There is an outcry in the United States that we're facing an urgent nurse deficit that threatens the safety of individual patients and the nation's health as a whole. Consider arguments from two Times editorials. "The nationwide shortage of nurses is likely to reach crisis proportions…. There is not much chance for permanent relief until the nursing profession is made more attractive to young people through better salaries, working conditions and public recognition," one reads. In another, titled "We Need More Nurses," Alexandra Robbins warns of dire consequences in the absence of a larger nursing workforce: "The more patients assigned to a nurse, the higher the patients' risk of death, infections, complications, falls, failure-to-rescue rates and readmission to the hospital—and the longer their hospital stay."
Six nurses at Sibley Hospital are being investigated by the D.C. Department of Health after dozens of drugs disappeared. The health department was notified by Sibley Hospital about missing drugs in June 2015. Two nurses had their licenses suspended by the agency in August. The four remaining nurses are being investigated to see whether or not controlled substances were unaccounted for either due to a documentation error or because they were improperly taken. According to the D.C. health department's licensing administration, one of the suspended nurses is accused of using the "override" command on the hospital drug distribution system 19 times to withdraw medications without a proper order. She allegedly had Dilaudid, lorazepam, and Percocet without valid prescriptions.
Nurse practitioners and other advanced-practice nurses say Ohio law makes it harder for them to do their jobs well and is forcing talent to states where they can practice without physician oversight and other challenges. Lawmakers are expected to begin hearings in January on a sweeping "modernization" bill introduced this year by Rep. Dorothy Pelanda, a Marysville Republican. On Wednesday, advanced-practice nurses chatted with her and lobbied her colleagues. Although legislative wrangling over the bill is months off, interest groups already are formulating their arguments and looking for ways to temper a proposal that would free the nurses from having to enter into formal agreements with physicians.
Rebecca Love is a matchmaker — not in the romance department, but in a field that can be just as fraught with emotion. Love runs the startup website HireNurses.com, which provides a platform to connect nurses to families who need home care for an aging parent, disabled spouse, or sick child, and to health care providers such as hospitals or home-care agencies that need nursing help. Since she launched the site a year ago, the number of nurses, nursing assistants, and student nurses participating has grown to 5,000 from 100. Love, who teaches nursing at Bunker Hill Community College, hatched the idea for HireNurses.com in 2013 after listening to her students lament how hard it was to find the right job.
With its plethora of renowned hospitals, it may come as little surprise that Massachusetts is a pretty great state for nurses. In fact, three of the best cities for registered nurses in the country are in the Bay State, according to a new ranking by financial research firm ValuePenguin. Using data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, ValuePenguin compared the median salary, cost of living, and location quotient (the concentration of nurses in an area as a percentage of all occupations) for 377 cities reporting data across the country, looking for cities most favorable for nurses. Among the top 10 cities were Lawrence at No. 2, followed by Worcester and Boston, which came in at No. 4 and No. 8, respectively.
Telling horror stories of long hours and stressed, overtired nurses caring for patients on the verge of death, lawmakers and nurse advocates on Thursday called for a state law establishing mandatory nurse-to-patient ratios and prohibiting mandatory overtime. Nurses around the country say they're frequently asked to work double shifts to cover staffing shortages. Several nurses from the five state-run psychiatric hospitals, for example, told the State Journal earlier this month they're worked to the point of exhaustion because of excessive mandatory overtime. John Armelagos , president of the Michigan Nurses Association backing the legislation, told of a Livonia nurse who couldn't get to an elderly patient because she had too many others to care for.