Having been a nurse for over 20 years, I have experienced burnout or compassion fatigue several times during this journey. Wikipedia describes the follow symptoms of compassion fatigue: "Sufferers can exhibit several symptoms including hopelessness, a decrease in experiences of pleasure, constant stress and anxiety, and a pervasive negative attitude. This can have detrimental effects on individuals, both professionally and personally, ...

"Everybody lies" is the mantra of Dr. Gregory House, and it's not just true on a fictional drama like House. Are your patients lying to you? As a nurse, you've come across your fair share of fibbing cases, and you know some patients will go to great lengths to cover up something they don't want you to know. Fortunately, nurses are ...

For a New Year’s treat, we asked Head Nurse Jo to give us the lowdown…and the highlights…of the people that you meet each day. She advised us, “These are in no particular order.” So, draw whatever conclusions you wish! Without further ado, THE LIST. Next: Attending Physicians >> Featured Author: SCRUBS MAGAZINE Scrubs Magazine is a lifestyle website 100 percent ...

Life is fleeting. We all know this. We only get one chance at it. I think it's safe to say that most individuals are very familiar with father time. As we get older, father time ‘visits' our life and all those around it quite often. No beating around the bush on this one – sooner or later we all die. Sorry ...

Want to see a bunch of people get up in arms? Recommend a new vaccination. While vaccines were once accepted as a medical miracle (no more polio!), today's parents closely examine the risk/benefit ratio of any and all recommended vaccinations. And who can blame them? With a ton of scary stories linking vaccinations with autism (never mind the fact that numerous ...

Teresa Brown, R.N. wrote an article, featured in The New York Times, recently called, Caring for the Chart of the Patient, in which she discusses the very real challenge we face as nurses to document our care. She speaks about the mandates, and standards that we are forced to document on in order to satisfy one agency, insurance company, regulation, or ...

Let’s face it: We’ve all doubted certain patients’ complaints of pain. We’ve all wondered whether their “pain” was really a not-so-cleverly disguised cry for a cheap fix. So how do you know if your patient is in pain—or just wants drugs? In Part I and Part II of our Pain Management series, ER doc Brady Pregerson and Nurse Rebekah Child examined ...

You think garbage collectors have it hard when it comes to on-the-job smells? Well, they do, but at least in their case they're prepared and can even wear a mask. Plus, there's a lot of margin for error. They don't have to look at whatever's causing the offensive odor; they can just close their eyes and dump it into the ...

http://www.flickr.com/photos/vagueonthehow/ / CC BY 2.0 1. Once More With Feeling The Show: Glee Like any other classic tale of geeks banding together in the face of adversity, the outcast characters of Fox's Glee made drama and singing cool again. An aspiring Broadway starlet, the captain of the football team, the head cheerleader, and the lowest of social misfits on the school ...

Once again, a coworker called in sick, and once again, you’ve been asked — no, make that required — to stay into the next shift. You’ve already worked 12 hours, you haven’t seen your kids all day and you have guests coming in tomorrow. Staying late was not in your plans. First, take a deep breath. Responding in haste isn’t going ...

What is a miracle? Among nurses, we may jokingly say it’s having a full roster of nurses on our shift or a shift without any “code browns,” but a true miracle—if there is such a thing—is much more than that. A medical miracle is one that can’t be explained by medical and scientific minds. They may have theories, but no one ...

Burnout can hit the best of nurses. In fact, research suggests that the best nurses – those detail-oriented, perfectionistic, deeply compassionate souls among us – are at the highest risk of burnout. Why? Because the realities of nursing don't always match up to their high standards, and the resulting stress and frustration, over time, leads the physical and mental exhaustion that's ...

The role of "patient advocate" is new and evolving. As the importance of patients' rights gains momentum, a group of healthcare professionals has banded together to stand up for the best interests of their patients. Because patient advocates are a new career path, many healthcare professionals declare themselves "patient advocates" after extensive experience in the fields. However, degree programs focusing on ...

Many of us think of hospitals as a safe haven from diseases. It’s a place where people “get better.” But would it surprise you to know that some of the nastiest, most difficult bacteria to conquer are found in hospitals, almost exclusively!!! According to recent studies, almost 2,000,000 infections per year are transmitted to patients in US hospitals, 90,000 of patients ...

While working at a bank many years ago, I approved a $10,000 fraudulent transaction. When the FBI showed me pictures of the man who had pulled a fast one on me, I didn’t even recognize him. In fact, the whole situation was kind of a blur. At some point, they pulled the footage from the branch security cameras and, as I ...

Last Valentine’s Day I decided to wake up early and make my beau a homemade chocolate chip cookie cake, all decorated with a cartoon picture of us. It was going to be perfect, but I had to get up super early to get started on it. The problem with that is: I am not a morning person. Nevertheless, I am mixing ...

In a recent Monster homepage poll, we asked, "Could you do your current (or most recent) boss's job better than he or she does?" Here's what you had to say: Of 3,032 U.S. respondents, 69.23 percent think they could outperform their boss (and more than half of those respondents would describe their boss as "incompetent"). And less than 12 percent think ...

Everyone wants to maximize productivity — no matter the setting — and hospitals are no different than offices, classrooms, warehouses, or anywhere else where work is done. For those looking for an answer on the surface, "working harder" is often the most popular remedy for productivity concerns. But what if that isn't possible? What if everyone is working as hard ...

I think we all can appreciate the argument. Nurses feel overwhelmed when the nurse-to-patient ratio is extended beyond our means. Not only beyond our means, but also when it borders on compromising patient safety. That has always been the source of our angst and distress. Having one nurse care for additional patients in a single assignment becomes cumbersome and borders on ...

Nobody loves going to work all the time--but there's a difference between routine workplace hassles and a working environment that stresses you out to the point of illness, according to Linnda Durre, the author of "Surviving the Toxic Workplace." Durre suggests that hostile working environments typically have one or more types of dysfunction--how many symptoms does yours have? Unfairness [widget:a_day_in_the_life] You ...