If You See a Teddy Bear, Shoot It
That would be the taste of barf in my throat Nurses Week is fast approaching. I am steeling myself mentally for the steady drizzle of syrupy tributes from various health…
Nurses
Nurses Grieve Too
An underexplored or ignored aspect of nursing professional life: how nurses working in a Labour and Delivery unit grieve over the loss of their patients, and how this grief affects…
How Nurses View Themselves
A selection of “What I Actually Do” meme posters” related to nursing, which have been making the rounds on the Interwebs. Some of them, I guess, are funny and clever,…
What I Have Learned from Nursing
The world of nursing on a couple of dozen flash cards. From The Nursing Channel on YouTube. While I don’t agree necessarily with every card — some of them, I…
In Which TorontoEmerg is So Busted, or, Welcome, Jean Hill
A few weeks ago, I was talking with a colleague, whom I will call Jean Hill, and by-the-by the conversation fell to nurse bloggers. Several prominent ones were mentioned, like…
Nurse Love, The Real Kind
Some real nurse love — and incidentally reminding us why we have the most tremendous profession in the world and how we each day make a powerful difference in the…
Breastfeeding Makes Sane People Crazy
Why does any discussion of breastfeeding makes people a little insane? I don’t exclude myself: even I get a little agitated. Here are some examples of what I mean: Exhibit…
Observations and Assessments
NOTIONS TO SMALL FOR A BLOG POST, ALL IN ONE PLACE, A.K.A. THE PERIODIC LINK DUMP. Nursing Related: New (to me) Blog Shoutouts — “This blog hopes to present a…
More on When Labelling Patients Causes Patients to Die
In the comments WhiteCoat (of WhiteCoat’s Call Room fame) strenuously objects to my take on the Anna Brown case: Wow. Someone on my blog suggested that I check out this…
On Your Feet, Nurse, the Doctor’s Here!
Should nurses give up their chairs for physicians? A nursing professor named Susan Kieffer writing at NurseTogether.com thinks so: If you have been a nurse for any length of time,…
Just Because I Don’t Remember You Doesn’t Mean I Didn’t Care
In the Emergency Department where I work, the number of patients we see pushes 200 some days. We assess and treat a lot of people, mostly for lumps and bumps,…
A Poem for Easter
My own, with at least Easterish themes of death and rebirth. Originally published on 7/10/10. VSA You came to us, no vital signs, no breath Found dead, or nearly so,…
Easter 2012
Happy Easter. One thing you may or may not know about me, dear readers, is that I’m a retired Catholic. Like many other people, I left because what some Catholics…
When Labelling Patients Causes Patients to Die
I found this story how a homeless woman died very disturbing: Anna Brown wasn’t leaving the emergency room quietly. She yelled from a wheelchair at St. Mary’s Health Center security…
Fat Nurses Need Not Apply
A Texas hospital has declared war on the scourge of obese nurses: A Victoria hospital already embroiled in a discrimination lawsuit filed by doctors of Indian descent has instituted a…
Scripting Nurses is Bad for Patient Care
This might be a new low in nursing management. Instead of actually providing caring, empathy and compassion, some hospitals would like nurses to provide a simulacrum of caring, empathy and…
Nursing Makes Nurses Less Empathetic
Irony alert! The best way to decrease empathy in nurses, apparently, is to actually practice nursing. A new study of nursing students found that as students gained more clinical exposure,…
The National Concerns of Busting Unions & Health Care
Marking a complete reversal by the Conservatives in intergovernmental relations, on Friday the process of creating a new health agreement between the federal government and the provinces will be announced.…
The Guy in the Next Bed
Code Blue on the floor: a lot like a Code Blue in the Emergency Department, except we have to run to the elevators, take a ponderously slow ride up to…
Portraits of Nurses at War
A small selection of photographs from the National Archives of Canada. Nurses have served with the Canadian military since Northwest Rebellion in 1885 and small contingents were sent to the…