Category: Empowered Nurses

My new client, Katie, sits across from me because of a situation that happened at work and resulted in a complaint before the Nurse Licensing Board. She’s scared and crying. I can tell by talking to her that she is a very compassionate nurse and does a great job. Yet, she doesn’t understand why this is happening to her. Like […]

Whenever I have the opportunity to meet a nurse from another country, I always wonder what nursing is like in their homeland. From a number of such international encounters, I found that nurses have the same frustrations no matter where they are in the world. Nurses are frustrated that they cannot speak their mind without risking getting into trouble. They […]

I read an article that recently has gone viral called “Fifteen Things You Should Give Up To Be Happy.”  The list made such an impact on me that I want now to share it with you. I’m not going to go through all fifteen but there are a couple of them that I feel are related to nursing. First is […]

  If you’ve been asked to go into a peer assistance program or if you voluntarily choose to go into the program to protect your license, here some things you should know. First, you will need to sign a recovery monitoring agreement which basically is a contract that you are entering the program and agree to certain of its requirements. […]

“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.” – Aristotle – Did you know a habit originally was a word for clothing? Some nurses who studied at a Catholic school would know this. But a habit also is “a routine behavior that is repeated regularly and tends to occur unconsciously.” – Merriam-Webster Dictionary […]

We can learn so much from nature. In nature, things are either flourishing or dying. I take that concept to heart because I want to continue growing and flourish instead of being on the other end of the spectrum. One of the ways to grow is to be a lifelong learner. Certainly, we have to take continuing education classes as […]

Substance abuse is one of the most important issues in nursing because access is so easy. Even with Pyxis machines that distribute medications with a thumb print, there still are ways that a determined nurse can divert medication. According to the Indiana State Nurses Assistance Program [ISNAP]: Impaired nurses demonstrate mood swings and irritability. He/she may seem depressed for no […]

Lately I have been receiving a lot of calls from nurses who either had a criminal problem in their past and are afraid that they won’t be able to get their nursing license or have had a criminal matter after they had obtained their license. None of these nurses ever thought that they would have a criminal matter but somehow […]

I have heard from many nurses that where they are working is understaffed which is not safe for the patients. Those nurses put in a lot of overtime because they are concerned that if they didn’t, there would be fewer staff available to care for the patients. They also expressed concerns that if the facility is able to get staff […]

I remember when I was practicing nursing; it seemed that the rest of the world was on the weekday 9:00 to 5:00 schedule. However, I worked the 3:00 to 11:30 p.m. shift, five days a week and tried to make as much overtime as I could so I could pay back my student loans. My social life took a backseat. […]