I have recently seen a number of health care professionals using Gabapentin, which is used to treat epilepsy, postherpetic neuralgia (shingles), but also widely prescribed off-label to treat fibromyalgia, neuropathy, migraines and other chronic pain conditions. In 2016, 64,000,000 prescriptions were written in the U.S. for Gabapentin, the 10th most prescribed medication. This is a 49% increase in just 5 years. In researching this issue, it appears that Gabapentin can increase or heighten the … [Read more...]
Nursing Boards: Why Are They So Harsh?
I am frequently asked why nursing boards are so harsh. The Boards are composed of nurses and shouldn’t the Board understand the situations in which nurses get involved? California has had issues with their Board. California has a separate Board of Nursing for Registered Nurses and one for License Vocational Nurses. The RN Board is called the Board of Registered Nursing (“B.R.N.”). In some parts of the country, licensed vocational nurses are called licensed practical … [Read more...]
Initiatives to Stop Violence Against Health Care Providers
Guest Blog by Mathew Keller, RN, JD. Reprinted with Permission from The American Association of Nurse Attorneys (TAANA) The forcible and violent July 26th, 2017 arrest of Utah nurse Alex Wubbels was a proverbial shot heard around the nursing world, provoking national media attention and a visceral reaction of support for nurses culminating in national campaigns to #EndNurseAbuse (ANA), #STAMP (stop assaults against medical providers, Show Me Your Stethoscope), and initiatives to escalate … [Read more...]
Safe Staffing Initiatives For Nurses
As nurses, we are the front line of patient safety. These days, hospitals are run as corporations and tend to put profits ahead of patients. We need to change this. People come first! Because hospitals are now run like businesses, productivity experts and personnel who are not nurses, ask us to do so much more with less. Administration is squeezing nurses to put their patients’ lives at risk and their licenses on the line. I am all for mandatory nurse patient ratios. While I think it … [Read more...]
Fraudulent Charting in Nursing
No one ever has become a nurse so that they can sit to document all the care they provided to their patients. Yet, documentation is one of the most important parts of our practice. As much as any of you may dislike documentation, it serves a very important purpose to protect your license and your livelihood as well as protecting you if a medical malpractice claim should arise. One thing nurses seldom realize is that when they late chart or enter something in a record which is not timed, an … [Read more...]
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