Archive for the 'Nurse Patient Care' Category

Nursing in the Chiropractic Field

Published
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admin
on March 29, 2011
in Nurse Patient Care and Nursing Career
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chiropractic nurseThere are many different avenues open to nursing graduates: you can work in a hospital, work in a doctor’s office, continue your education, or find employment in any number of government and health care facilities. One less common path is to turn to holistic medicine or alternative care therapies. Although many types of holistic medicine are looked down upon by the medical profession as a whole, many people swear by therapies like massage, acupuncture, herbalism, and even chiropractic medicine.

What is Chiropractic Health Care?

Chiropractic medicine is a type of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) that emphasizes the importance of the spine and the musculoskeletal system in overall bodily health. By manipulating the spine, joints, and tissues, a chiropractor hopes to heal different disorders and promote a healthier, more active lifestyle.

To the medical community, chiropractic medicine presents a bit of a conundrum. On the one hand, the idea that working with the spine can “cure” ailments not directly related to the nervous system hasn’t yet caught on with standard Western medicine teachings. On the other hand, many people swear by the practice and really do reap valuable benefits from it. For nurses, this presents an even bigger problem: by becoming a chiropractic nurse, you straddle the line between the medical community and holistic medicine.

Should I Become a Chiropractic Nurse?

Straddling the medical boundary can be a difficult place to be, especially if you have gone through all of nursing school and are now a registered nurse with an advanced college degree and a license. Do you stay true to your education and work in a legitimized health care field, or do you work in a field that you believe in, even if it means stepping away from the health community?

No one can answer that question for you. As a chiropractic nurse, you will most likely be doing much of the same work you would be doing in any other setting, preparing patients for their sessions with the doctor, answering questions, and patient charting. However, because chiropractors are not doctors, they don’t prescribe medication or keep patients overnight, which will considerably reduce your job responsibilities and experience.

And because there are no formal courses that will allow you to specialize in chiropractic nursing, you will be on your own when it comes to continuing education within your field. In fact, because the level of education is fairly similar in length, you might be better off not going to nursing school and simply becoming a chiropractor instead.

Additional Nursing Options

Fortunately, there are alternate options if this is a field you’re interested in. You may work with osteopaths, orthopedic doctors, physical therapists, sports medicine providers, or other professionals who deal in the skeleton and muscle tissue, but within a more traditional medical setting. However, if you do have an interest in holistic modalities and how you might be able to combine your formal medical education with alternative options, chiropractic nursing might be perfect for you.

Related Topics:

Nursing and Holistic Health Care Centers

Complementary but Alternative Medicine

Find a Nursing School in Your City

Nurses in Popular Culture

Published
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admin
on September 20, 2010
in Nurse Patient Care and Nursing Career
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i_nurse_female_9Throughout history, the nursing profession has been one of the most misunderstood and misrepresented careers by the media and popular culture.

From starched and prim young women taking care of soldiers in their white uniforms to the (also young) women on television navigating their way through the higher-ranking doctors in the emergency room, nurses have gotten a somewhat negative reputation as young, pretty, inexperienced women whose personal lives make for great entertainment.

The Nursing Stereotype

As is usually the case, these stereotypes aren’t without a basis. Nursing careers have always been dominated by women, even though more and more male nurses are attending nursing schools and finding gainful and satisfying employment in the field. Youth is also fairly common, since the burnout rate for nurses is fairly high, and it’s necessary to keep a steady stream of recent graduates to keep the staffing numbers up.

However, where the stereotype falls very short is when it depicts nurses as the inexperienced and slightly incompetent versions of doctors. The truth is that nurses – whether they are LPN’s, RN’s, NP’s, or even doctors of nursing – are professionals with incredible expertise and skills in their field.

In fact, few other professions offer such a high salary right out of school. The average starting salary of an RN at a hospital is around $40,000 per year, with opportunities to earn up to twice that. Many nurses have Bachelor and Master degrees, and routinely go back to school to maintain their high level of education and to stay up-to-date with the medical field.

Nurses are also more autonomous than most television shows let on. While nurses typically don’t have the same authority and education as their doctor counterparts, they are usually not the “employees” of the doctor. They are part of a larger health care team composed of physicians, nurses, surgeons, occupational therapists, physical therapists, nursing assistants, and pharmacists. All of these professionals work together to help patients and their families – it’s just that nurses are responsible for most of the hands-on care, and are thus viewed as a little bit lower on the totem pole.

However, nurses (particularly at the nurse practitioner and managerial levels) are responsible for quite a bit of self-sufficiency. NP’s often open their own practices, and charge nurses or administrative nurses might make life-and-death decisions on the scene. Although most nurses establish a patient care routine in keeping with a doctor’s orders, there is rarely a doctor present supervising all the activities.

Real Life Nursing: A Great Career Choice

From ER and Grey’s Anatomy to Nurse Jackie and Scrubs, nurses make a common appearance in the television shows we watch and enjoy. And while there are factors of all of these shows that are true, none of them accurately represent the whole medical profession (for doctors and ER technicians as well as nurses).

If you’re interested in attending nursing school or entering the profession, it’s important to step away from the television representations and look at nursing as a viable, successful career choice. With great salary options, flexible hours, and a stable long-term job outlook, there are few better choices for those who want to help others – regardless of age, gender, or any of those other popular media depictions.

Related Topics:

Educational Requirements of a Nurse Practitioner

Growing Demand For Nurses in Florida

Cultural Awareness in Nursing

Published
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admin
on June 14, 2010
in Nurse Patient Care
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i_nurse_femaleIn a time when nurses of all ethnicity and cultural backgrounds are needed to care for an equally diverse population of patients, the health care community is also working to create more diversity in the nursing workforce.

There are some groups which contend that the more ethnically diverse a nursing workforce is in a community, the fewer discrepancies exist in patient care.   This would, of course, be difficult to prove, but nevertheless, the current supply of nurses is being shored up for the upcoming projected nursing shortage, by any means possible.

Nursing schools are doing their best to recruit instructors so they can accept and graduate more students. Another strategy is bringing in nurses from other countries as a way of filling staffing gaps while also attempting to diversify America’s nursing workforce.

The challenge with this strategy is that, just because a nurse from overseas shares the same root ethnicity as specific populations here in the states, it does not mean that they share the same culture.  For instance, nurses from Latin American countries do not necessarily represent an exact cultural match to the broad range of Hispanic American populations and African does not mean African American. The beauty of culture is often found in its depth and diversity.

Since nurses have the most direct contact and communication with patients, cultural awareness is a very important part of nursing care. Creating a diverse nursing workforce is certainly an admirable goal, but no matter what your culture or ethnicity is, there are ways you can provide culturally competent care to all your patients.

First, there is the cultural awareness that comes from understanding your own culture and any biases of other cultures.  Second, there is the basic information about the cultures in your community and work area that you can establish by doing your homework. Finally there are the cultural factors that impact the care that you offer your patients, such as religion, home remedies, communication, family roles, personal space and food preferences that vary by culture.

In an ideal world, our health care system could boast a nursing workforce packed with skilled, compassionate, competent and diverse nurses that represent America’s equally diverse population. As our health care system works to buffer the population of current and future nurses, it is fortunate that all nurses can add cultural awareness to their existing list of talents.

Florida Nursing: Demand Meets Paradise

Published
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admin
on April 16, 2010
in Nurse Patient Care and Nursing Career
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i_nurse_geriatricsOf the estimated 78 million baby boomers “coming of age” presently and in the near future, many of them will inevitably migrate to Florida. On the television show Seinfeld, the Costanza’s and Seinfeld’s made their way to a Floridian condominium paradise and even Kramer enjoyed the retired life in the Sunshine state at one point. My parents ended up there and for a time after nursing school, I was a bonafide Floridian.

And as a nurse and a genuine Floridian (I also get credit for regular childhood trips there to visit grandparents), I got to see for myself the vital role played by nurses in Florida in caring for the patient population consisting of primarily retired folks. In a nutshell, Florida has more elderly patients who have a great number and complexity of acute medical problems. I recall diagnoses on the charts of broken hips, infections, heart disease, stroke and respiratory illnesses like pneumonia, to name a few.

I personally wonder what effect the state’s infamous chronic abundant air conditioning has on some of this illness. How healthy can the sudden and dramatic temperature changes (indoor – frigid, outdoors – sweltering) be for people who have delayed body temperature regulation anyway due to the biology of aging?

Regardless of the reason, there is a growing influx of Floridians who need care and, as a result, the nursing shortage is hitting this state hard, and new nurses are desperately needed there. The shortage is of particular benefit to graduates of Florida nursing schools since they already have roots in the state.

A 2008 report from the Florida Center for Nursing has also shown how, if the estimated 13,494 nurse vacancies were to be filled, the state would see an increase of more than $700 million in annual revenue. This is because nurses, a.k.a. employees, are residents who spend money on stuff including paying taxes.

In addition to revenue, filling the nurse vacancies improves patient outcomes. In general, when there are enough nurses to care for the patients, the sunshine state just becomes that much sunnier for residents and staff alike.