MastersinNursing.com is celebrating our 10 year anniversary with new and updated content in addition to a complete website redesign. Our site originally went live in February, 2008 and was just a one page site for the first couple of years. The top of the original page looked like this:   We also had an overly descriptive intro before getting to the actual list of masters in nursing schools:   Here is how the beginning of the actual list of all accredited MSN programs in the US looked back then:   Here is how MastersinNursing.com looked in 2011 after the first redesign: Here ..read more

I have been thinking about the concept of palliative care and the role of the nurse in palliative care lately. During this past month Barbara Bush, the United States former first lady passed away. In her final days she decided not to seek further medical treatment and to receive “comfort care.” “Comfort care” is a term that can be misunderstood. Comfort care does not mean stopping all medical treatment. While it does mean stopping aggressive medical treatments, it does not mean stopping treatments such as pain medication or treatments aimed at alleviating symptoms and side effects. Comfort car ..read more

I hadn’t given much thought to this question. I am hearing more and more discussions about health providers hugging patients. I am also seeing more being written on this topic then I have ever seen written before. Should nurses hug their patients? Some might think this should be an easy question to answer. I don’t find that to be the case. I think it is a complex question for nurses to answer. In the current environment of high tech/low touch in health care many patients are yearning for high touch. Touch can convey so much between nurse and patient. Touch can reflect caring and concern. In a ..read more

What do you think the future will be like for the elderly? Are you worried about becoming disabled or finding yourself with a terminal condition? Do you feel that this is the wrong time to be part of the aging population or having a relative that is aging and will soon be in need of ongoing care? I have been reading about nursing homes and how many people are growing more and more unsatisfied with nursing homes. This dissatisfaction includes issues such as lack of privacy, absence of cleanliness, poor food quality and quantity, and nursing shortages resulting in long waits for nursing help. Pa ..read more

I have been thinking a great deal about resilience lately. Living in Rockport, Texas where Hurricane Harvey made landfall I have been able to observe a variety of people and have seen the way the hurricane has affected their lives. Some have been able to “weather the storm” while others have been unable to pull their lives back together again. As I think about this the word resilience comes to mind. Resilience is also important in nursing. You might be asking, just want does resilience mean and how does it apply in the world of nursing? Resilience involves the ability to bounce back from diffi ..read more

Do patients want to be empowered? What is patient empowerment anyway? If you ask a variety of health care professional and patients “What is patient empowerment?” I am sure you will receive a multitude of responses. These responses could range from the patient asking questions about a variety of treatment options and asking about the pros and cons of each treatment option. It could involve patients asking about side effects of recommended medications. Some would say that it means the patient taking an active role in decisions about treatment, medications, and therapies. There are those who wou ..read more

As nurses we have prided ourselves on how well we multi-task. In many ways it is a necessary part of our job. Whether we are providing patient care, case managing, triaging, or doing some other type of nursing care we ultimately have to multi-task at some time. We all do it. Most of us can do it without even thinking about it. We talk on the telephone while we are cooking, dusting, driving, or a variety of other tasks. Driving and eating was so common place when I was a case manager for a company in Minneapolis that one of the nurses joked that she taught new case managers “Eating in the car 1 ..read more

As I look back on my many years of nursing it is often the little things I remember and hold dear. I can of course think of some of the big things when I know my nursing skills had a profound effect on someone life or their survival. However, the little things are what makes nursing so individualistic and personal. I would hope that the big things I did, any nurse would have done, such as picking up on preeclampsia in a patient and sending her to the hospital. However, I think it is the little things that make us unique in our nursing skills. I remember seeing a home care patient for the first ..read more

One of the things I find so wonderful about nursing is that there are so many different types of nursing and so many different ways to be a nurse. I started out in psychiatric nursing, then moved into public health nursing and eventually into case management. I didn’t even know about the field of case management when I was in nursing school. As a matter of fact, it may not even have existed back then. The field of nursing is changing rapidly and there are more and more opportunities for unique and different roles. Early in my career I applied for an in-service educator position. As it turns ou ..read more

I recently heard someone say, “I once was a nurse, but I’m retired now, so I’m not a nurse anymore”. I was a bit surprised by this. I can understand being retired and not renewing your nursing license. However, I find it difficult to think of myself as ever saying I’m not a nurse anymore.  For me, being a nurse isn’t an 8 to 5 job. I am a nurse whether I’m working or not. I will probably think of myself as a nurse until the day I die. What about you? I was in a grocery store this winter and an older woman in one of those store provided motorized carts just collapsed and fell to the floor ..read more