Change of Shift – Volume 5, Number 1

Welcome to the Change of Shift anniversary edition!

Today marks the beginning of Change of Shift’s fifth year.

Thanks to everyone who responded with suggestions for our carnival! I’ll be compiling those thoughts into a future post (let’s just say link lists are out…).

Many thanks to those who contributed! This week, I’ve added a few new-to-me nursing blogs I’ve discovered along with favorite CoS regulars.

The next edition will be hosted here at Emergiblog, so submissions can be sent through Blog Carnival or to the contact link at the top of the blog.

In the meantime, enjoy Volume 5, Number One of Change of Shift!

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NPs Save Lives writes a wonderful description of her responsibilities as an NP in Nurse Practitioners As Primary Care Providers, posted at The Nurse Practitioner’s Place. In the face of a primary care shortage, it’s hard to fathom the continued resistance to this concept. Over at her second blog, NP Place. com, she gives a Nurse Practitioner’s Opinion Regarding Medicaid Reimbursement To Specialists.

Nurse Me pens a poignant post on palliative care from a personal and professional viewpoint in The Beginning of the End.

Laney at Nursing Student Chronicles is working at her PNA externship and she is excited! Share her enthusiasm at PNA – Week 1.

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Chris at The Man-Nurse Diaries wonders Do We Need Doulas in Critical Care? As Chris notes, “I ruminate over the idea of third-party patient advocates in the ICU. Can you imagine having a privately-hired patient advocate in the room while you’re taking care of a patient?”

In California, we have the ability to place those who are suicidal on a 3-day hold (5150). Florida seems to have a “loophole”. At AJN’s Off the Charts blog, nurse Marci Phipps writes of Reflections on the Freedom to Harm Yourself.

Oh, the joys of dealing with other departments…Shrtstormtropper gives vent to frustration in Lab, found at New Nurse Insanity: Fundus Chop.

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For the past few weeks, Jamie Davis of The Nursing Show podcast and Terri from Nurse Ratched’s Place (and me!) have been discussing various nursing topics for a new podcast entitled Insights in Nursing. Click to hear the latest edition, Over Anxious, Over Testing, & Keep That NG Tube Away!

Oh, the joys of California Dreamin’ – Life and Times of a L&D Nurse Babyrndeb can call herself “Earthquake Nurse” after this week’s 5.4 in southern CA!

Sometimes we see things differently. Gina at Code Blog talks of her experience with this in Perspectives.

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Nurse Teeny may be running ragged but she is doing just fine in One Step Forward over at The Makings of a Nurse.

If this were on a TV show, no one would believe it. Rachedy at You Can’t Fix Stupid describes Some Scary Shit. Everybody ready? All together now…”EWWWWW!”

The devil is in the details – as E.J. discovers in Beatdown, at Uncompromised Airways. Kudos to everyone in neonatal critical care; you guys deserve a medal.

Over at Nursing Birth, our colleague entertains Thoughts on Becoming a Midwife. Wish I had her as my nurse when I was delivering. Check out other posts while you are there, her desire to advocate for her patients will inspire you.

Over at Weird Nursing Tales, Tex encounters Things That Make You Go… And we wonder why our health system is ill.

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And that concludes our anniversary edition!

If you are wondering if you should submit to CoS, the answer is yes! You don’t have to be Hemmingway, you just have to write about nursing. Frustrated at work? Have an idea about health care reform? Want to shout the praises of the profession? Want to brag about an award you received, a symptom you unearthed, a thank-you from a patient? Want to discuss nursing theory in all its glory (or is that only me that does that)? We want to read it!

So…what are you waiting for?

Change of Shift Begins Year Five: Where Do We Go From Here?

The patient looks like a Cyberman from “Doctor Who”!

Funny, I don’t remember the Doctor ever having a nurse for his traveling companion…

The cap rocks.

The shoes look like Barbie slippers!

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What??

You’ve never seen “Doctor Who”??

It’s only been on TV for forty-seven years!

It’s not a medical show, it’s sci-fi and The Doctor is a Time Lord who time-travels in a police call box (aka the TARDIS) that’s bigger on the inside than the outside…

Seriously, you have to see it.

BBC America. Saturdays. 9 Eastern, 6 Pacific.

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Thanks to Keith at Digital Doorway for hosting the last edition of Change of Shift and including gorgeous pics of New Mexico!

The July 9th edition of CoS will be hosted here at Emergiblog with submissions accepted up until July 8th at 11am PDT.

This also marks the beginning of Change of Shift’s fifth year!

And I need your feedback.

What do you like about the CoS format?

What would you change?

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To start, I have two areas where I need your opinion:

1. Do we continue to include link lists in CoS editions?

Those who have hosted CoS know that there are a lot of “junk” submissions of link lists that have nothing to do with nursing at all. Everything from “50 Ways to Leave Your Blubber” to “10 Victoria’s Secret Items You Can Wear to Work”.  Those go into the SPAM pile.

But…we also get many lists of links may be of interest to nurses, by nurses and from sites that are nursing related. Often, they are related to a business. While never totally comfortable using them (I prefer actual blogs), I’d check them out and if I found the links interesting, I’d include them in the edition.

But when Jacob Molyneux, editor of AJN’s Off the Charts, brought up the issue of whether the inclusion of these lists/posts reduces the value of the independent nurse bloggers and questioned their inclusion in CoS, I began to wonder if their use should be re-evaluated.

So…what say you?

Keep including them (at the host’s discretion) or drop them all together?

2. Submissions – nurse bloggers, where are you?

Okay, let’s be honest here.

Submissions from the individual nurse blogger have declined. Where I used to get at least 12 submissions for an edition, I now get four or five.  I know a lot of our blogging colleagues have dropped their posting frequency or are taking a hiatus. Heck, I am just now coming out of a slump myself.

Those of you who have been surprised to find yourself in CoS these last few editions, well let’s just say a little birdie was submitting for you. Okay, it was me. There’s good stuff out there and I want to make sure it ends up in CoS.

But…

Why have the submissions dropped? Is it a lack of publicizing, a lack of being able to find out who is hosting?

A lack of time?

Or, god forbid….

A lack of interest?

What say you?

Should CoS stay as it is, with submissions as they come (or don’t as the case may be)? Or should it become a selection chosen by whomever is hosting that week? In other words, if you are hosting, you find and include posts from nurse bloggers you would like to showcase. Is that better?

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Change of Shift has always felt like my “baby” and I want to make sure it is an asset to nursing on the web.

Who better to give feedback than you, my fellow nurse bloggers!

All opinions welcome, and I’ll share the results in a future post.

Thanks!

An Open Letter to the ANA

To the American Nurses Association,

I am a member of the American Nurses Association and a dedicated supporter of HR 4601 The National Nurse Act.

For the life of me, I cannot understand ANA’s reluctance to endorse the National Nurse Act.

The infrastructure already exists, in fact the position already exists. The Act seeks to have the Chief Nursing Officer of the US Public Health Service designated as the National Nurse.

There is nothing political about this – the nominating procedure for the position does not change. It is not a presidential appointment, nor is it a Cabinet position.

And it costs nothing to implement – it’s already funded. It takes no resources away from other nursing initiatives; it competes with no other nursing organization.

But more importantly, it gives the public a visible nurse leader as our health care delivery system transitions to one that focuses on health and the prevention of disease.

And yet, the ANA does not endorse the Chief Nurse Officer of the US Public Health Service being known as the National Nurse.

Why?

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I sit here holding a copy of the ANA Social Policy Statement for Nursing (Second Edition).  The Office of National Nurse promotes every aspect of our social policy.

From the ANA  “Definition of Nursing”:

Nursing is the protection, promotion and optimization of health and abilities, prevention of illness and injury…(p.6)

From the ANA “Knowledge Base for Nursing Practice”:

Nurses partner with individuals, families, communities, and populations to address issues such as…healthcare systems and their relationships with access to and quality of healthcare…the environment and prevention of disease (p. 7)

From the ANA “Values and Assumptions of Nursing’s Social Contract”:

Public policy and the healthcare delivery system influence the health and well-being of society and professional nursing (p.3)

These are the very foundation of the National Nurse Act.

Imagine the impact of a focus on disease prevention and health promotion at the national level. Imagine the Medical Reserve Corps gearing up with nurses who volunteer in their own communities – think of the impact on health disparities, on social inequities. Imagine patient education on a national scale.

Imagine the public understanding what nursing is…what we do.

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HR 4601 was introduced on February 4th. Fifteen members of Congress support it. Four state legislatures are on board and over 100 organizations and prominent individuals are supporting it.

But not the ANA.

I want to know why.

No cost, no politics and an existing infrastructure ready to go…what more do you want?

Because from where I sit, the National Nurse Act seems to blend beautifully with the ANA.

So, speaking as a card-carrying-dues-paying member of the ANA, we need to get onboard.

We need to support HR 4601 The National Nurse Act.

Thank you.

Kim McAllister, RN, BSN

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(Further information can be found at The National Nurse.)

Reference:

American Nurses Association (2003). Nursing’s social policy statement (2nd ed.). Silver Spring, MD: nursebooks.org.