• Self Care Matters!

    Self Care Matters! No one taught you this in nursing school although it should be part of Nursing 101! The past 2 years have taught us that it is vital to survival. Burnout and caregiver fatigue are REAL and a threat to very existence. May is Nurses Month and it’s also Mental Health Month. As many would say, there is no such thing as coincidence. So it’s high time to join the effort and TAKE CARE of YOU! (Mental Health resources here.) Sleep Issues One of the things that leads to, or contributes heavily to, burnout and caregiver fatigue is poor sleep! Poor sleep also leads to health issues. The…

  • We Need More Nurses in Congress

    Healthcare has been through the wringer in the past 2 years  from COVID-19. In the US there have been almost 82 Million cases and over 1.9 Million deaths. So very many Americans are living with long reaching effects of having had COVID. The widespread misinformation from the very beginning and even now has cost Americans in millions of ways including financially, economically, job status, family relationships, etc. We pay for it every day at the grocery store, the gas pump, in the cost of all goods and services and the total lack of them. In our daily lives, masks and social isolation has taken a huge toll on every American.…

  • TheNursingSite.com is Back!

    It’s been awhile, but TheNursingSite.com is relaunching today after a moderate hiatus. Things just got out of hand and the Omicron variant hit my (vaccinated) household just after Christmas. Although I didn’t catch it, I was of course required to quarantine and work remotely while helping to get others back to health. It seemed impossible to catch up but finally there is light on the horizon. I feel compelled to jump back in at a time when the nursing profession has been overwhelmed and is struggling to hang on.   COVID FUNDING CRISIS Just when we thought we had a handle on things we got hit with another COVID variant…

  • How Assisted-Living Facilities Endangered Patients During the Pandemic

    A guest post by Farlyn Lucas Last year, as the COVID-19 pandemic swept across the United States and the globe, nursing homes around the nation became some of the deadliest, most dangerous places to be for elderly citizens. Eighteen months later, over 185,000 long-term care residents of nursing homes and assisted living facilities have died, accounting for 31% of all COVID deaths in the U.S. Unfortunately, no single factor or event can explain why assisted living facilities became ground zero for the coronavirus nationwide. The deadly storm that would start to unfold in early 2020 was already years in the making. For starters, analyses of annual Medicare data suggest that…