’s kind of like I’m in prison.  In reality, I’m not locked in some self-perceived cell.  I know that I actually have plenty of choices.  I may not like the options but, nevertheless, the choices are available. By believing that you have a choice and you […]

As nurses, we see all sides of humanity.  I remember as a student doing my pediatric clinicals, we had a small toddler in an oxygen tent while its mother was smoking in the restroom when the child started to cry.  She handed her belt out from behind the door with the instruction, “Here, use this.” Again … you see all […]