Do you enjoy delving deeply into a subject? Are you fascinated by the workings of the human heart? Consider a career as a cardiac nurse. While cardiac nurses focus their practice on one specific body system – the cardiovascular system – cardiac nursing is an extraordinarily diverse specialty. Cardiac nurses can be found on telemetry units, coronary care units (CCUs) and ...

After being reminded of the value of yoga principles and other alternative therapies recently I began some research in the possibilities of these in relation to expanding the career horizons of the LPN and RN. With the aging of the population, hospice care has become a valuable specialty in nursing care. Nurses are needed to provide basic nursing care, to oversee ...

Nurses are experts at navigating through rough waters. We are always there for our patients in their time of need. Check this nurse out. She is using her critical thinking skills while she sails her boat through a stormy ocean. It’s true. Nurses can do just about anything, just so long as they have a good mentor to show them the ...

Have you been wondering if you have the stuff that it takes to work in psych? Or are you already working there and thinking about moving up the ladder, perhaps to Psychiatric Nursing Practitioner (or Advanced Practice Psychiatric Nurse)? If so, here’s some information that might help you make that decision. What Does a Psychiatric Nurse Practitioner Actually Do? As with ...

Failure to Rescue has emerged as an issue in the patient safety movement and is now being addressed as it applies to correctional nursing. I wrote about it last fall and have continued to consider how this concept impacts practice in our specialty. This morning I attended a session in the Updates in Correctional Healthcare presented by Sue Smith, MSN, RN, ...

Chances are if you are interested in entering the nursing field, you want your life to count, you want to know you are contributing something valuable to another and you want to help people. Imagine the possibility of helping not just one person at a time, but your career contributing to the excellent care of dozens or hundreds of patients at ...

Should healthcare providers start talking more about the "woo woo" specialty? As a hospital nurse, holistic nursing always seemed so separate from what I did. It was a taboo subject among my coworkers, not to be taken seriously by conventional healthcare. But holistic nursing goes much deeper than complementary nursing modalities such as aromatherapy, therapeutic touch or guided imagery. In fact, ...

I visit many jails and prisons across the country providing risk consultation for healthcare units. It is not rocket science to reduce injury risk but it is still very hard to do! Take sharp safety for example. We all know what we need to do but don’t always do it. Protecting ourselves from a needle stick injury takes second (or third ...

Unfortunately, correctional nurses must be wary of a variety of motives behind inmate-patients seeking medical or mental health treatment. Malingering is defined as the intentional falsification or exaggeration of symptoms for external motives or secondary gain. There is a high incidence of malingering in jails and prisons. A reported 20% of mental illness in corrections is malingering. Reasons to Fake Illness ...

The profession of Holistic Nursing has attained new levels of acceptance, now officially recognized by the American Nurses Association (ANA) as a nursing specialty with a defined scope and standards of practice. Standing behind this great achievement is the American Holistic Nurses Association (AHNA), the non-profit support organization for nurses and holistic healthcare professionals. To apply for specialty approval, the AHNA ...

Some nurses have a natural talent in dealing with certain groups of people. Some work well with children, patients with mental illnesses, or working with the elderly. Now more than ever, nurses are needed for senior care, considering the population boom of seniors in North America. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention the average lifespan is expected to ...

Nursing can be one of those fascinating careers that always brings with it new experiences. There can be plenty of drama, surprises and emotional highs and lows. Talking with Bernardino Ramos, the head nurse at a Veterans Affairs clinic and a veteran himself, it’s apparent that for those working in the military, the extremes can be even greater. After earning his ...

If you find your way into oncology nursing, you may never leave. Jobs are plentiful, diverse and challenging, oncology nurses say. And once you've gotten a taste of caring for cancer patients, other nursing jobs pale in comparison. "It's ‘once an oncology nurse, always an oncology nurse,'" says Mary Murphy, MS, director of clinical systems at the Hospice of Dayton in ...

I had never heard of a private patient advocate. But I always knew I had more to offer than just carrying out written doctor’s orders, filling out the paperwork and going home. I started brainstorming and searching around online for answers. What I found was exciting: Private patient advocacy is an emerging field that brings together nursing and medicine with social ...

With continuous cut-backs in education budgets, many school nurse positions are being eliminated, putting our nation’s children at serious risk. Part of the problem is the considerable misunderstanding of what school nurses do and the value they bring to the community, the educational system, and the healthcare system. There is considerable evidence to support the fact that fewer school nurses has ...

Picking a nursing specialty is easy for some–harder for others! New nurses need to ultimately decide what area of nursing fits them intellectually and emotionally, and sometimes that takes real work as well as changing jobs. It is miserable to find oneself in an area of nursing that doesn’t fit–for me that would have been med/surg or ortho. Yet I know ...

Nurses often ask how they can find out what is happening in LTC and how can they get current and reputable information about nursing practice in LTC settings. We suggest that you use a “one-stop” shopping approach and look to the Coalition of Geriatric Nursing Organizations (CGNO) for the information you may need. The CGNO encompasses 8 organizations representing over 28,700 ...

Is a career in home healthcare right for you? The independence, one-on-one patient contact and flexibility appeal to many healthcare job seekers, but home health work isn't for everyone. If you're considering a job in home care, ask yourself the following questions -- courtesy of home health veterans -- to determine whether you'd be happy and successful in the field. Can ...

When Carmen Carrillo, RN, CHPN, interviewed for a palliative care nurse position in a Southern California hospital system, she had little idea she was about to become part of a new trend in end-of-life care. “After I heard more about the position, I learned more about the palliative care movement and I wanted to be part of it,” says Carrillo, now ...

If you could imagine the greatest gift to receive, what would it be? Some would say a winning lottery ticket. Others would argue that the car of their dream or house they’ve always wanted would suffice. And some would stray from the material world and deem that marrying your soul mate or seeing your kids grow up into successful adults would ...