NursingLink

Television may be blamed for a litany of modern plagues but for one local woman it saved her life. Early this year, Patrice Broussard of Antelope was suffering from a mysterious ailment. Ping-ponging between doctors' appointments, she was losing hope with every physician's "I don't know what's wrong." As the mother of three sat on the couch one afternoon last January, ...

Efforts to require flu shots for health care workers in order to protect vulnerable patients are being abandoned by some major health systems because of legal challenges and vaccine shortages. Requiring flu shots is an exception in the health care industry, where 48% of workers were vaccinated against flu last year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The ...

U.S. researchers say they found nurses who worked in hospital intensive care units may get less regular sleep than other nurses and may commit more errors. Researchers at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston assessed the overall sleep quality and vigilance among intensive care unit nurses at the beginning and end of their shift. They compared their findings with similar measurements ...

The increase in demand may well put an end to a simmering policy dispute over the circumscribed role of nurse practitioners in medical care. If tens of millions of new patients enter the health care system, it seems clear that nurse practitioners will be needed to perform many of the tasks now performed by physicians. Nurse practitioners are registered nurses who ...

Swine Flu Twitter Chat with Jennifer Stephen: SWINE FLU QUESTION: Son has sickle cell...Does he qualify as high priority and where can I take him to get the shot? Nurse Stephen: He's definitely in the high priority group. He can get the shot at the local health department. #swineflu SWINE FLU QUESTION: If I had the swine flu earlier this year, ...

One of the animating principles (or should I say ideologies) of the Obama Administration’s health reform effort is the notion that Americans who have health insurance “like their insurance.”  To genuinely address the underlying problems in our health care system in ways even the President admits would be the most effective — like having some form of national, tax supported health ...

I recently wrote a letter to the president of the United States- Barack Obama. This letter was a plea to reexamine the proposed health care reform. There is  a better way to rectify our fractured "unhealthy" system. He responded with a form letter that, in essence, gave himself a "pat on the back" for his proposed plan. I would like to ...