For eight years, Judy Rich worked as a nurse in intensive care units in Philadelphia and New York — days, nights and weekends — long enough to become frustrated with bureaucracy she believed made caring for her patients more difficult. From staff nurse to nursing manager to nursing director to chief operations officer at Wellmont Health System in Tennessee, Rich took her first executive position when she had three kids in three separate schools. Today, as president and CEO of TMC Healthcare, she knows from experience what many on her staff juggle.
Over the past 15 years, nursing boards across the country have taken steps to tighten oversight of nurses, screening applicants more extensively before issuing licenses and instituting swifter, tougher sanctions for problem licensees. Not New York.
Tufts recently launched a program aimed at college graduates to bolster its staff of approximately 250 nursing aides, called clinical care technicians — a job that involves taking vital signs and moving patients and typically requires a certificate that can be earned in four to eight weeks. Filling these jobs with college graduates gives young people exposure to the health care field and helps the hospital fill a chronic shortage of nursing assistants with high-quality workers, said Terry Hudson-Jinks, chief nursing officer at Tufts. The program has been so successful that Tufts now only hires aides with college degrees.
The owner of a Dallas-area hospice ordered nurses to increase drug dosages for patients to speed their deaths and maximize profits, according to an FBI affidavit. A copy of the affidavit for a search warrant obtained by KXAS-TV in Dallas-Fort Worth alleges Brad Harris ordered higher dosages for at least four patients at Novus Health Services in Frisco. The warrant refers to an FBI raid on the hospice in September. It alleges Harris sent text messages to workers such as, "You need to make this patient go bye-bye." On another occasion, Harris told administrators during a lunch meeting that he wanted to "find patients who would die within 24 hours."
Legislation that grants nurse practitioners and physician assistants prescribing authority for controlled substances like painkillers and medicines for attention deficit disorder awaits Florida Gov. Rick Scott’s signature, ending decades of opposition by a rare holdout state. Florida is the last state in the country balking at giving nurse practitioners the ability to prescribe and the second to last state standing in the way of physician assistant prescribing authority for controlled substances.
Nurse midwives would be able to deliver babies without a doctor’s oversight under a bill passed by the Kansas House on Monday. SB 402 advanced on a voice vote. It would allow certified nurse midwives to handle routine deliveries without having a collaborative agreement with a physician. The nurse midwives would be allowed to prescribe medicines, order diagnostic tests and perform birth procedures such as episiotomy, Hawkins said.