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I don’t know about you, but I rarely noticed a medical machine unless it was malfunctioning. That is, until recently when I visited the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, or FDA, and heard nurses and other healthcare professionals talk about their involvement in ensuring medical devices are safe for patient care and engineered to make sense for providers’ daily use.
I’ve never thought about healthcare professionals having my back and going over medical machines and devices with a proverbial fine-toothed comb. It was refreshing to hear. I now look at medical machines differently. Whether new or used, these tools help us do our jobs; they are beside us day-in and day-out; they lift, clean, turn, pump, pulse, measure, analyze, report, print, cradle. They help heal. They improve our efficiency…yes, even when we think otherwise!
The next time you look for a pump, add instruments to an autoclave, connect a patient to a pulse oximeter, print an EKG strip, measure a set of vital signs with the touch of a button, or save your back by raising and further adjusting a patient’s bed, think of what modern nursing would be like without these patient care tools and the people who develop, evaluate, sell, ship, inventory, and maintain these modern marvels. It’s pretty amazing.
Disclosure: This article is sponsored by Medical Machines Online.
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I’ve had several reminders this week about the value of waiting. The video below is only one of the many reminders, and it’s worth the nine minutes of your life.
Just for the record, I don’t like waiting. It feels like a waste – a waste of my time, a waste of my energy (yes, it takes energy to wait), a big, fat waste. And I wait all. the. time. I wait for my children to get out of the bathroom. I wait for my breakfast to finish cooking. I wait for my husband to move the other vehicle from behind me. I wait for the carpool load to fill my vehicle. I wait in the drop-off line at my children’s school. I wait in traffic. For a long time. I wait in line to pull into the hospital parking garage. I take the stairs no matter what floor I’m on or what shoes I’m wearing because I refuse to wait for the painfully slow elevator. I wait for my computer to boot up. I wait for people to arrive to meetings. I wait for the microwave to warm my lunch. I wait for meetings to end. I wait for email and telephone responses. I wait for fax transmittal sheets and the copy machine. I wait in traffic. Again. I wait in the bank teller line. I wait to talk to the grocery butcher. I wait for the neighborhood children to clear the mound of toys from my driveway so I can get into my garage. I wait for the pasta water to boil. I wait for my children to brush their teeth. I wait for the next day. I wait.
Most of the time, my “waiting” is anything but waiting. Just in case you forgot, I don’t like waiting, so I fill the empty spaces with other stuff.
But, there is value to waiting – unfilled, waiting space. It is the waiting that transforms my action. It is the waiting that prepares my mind. It is the waiting that calms my heart. It is the waiting that defines my character. It is the waiting that changes me. And even though it seems like wasteful, negative space, I’m realizing it’s actually the productive focus of the larger picture of me and my life.
Valuable doesn’t always equate to fun, though. Discipline is never fun in the moment. The results, however, are often brilliant. Happy waiting.
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As a runner, I realize the tremendous difference the right pair of shoes makes on my performance as well as my comfort. But as a nurse – what about my patients who are not only living with their disease but also the effects the disease may have on their foot health? Are they wearing the right shoes to positively impact their own daily performance, safety, and comfort?
Diabetes, arthritis, gout, plantar fasciitis – you name it and our patients have to face a multitude of problems impacting their feet, which impacts their balance, gait, pain, and circulation. Helllloooo, safety concerns! Foot health can even affect ankle and leg health, as well. It’s that good ‘ole kinetic chain in which everything is linked and needs to be in alignment, working together. Therapeutic footwear, which protects and help correct feet problems, is prescribed by podiatrists and other providers to ensure patients get back on their feet – literally.
As nurses, we rarely assess patients’ shoes, socks, and shoe inserts, which can all be therapeutic. With the ever-increasing comorbidities among our patients, we should take the time to assess these details more thoroughly and advocate for our patients if we think therapeutic footwear will help with their safety and/or comfort.
Disclosure: This article is sponsored by www.drcomfort.com.
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According to the National Cancer Institute (2012), a meningioma is a slow-growing tumor that develops from the meninges, which are the thin layers of tissue that cover the brain and spinal cord. The cerebrospinal fluid flows between the meningeal spaces. Meningiomas typically occur in adults, and they are “graded” either I, II, or III by the World Health Organization (WHO) classification to determine their aggressiveness and propensity towards growth and spread.
Meningiomas represent the second most common brain tumor, comprising nearly 20% to 30% of tumors. Women are diagnosed with meningiomas nearly twice as much as their male counterparts. While nearly 80% of meningiomas are benign, or noncancerous, patients may still have pain, disfiguration, and even neurological side effects such as dizziness, seizures, and vision changes, among others depending on the location of the meningioma.
Providers use MRI, CT scan, and histopathology to definitively diagnose meningiomas. Because meningiomas are slow-growing, treatment can range from periodic imaging and symptom management to the standard-of care surgery to conventional radiation or Gamma Knife. The prognosis for most meningiomas is good.
Meningioma work-up can be extremely frightening for patients and families, and even the benign diagnosis can continue to distress patients as they experience symptoms from the tumor and go through treatment. Nurses can help provide much-needed education and supportive care for patients and families experiencing a meningioma diagnosis.
Disclosure: This article is sponsored by Skull Base Institute.
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I’ve had my fair share of stale PowerPoint presentations. Trust me, I’ve given many of them, too. I find the presentations I enjoy the most have clean aesthetics, minimal text, and provide opportunities for storytelling. Considering I like those things in presentations, I choose to present this way, as well.
I had the lovely opportunity to speak on behalf of the Nurse Oncology Education Program to a group of nurses and nurse faculty at the beautiful Moncrief Cancer Institute in Fort Worth on Saturday. One presentation was directed for faculty on how to make oncology content “stick” in undergraduate curricula, something I’ve grown passionate about as a result of working with faculty over several years. The second presentation was about colorectal cancer screening.
Both topics can be rather dull, so I try to make the content come alive in any way possible – mostly with stories, vocal tone, and creative PowerPoint backgrounds. In preparation for the presentation, I couldn’t find any background I really liked, so I just made my own with simple shapes, lines, transparency settings, and colors. One of the nursing faculty members asked for the templates, so I thought I’d share, share, share in true Nursetopia fashion.
You can download the “Notepad & Tape” PowerPoint template here and the “Screen” PowerPoint template here. (Any large, unused space likely included a picture.) Enjoy!
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It’s not very often that I can say a book changed my life, except for one. I rarely think about a specific book every day. Yes, Lean In by Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg, is that amazing.
I think I take risks and “lean in” to my family, my job, my passions, but after devouring the book in a little over three hours while traveling, I realized my risks, my priorities, my decisions needed some adjustment.
“This book makes the case for leaning in, for being ambitious in any pursuit” (p. 10). Sandberg explains there’s no single definition of happiness as we don’t all want the same things in life. She discusses unwritten rules of gender roles in society, the “holy trinity of fear,” Imposter Syndrome/feeling like a fraud, and so many more topics that literally made me put the book down at several moments so my brain could digest everything.
I am sure the man next to me on my flight thought I was crazy because I was on the verge of tears many times as I read the book – the acknowledgement page (which I took a picture of a sent to my husband because – oh my goodness – captures the way I feel about my Love), each time I read the title of a new chapter – knowing Sandberg was going to “read my mail!,” accepting her calls to action, laughing and simultaneously cringing from her self-deprecating stories, knowing I’ve lived through many similar ones. I’m not going to lie; I likely didn’t help my flight neighbor’s behavioral health concerns for me as I may have actually laughed out loud on multiple occasions.
Lean In changed my view on many parts of my life. I have made several decisions over the last three weeks, since reading the book, that I definitely would not have done without Sandberg’s advice. Amazingly powerful book!
While there’s no mention of the nursing profession in the book, I found myself thinking of men within the nursing profession a lot as I read the book. There are many parallels.
Woman or man – You. Need. To. Read. This. Book.
Have you read Lean In? What do you think about the book?
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“Simple” and “easy” are two very different concepts that people often mistakenly use interchangeably. Remaining poised in difficult times is a simple thought; it is by no means easy.
A recent Minute with Maxwell coaching video reminded me that poise is important. “Keep steady.” Oh, how I needed that one minute this week. Now for the “simple” application…oh my.
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Congratulations, I think, to Marilyn Tavenner, a former nurse and hospital executive, on her U.S. Senate confirmation May 15, 2013, to lead the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). She has served as the acting administrator of CMS since late 2010, and she is the first permanent leader of CMS since 2006.
I’m not sure her work changes at all – except for maybe having to stop justifying that she can do the job and just get on with it. There is, indeed, much work. Best wishes to Tavenner and her team as they implement the Affordable Care Act and attempt to reinvent CMS services.
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