By Kathryn Norcutt Doctor shortage could be intensified by the Affordable Care Act Despite how one may feel about the Affordable Care Act, it is going to change the face of American medicine forever. For better or for worse, once it is up and running in 2014 an estimated 30 million newly insured people will have access to the health care system outside of the emergency room. This is great news for anyone who works in or has been forced to visit one of the thousands of overcrowded emergency rooms across the US, however, the looming doctor shortage will loom even larger once those patients have access to specialists in…
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Never Forget
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Nursing Shortage Rearing Its Head Again
The nursing shortage was never resolved. It was sort of put on hold when the economy tanked. Nurses of the Baby Boom generation were poised to retire, but the majority of them were forced to continue working for financial survival. Others had to return to work in order to make it through some of the toughest economic times ever. The impact has been that new grad nurses have had an impossible time finding work; something that has been unheard of for several decades. Now that the economy is in a recovery mode, Baby Boomers are retiring and the shortage of nurses is becoming a nightmare. The severity of the situation…
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NAQC : Guiding Principles for Patient Engagement
The Nursing Alliance for Quality Care (NAQC) recently released Guiding Principles for Patient Engagement. This list of nine core principles is designed to assist nurses and other health care providers in delivering high-quality, patient-centered care through full engagement in all aspects of their care. Many of these principles are things that we as nurses do every day, but NAQC reminds us that these things are all central to improving and maintaining high quality patient centered care. The principles include: · There must be a dynamic partnership among patients, their families and the providers of their health care, which at the same time respects the boundaries of privacy, competent decision-making and…
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Take the Nurse Satisfaction Survey
I recently received an invitation to blog about this survey from Michelle Gray-Bernhardt at IVantageHealth.com Nurse Satisfaction – A Quick Snapshot “Satisfied employees help a hospital run to its optimum performance. In the new healthcare environment, nurses are frequently asked to do more with less – to take on more patient care and other tasks with fewer resources. How does this impact nurse satisfaction? We asked nurses. If they are not satisfied, what are the biggest points of contention? 100 nurses from both community and larger hospitals provided insight in our recent “Nurse Satisfaction Survey”. The good news is that nurses are generally happy in their positions. There is, however,…