According to a recent Kaiser Family Foundation survey, 50% of New Orleans area residents reported problems receiving medical care.
This shortage have caused many nurses and travel nurses to take bold steps and make sacrifices to bring their nursing expertise to the still-struggling region.
Here’s a great story in CNN about one nurse who is giving back [...]
Pharmaceutical Companies
Pharmaceutical companies are making more and more money each year from consumers and other sources of revenue. The cost of this profit along with rising costs of research are being passed on to patients. An increasing number of these patients are becoming unable to afford to pay these rising costs. Stagnant economic growth, stagnant [...]
The Media Image of Nurses
All too commonly, today’s popular TV shows cast nurses as mere physician assistants and peons who have little or no technical knowledge of medicine. These misrepresentations and typecasts often result in nurses getting less authority and respect from two very important areas: patients and doctors, which obviously [...]
Let’s face it, email is here to stay. It’s in colleges and universities, America’s largest and smallest corporations. It allows us to communicate quickly and efficiently with the added benefit of being able to review our words before they travel to our intended recipient.
But is email coming to a doctor’s office near you? Probably not, [...]
Nurse Education
One of the most obvious ways to combat dwindling nurse staffing levels (besides enacting legislation to protect patient ratios) is to make nursing more attractive, education potential nursing students about the career potential nursing holds and remove the barriers to receiving quality nursing education. Rep. Lois Capps, a nurse serving in Congress, has proposed [...]
Nurse Staffing Levels
As nurses and travel nurses are probably aware, this country is experiencing a shortage of registered nurses. This shortage results in overworked nurses and can easily patient safety into question. Nurses on all levels, in all departments need to push their employers for better pay and working conditions. Better pay and conditions for [...]
Harm Reduction
This important issue addresses programs that intend to reduce the ill-effects that are typically associated with dangerous and potentially dangerous lifestyle choices. These programs are broad in scope and can range from designated driver/drunk driving awareness campaigns to condom/birth control distribution in public schools and public needle exchange programs for those addicted to drugs [...]
The National Nurse
The idea of a National Nurse in the United States has been proposed, but not yet implemented. Much of the lobbying and pressure for this new post has been generated by the National Nursing Network Organization and includes. The Office of the National Nurse would, according to the NNNO’s website:
Elevate the Chief Nurse [...]
Healthcare Funding
All nurses, travel nurses included should be very concerned about the amount of funding for those who simply can’t afford adequate health care - this includes immigrants living in the United States.
Many areas of the country aren’t setting aside enough funding to treat impoverished patients who simply must have care. The healthcare industry as [...]
Travel nurses may not consider it, but the fact is that political issues affect their lives as well as the lives of every single American today. This is even more true in the world of health care where issues range from financial to moral and few are anything but controversial. Each issue is very important [...]
The next time you walk into your travel nurse placement and cringe at the nurse-to-patient ratios, think of one word for your next assignment: California. The Golden State’s safe hospital staffing law has recently seen its latest phase-in period thanks to relentless advocacy by the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee (CNA/NNOC). The new ratios, [...]