Surviving Modern Healthcare: 9 Tips To Keep Your Network Strong from Nurse TogetherWe have heard it said that “no man is an island,” and that is true for all of us. An effective support system is necessary for us to excel in our life goals. These support systems may include friends, family, loved ones and co-workers. I had the opportunity to hear a wonderful speaker who grew up with parents who were FBI agents. He changed his identity and moved several times as he was growing up, and he spoke of one of the most important lessons he learned from his parents: your network keeps you safe. He then went on to do an insightful presentation about the value of networking. Some of the most important networks which we find ourselves a part of are our social networks, family networks and professional networks. Social networks include our friends, those we meet in classroom settings, people we like to spend time with and those we engage in social media. Our family network includes all of our family members and extended family. Lastly, our professional network includes colleagues at work. Even more valuable though, is the professional network you build beyond your work experience. Especially with the volatility in healthcare, the professional network can be vital to your career success. Your professional network can serve you in three important ways: support, promotion and saving your life.

We have heard it said that “no man is an island,” and that is true for all of us. An effective support system is necessary for us to excel in our life goals. These support systems may include friends, family, loved ones and co-workers. I had the opportunity to hear a wonderful speaker who grew up with parents who were FBI agents. He changed his identity and moved several times as he was growing up, and he spoke of one of the most important lessons he learned from his parents: your network keeps you safe. He then went on to do an insightful presentation about the value of networking.

Some of the most important networks which we find ourselves a part of are our social networks, family networks and professional networks. Social networks include our friends, those we meet in classroom settings, people we like to spend time with and those we engage in social media. Our family network includes all of our family members and extended family. Lastly, our professional network includes colleagues at work. Even more valuable though, is the professional network you build beyond your work experience. Especially with the volatility in healthcare, the professional network can be vital to your career success. Your professional network can serve you in three important ways: support, promotion and saving your life.

For the full article please go here.

5 Healthy Reasons To Love Love from Huffington Post

alentine's Day may get a bad rap as a greeting card holiday, but at the heart of it (no pun intended), it's an opportunity for us to be reminded of the loving relationships in our lives, which have a real and lasting impact on our health and well-being.

Factors like having a supportive community as you grow up, a secure job that you can rely on, or family that you see regularly make a big difference in determining both the quality and the quantity of your years, said Dr. Dean Ornish, M.D., author and HuffPost's medical editor. In other words, love makes you happier, but also healthier and long-living. However, maintaining these sorts of close relationships often goes unrecognized as a health behavior, he said.

"I believe that the need for love and connection and community is a fundamental thing ... as basic of a need as food, air and water," Ornish told HuffPost.

For the full article please go here.

The Pros and Cons of Continuing Education from Nurse Together

As Registered Nurses or Licensed Practical Nurses, fulfilling continuing education credits or units (CEU) is a requirement for the profession—it is necessary for relicensing. In certain states we are required to fulfill a certain number of CEUs every two years. Obtaining an education credit can be accomplished by reading a journal, attending a seminar, watching a video—any of these would relate to the practice of nursing. Completing CEU’s sounds like a wonderful idea, however, some members of the nursing profession disagree. After all, competence has been demonstrated by the proof of licensure and associated renewal, so mandating further credit hours seems redundant. To fully examine the debate: “Should Continuing Education be Mandatory?” consider the following pro versus con arguments:

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Boldly Going Where No Capsule Has Gone Before from H and HN

OK, so many of my get-rich-quick schemes haven't been what you would call blockbusters. My closest friends, family and even financial adviser scoffed several years ago when I came up with the idea for a new delicacy: Tuna on a Stick. Go ahead, laugh, but have you ever been to the Taste of Chicago? They sell everything on a stick at that exhibition of gluttony, so why not tuna? I had a grand vision of franchising all over Chicago, eventually expanding the menu to mackerel, red snapper, even Mahi Mahi (wouldn't you know it, a few years later when the Minnesota Twins' new ballpark Target Field opened, the concession stands boasted "Walleye Skewer" and "Pork Chop on a Stick").

More recently, I had the idea of creating a giant wiper blade that could descend from the top of a skyscraper to swoosh away the rain. Attach a hose or some sort of spraying mechanism and it also negates the need to have workers dangle hundreds of feet above the sidewalk with sponges and squeegees.

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5 Health Tests You Need to Ace This Year from Yahoo News

No matter how fit you are, you can't change health risk factors like your genes, your family history, your race, or your age. Other aspects of your lifestyle count, too, including how you manage stress and your eating habits. The best way to safeguard your long-term health is to catch troublesome issues early, so ask your doctor about adding these screenings to your calendar.

BLOOD PRESSURE
There are no early symptoms of high BP (hypertension), but the longer it goes unnoticed--and untreated--the more damage occurs to your heart and blood vessels, upping your chances of a heart attack or stroke. With every birthday your risk goes up. Your favorite foods also play a role, with salt, saturated fats, and too much alcohol being top aggravators. Certain medicines can also raise BP.

For the full article please go here.

What Your Looks Say About Your Health from Health.com

Good looks, good health?

By Karen Pallarito

Good health often is reflected in an attractive, youthful appearance. So you might be tempted to blame aging and stress for facial lines, unsightly fingernails, or hair loss when, in fact, these flaws can signal underlying health issues, says integrative medicine specialist Molly M. Roberts, MD, of the Institute for Health & Healing, in San Francisco, and president of the American Holistic Medical Association.

"It'll start by whispering, then it'll start talking, and, if you don't pay attention, it'll start yelling and shouting, and then you've got an illness,” she says.

Here are 15 physical signs that trouble may be lurking beneath the skin's surface.

For the full article please go here.

Has Yoga Lost Its Soul? Part I: Selling Out and Innovating from Huffington Post

From the Mountain to Wall Street

Gone are the days of the loin clothed yogi meditating alone on a mountaintop, unless of course said loin cloth is made of wickable polyester blend, fits your body like a glove and retails for $100 a pop and the yogi in question has worldwide appearances and a DVD series purchasable on Amazon.com. Oh, and don't forget to check their Twitter feed.

In the ancient tradition of yoga, a teacher's modest living requirements were provided by their students. "Some may offer the teacher a bag of rice, a small bowl of sugar, some clothes, a place to rest, whatever one's capacity was," said Sister Sukanya of the spiritual organization Brahma Kumaris. "The teacher just shares the knowledge with the students... there was no commercial interest involved, the only interest was the transferring of knowledge."

For the full article please go here.

Should Doctors Be ‘Parsimonious’ About Health Care? From Kaiser Health Care News

A major medical group issued ethical guidelines on Monday that take the provocative position of urging doctors to consider cost-effectiveness when deciding how to treat their patients.

The American College of Physicians, the second-largest U.S. doctors’ group after the American Medical Association, included the recommendation in the latest version of its ethics manual, which provides guidance for some 132,000 internists nationwide.

“The cost of health care in the United States is twice that of any other industrialized countries and we are not providing care to as many people as they do in other places, and we don’t even have as good outcomes,” said Dr. Virginia Hood, president of the group. “So given that, we really have to look at ways of doing things better.”

For the full article please go here.

Immune-Boosting Superfoods For Cold And Flu Season from Huffington Post

First that nasty cold knocked out the IT department, then your desk-mate started sniffling. At this time of year, there seems to be a perpetual virus going around the office. One way to help? Load up on superfoods that give your immune system a fighting chance, but don't wait until you're already feeling under the weather. Studies show that infection-fighting nutrients like zinc, selenium and beta-glucans work better before symptoms start, so load up on healthful foods now to keep your body's defense system strong throughout the season.

For the full article please go here.

5 reasons EHRs need to 'grow up' from HealthCareITNews.com

With Medicare's push toward shared savings and accountable care organizations, healthcare business models are getting more complex, said Shahid Shah, software IT analyst and author of the blog The Healthcare IT Guy. And according to him, the industry needs software to implement these new models.

“Due to the new intricacies of organizational connections between different providers, standardization of workflows on existing EHRs won’t really be possible," Shah says. "Most EHRs are not up to the task of handling the complexities of newly shared accountability and what I call ‘patient team’ business models, so we need EHRs to become more social, more collaborative, and far more integrated than they are now, EHRs need to grow up from the adolescence of basic electronic typewriters and chart storage systems to mature real-time care coordination and collaboration platforms.”

Shah gives us five more reasons EHRs need to “grow up.”

For the full article please go here.

The Most Controversial Health Stories of 2011 from Health.com

By Amanda MacMillan

If there's one thing you can say about 2011 from a health point of view, it's that it wasn't boring!

From killer vitamins to Charlie Sheen's excesses to scientists flip-flopping on the dangers of cell phones and salt, our heads are spinning as we sort through the headlines.

Here are our picks for the year's most buzz-worthy stories—share yours on facebook.com/heal

For the full article please go here.

5 Ways Poor Dental Care Makes You Sick from Yahoo News

Even if you brush your teeth daily, you may still have dangerous bacteria growing inside your mouth. Not only could that lead to periodontitis (an advanced form of gum disease that comes with symptoms such as bleeding when you brush and gum pain), but studies also find a link between poor oral hygiene and major health issues. Here are some ways that missing the mark on oral care could harm your heath.

1. It may hurt your heart.
People with gum disease are almost twice as likely to suffer from coronary artery disease compared to those don't have periodontitis. Researchers aren't exactly sure of why this might be, but one theory is that harmful bacteria from your mouth enters your blood stream and attaches to fatty plaques in your heart's blood vessels, leading to inflammation and upping your risk of clots that can trigger heart attacks.

For the full article please go here.

Regaining Weight Bad For The Health from Medical News Today

Recent research has shown that even after dieting and losing weight, the body tends to try its best to regain the lost fat stores. Holiday times tend to be tough for those trying to stay trim, and New Year resolutions often don't stick.

Perhaps an article published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition will provide some extra incentive. The study shows that older women who lose weight tend to gain it back again as fat not muscle.

Barbara Nicklas, Ph.D., a gerontologist at the J. Paul Sticht Center on Aging and Rehabilitation at Wake Forest Baptist and principal investigator for the study put it rather frankly :

For the full article please go here.

Top health stories of 2011 from CNN

(CNN) -- The most deadly recorded listeria outbreak and concerns about nuclear radiation after Japan's biggest earthquake made major health headlines this year, along with several notable deaths to cancer and the inspiring recovery of a Congresswoman who suffered brain injuries from a gunshot wound.

Here's a look back at some of the top stories of 2011, a year that marked major anniversaries in some of the world's most pernicious diseases -- HIV/AIDS and the "war" on cancer.

For the full article please go here.

MRI Scans Better For Suspected Heart Disease Patients from Medical News Today

In recent years, imaging techniques such as the most commonly used single-photon emission computed tomography (SPECT), have gradually replaced exercise treadmill tests for diagnosing heart disease. Now a five-year trial of over 750 heart disease patients conducted by the University of Leeds in the UK suggests that a more modern scanning method based on magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is better for diagnosing coronary heart disease than SPECT and should be more widely adopted.

The findings could change the way patients with suspected heart disease are tested, not least because the MRI approach, called multiparametric cardiovascular magnetic resonance (CMR), does not involve invasive procedures or ionizing radiation.

In a paper published online on 23 December in The Lancet, lead author Dr John Greenwood, senior lecturer and consultant cardiologist at Leeds, and colleagues, conclude that CMR is superior to SPECT, which varies in accuracy and exposes patients to ionizing radiation. They conclude that CMR should form part of all evidence-based clinical management guidelines for the diagnosis of coronary heart disease (CHD).

For the full article please go here.

What Makes Anesthetics Work from Science Daily

ScienceDaily (Dec. 22, 2011) — Physicians use inhalation anesthetics in a way that is incredibly safe for patients, but very little is known about the intricacies of how these drugs actually work in children and adults. Now, researchers have uncovered what cells respond to anesthesia in an organism known as the C. elegans, according to a new study from the Seattle Children's Research Institute. C. elegans is a transparent roundworm used often in research. The study, "Optical reversal of halothane-induced immobility in C. elegans," is published in the December 20, 2011 issue of Current Biology.

For the full article please go here.

The 6 Best Foods for Winter from Yahoo News

It’s the first snow of the season, and it’s so heavy and wet that it clogs your snowblower. You have two choices. Option 1: Shove your arm between the augers and remove the blockage. The downside: You’ll lose your arm in the process, and having it reattached will probably bankrupt you. Option 2: Turn off the machine, grab a broom stick, and chip at the blockage until it crumbles.

You might be thinking, “What kind of lunatic would choose option 1?” Well, lunatics like the American people. The U.S. spends more than $2 trillion on health care each year, with much of that cash going toward the treatment of obesity-related complications like heart disease and diabetes. We’re fixing our health problems retroactively, with medication and surgery, even though we could prevent most of them by making smarter choices about what we eat.

There’s no better time to put this notion to the test than the winter months. Winter is not necessarily conducive to good health; the season conjures up images of calorie-loaded comfort foods, fireside naps, and runny noses. Read on for six everyday foods that will keep you healthy and strong from December to March and beyond, compliments of the all-new Eat This, Not That! Supermarket Survival Guide, which includes thousands of smart swaps that can help you shave 20 pounds or more in just 6 weeks.

For the full article please go here.

Medicare: Who Said That? From Kaiser Health News

In the past year, Medicare politics and policies have grabbed headlines, with politicians from both sides of the aisle talking about “saving Medicare,” “protecting beneficiaries,” “improving quality of care,” and “curbing fraud and abuse.” But a longer look at the program’s history shows that many of these ideas have been a part of the Medicare discourse since its earliest days, beginning even before the program was signed into law.

To test your knowledge of who has said what about Medicare, Kaiser Health News gathered the following 15 quotations. For each quote, you will have multiple-choice answers and, when you are done, you can check your work against a detailed answer key. Good luck!

For the full article please go here.

The Critical Need for Continuing Education from Nurse Together

In writing my book and preparing educational courses for nurses, I have devoted much study to critical thinking and its application to nursing. While critical thinking is a very large subject with many parts, one component stands out in our world of evolving technology, mass communication and frequent research updates; accurate information.

In our initial training, we were exposed to the most up-to-date information available. This was the frequently cited reason for always having to purchase the newest edition of text books. We dutifully studied and were tested on information that would allow us to practice state of the art nursing. Later, we were tested on this same information to earn our license. After all of this training and testing, we were set free to be nurses. Having graduated from my nurses training in 1973, there was no continuing education requirement for my state at that time.

For the full article please go here.

Berwick: How Health Care Can Trim a Trillion in Costs from H and HN

During recently departed Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Administrator Don Berwick's return to the Institute for Healthcare Improvement's National Forum in Orlando earlier this month, I saw him speak twice — once during a keynote address for all Forum attendees, and during a small press briefing.

During both appearances, Berwick hammered home the pressure the health care industry faces to curb health care spending — and how those ends can be accomplished in tandem with improvements to quality. To be sure, Berwick isn't the first health care expert to link reduced costs with quality improvements, but he believes the system, using principles of the Lean and quality improvement movements, could stand to trim a staggering $1 trillion — or what he estimates as roughly a third of overall U.S. health costs.

For the full article please go here.