The Joint Commission, which provides accreditation of health care organizations, issued a mandate requiring surgical/procedure teams to have a time-out prior to beginning an operation to prevent wrong site surgery. Yet, time-outs are always taken and surgical errors continue to occur. What’s more disturbing is that a study was done prior to the time-out procedures and found at least 1 person in the operating room knew that surgery was being performed on the wrong site but was too afraid to … [Read more...]
Employment Discrimination Against Nurses
Most States are “employment at will” which means that one can be terminated for any reason or even for no reason at all! However, under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, employers are prohibited from discriminating against applicants and employees on the basis of race, color, religion, sex and national origin. In a recent case, a 60-year-old nurse of Chinese descent, worked at the Cleveland Clinic since 1976. Ms. Lee started over 40 years ago, when she was just 23 years old. In 2009, … [Read more...]
How Your Bill Becomes Law
Congratulations to South Dakota for becoming the most recent State to pass a law to grant full and direct access to Nurse Practitioners! This is the 22nd State to authorize NPs to provide the full scope of services to the public. Certainly, this will enhance patients’ ability to access high quality health care. Just how are laws made? Let’s take some time here to learn about how you can get one in the law books. First, you need to find one of your State’s legislators who will “sponsor” … [Read more...]
Termination v. Resignation
Sometime nurses resign yet their employment records will show that they were terminated. Therefore, the question becomes, how can you properly resign? In order to properly resign, you must submit your resignation in writing and it has to be accepted. Keep documentation of your resignation and, for added measure, have it signed and dated by your employer. Also, if it is possible, get a letter confirming your resignation. That way, there can be no question that you resigned and were not … [Read more...]
Am I Safe?
In nursing, there is a fine line between high tech and high touch. Sometimes I wonder, with so much technology, will they even need nurses in the future? Someday there may be a “tricorder” like Bones used in the Star Trek series to diagnose and heal people. But … back to reality. It’s interesting that nursing is so high tech yet there are a 100,000 deaths that occur in hospitals each year as a result of medical mistakes. To learn more click here. Other high tech industries do not have … [Read more...]
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