February 4, 2011, 12:57 pm

Change of Shift: Volume 5, No. 16

Welcome once again to Change of Shift!

This week our themes lean to education and the art of “being there” and we have two new bloggers submitting! Welcome!!

Man, that was a fast two weeks!

So….let’s get started!

As a profession, nursing has been criticized for not having a standardized entry level into practice. But we nurses seem to spend an inordinate amount of time criticizing each other for the same thing. In this week’s Editor’s Pick, Nurse Teeny takes on The Myth of the Second Degree Nurse at The Makings of a Nurse.

If you read nothing else this week, please read this post from Suzanne Gordon – she reviews a new book: My Imaginary Illness: A Journey Into Uncertainty and Prejudice in Medical Diagnosis. It looks at the phenomenon of doctors (and nurses) becoming angry and blaming the patient when problems persist and/or diagnoses cannot be made. My copy of the book will be here in two days (thank you, Amazon Prime!)

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Running Wildly‘s compassionate care encourages a patient to open up about their past in this touching post entitled Helping Hand. I hope her patient was able to get the help she needed. (And here is a submission I missed for the last edition, an ode to workin’ the ER on the holiday: Emergency New Years!)

Shrtstormtrooper knows exactly what a patient needs, and it isn’t high tech in Reassurance posted at New Nurse Insanity: Fundus Chop!.

The latest Insights in Nursing is up, with host Jamie Davis and panelists Terri Pollick and Terri Schmitt taking on health care fraud, nurse practitioners/primary care and virtual beds! Check out Virtual Nursing in Tron-land.

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Maureen “Shawn” Kennedy, editor-in-chief of the AJN, reports from the 2011 Clinical Nurse Leader Summit in Florida for AJN’s Off the Charts blog. Does your facility use CNLs?

KMorales discusses why she is Working on my MSN and has gotten me all inspired with her description of her friend/colleague “CB”. I bet you’ll be signing up for school after you read it, too! Thanks, Katie, I needed this! : ) It’s posted at NursesNetwork.

Lisa Ordway discusses end of life care (or lack of same) in the ICU in Palliative Care – Devil of Defeat or Humane Patient Care? posted at Experiences of an ICU Nurse. You can always depend on an ICU nurse to tell in like it is.

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Elle Bieling, RN notes that hearing and understanding metaphors used by patients are important when assessing pain in Chronic Pain ~ Why Physical, Emotional and Spiritual Pain are Inseparable posted at The Body Window.

Michelle Walter has started NurseNRecovery, a website to help nurses struggling with narcotic addiction. Michelle is a recovering addict and shares what she has learned with her readers. Her story is an eye opener about just how insidiously an addiction can take hold.

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Many thanks to those who submitted this week and many, many thanks for reading and linking each week!

Be sure to send in your submissions for the next edition of Change of Shift, here, at Emergiblog. Use the Contact button at the top of the page or submit via Blog Carnival!

See you there!