A Twin Cities nurse charged with stealing pain medication from a patient who then endured significant pain during a medical procedure missed a court appearance Tuesday because she is in treatment for drug addiction, a court official said. Sarah M. Casareto, 33, of Forest Lake, is accused of taking some of the powerfully addictive fentanyl that she checked out for patient Larry V. King, 56, of Bloomington, before a routine procedure for kidney stones on Nov. 8 at Abbott Northwestern Hospital in Minneapolis.
Labor pain is nothing to laugh at. Yet. The use of nitrous oxide, or laughing gas, during childbirth fell out of favor in the United States decades ago, and just two hospitals -- one in San Francisco and one in Seattle -- still offer it. But interest in returning the dentist office staple to the delivery room is growing: respected hospitals including Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center plan to start offering it, the federal government is reviewing it, and after a long hiatus, the equipment needed to administer it is expected to hit the market soon. Though nitrous oxide is commonly used for labor pain relief in Canada, Great Britain and other countries, it's been all but abandoned in the United States in favor of other options, such as epidurals. With an epidural, medication to block pain seeps through a tube into space surrounding the spinal cord. Because it must be administered by an anesthesiologist, an epidural is significantly more expensive than nitrous oxide. Both are covered by insurance.
A whopping 53.7% of Indiana's licensed registered nurses are 45 and older. An additional quarter are older than 55, and that paves the way for what some experts predict will be a critical shortage of nurses in the coming years as millions of baby boomer nurses retire. The phenomenon of older nurses calling it quits is already hitting the state. Nearly 52% of registered nurses 55 to 64 years old say they will retire in the next four to nine years, according to a survey produced by the Indiana Center for Health Workforce Studies and Bowen Research Center at Indiana University School of Medicine. In 2011 alone, there will be 2,281 openings for registered nurses, according to the Indiana Department of Workforce Development.
Dozens of Tennessee nurses have had their licenses suspended for ignoring their student loans. They join the growing ranks of professionals who are suffering real-world consequences for failing to pay off the money they borrowed for their education. More and more states are yanking the licenses from lawyers, healthcare workers, teachers and other professionals until they get on a payment plan. In October, Tennessee cracked down on 42 nurses who were in default on their student loans—and in violation of a state law that requires licensed professionals in Tennessee to repay the money they borrowed for their educations, or face the consequences. Without a license, the nurses—including 13 from Nashville and its neighboring counties—will be unable to work in their field. Their names were recorded in the Tennessee Department of Health's monthly disciplinary report.
Fifteen months after a contested union election, nurses at Lee's Summit Medical Center will again have a chance to vote on the matter. The National Labor Relations Board in Washington agreed with the federal agency's regional office that the hospital management unduly influenced the outcome of the last election, held in October 2009. Lee's Summit nurses at that time voted 68-59 to decertify the union, which had represented them since 2000. Thus, an election will be held again Jan. 27 and 28, according to Dan Hubbel, regional director of the NLRB's Overland Park office. About 130 Lee's Summit nurses are eligible to vote. Essentially, the NLRB in Washington backed the findings of the regional hearing officer last year that management used illegal tactics that led to the union's ouster. Lee's Summit Medical, owned by HCA Midwest, reiterated that it does not believe having a union is in the best interest of the hospital or the nurses.
Cook County’s health system says it will cut about 300 positions in fiscal 2011. But a nurses union is threatening to strike over the plan. The cash-strapped county’s Health and Hospitals System has been shrinking its payroll for years. Now County Board President Toni Preckwinkle is asking for another $83 million in cuts. That’s not going over well with National Nurses United. The union represents 800 registered nurses whose county contract expired more than two years ago. “We are sick and tired of trying to provide high-quality care in an unsafe and understaffed environment,” said union negotiator Dorothy Ahmad, a nurse in the coronary unit of John H. Stroger Jr. Hospital.