10 Tips for Nurse Practitioners to Avoid Burnout from Nurse Together

How can taking care of one's self have anything to do with business? As a business owner, you work hard; most likely you work harder than you ever did as an employed person. This is especially true during your first years in business. As such, it's important to take the time to recharge your batteries. Here are some suggestions for you:

Vacation. There is no question, getting away is the best way to recharge. While many of us may not be able to get away for 2-3 weeks, consider several mini-vacations or even a staycation.

Read a book that has nothing to do with medicine, nursing, health or business. Totally get away from your everyday work and immerse yourself in something completely unrelated.

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10 Ways to Reduce “No Shows” for your Nurse Practitioner Business from Nurse Together

There is no doubt about it; having patients no show on your schedule is lost revenue for your practice.



Some practices will charge a no-show fee, but others don't, or they feel it is impossible to collect on them. And with some insurers, you are prohibited by contract to charge your patient (DSHS for example).



Regardless of your office policy, minimizing or even eliminating "no-shows" on your schedule will increase your revenues.

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Retail Healthcare: An Evolving Field for Nurse Practitioners from Nurse Together

I work in a new area for nursing: Nurse Practitioner in a Convenient Care Clinic providing minor care in a retail setting. That is, I diagnose and treat sore throats in a grocery store. My practice involves sore throats, ear aches, URI, Influenza, Dermatitis, and UTIs for adult women. I am a Family Nurse Practitioner and we do episodic care for anyone one year and older. My oldest patient, thus far, was a one hundred-year-old lady who received her flu shot in my clinic.

Working in a retail clinic requires a lot more than the ability to diagnose and treat minor ailments. To be good at this position, one needs to be able to triage simple, routine care from more serious conditions that require a higher level of care and greater follow-up. If you don’t want to miss heart failure from bronchitis, you need to be aware that things may not be as clear cut as they look. At the same time, the famous saying, “look for horses before zebras”, is the general rule.

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An RN Asks: Why Should I Have to Go Back to School? from Nurse Together

You’re an accomplished RN, a nurse with years of experience helping patients in every circumstance imaginable. So when you hear your manager, employer, fellow nurses, nursing associations, and trade journals harping on and on about the need to go back to school, you may be asking yourself, "Why? I know my stuff! What’s the point now of going back to school now?"

An even more pressing question in your mind might be, "What will a degree really do for me at this point in my career?"

These are valid questions. After all, like most every RN, you’ve picked up knowledge and experience about how to do your job by learning it on the fly. So what difference will a degree make, exactly?

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5 Things I Have Learned from My Patients from Nurse Together

I have been in nursing for many years now and every day still brings a new opportunity for me to learn something from my patients. Even the ones who are difficult, argue with me and even call me a few names I will not repeat here, still taught me a lesson or two about life, how to communicate and what empathy really means.

Here are my top five things I learned from my patients:

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The Benefits of Reiki in Nursing from Nurse Together

I walk onto my unit and can cut the air with a knife. The patients are milling around the day room, looking bored, tired, and irritated. As I enter the nurses’ station I am greeted with grunts, grimaces, or not at all. Staff from evening shift looks exhausted and drained, as if they were ready to leave four hours ago. I enter the back room, where we give report, and have a sense of what lies ahead of me for my impending night shift.

We have a woman who has bipolar disorder, substance abuse problems, and is delirious from her medications. She yells and screams for hours on end. Everyone is tired. The patients want rest. Because of the noise, they can’t sleep. The staff wants a break. They cannot focus on their work because sometimes it takes all hands to help calm this woman down.

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5 Qualities of a Great Nurse Educator from Nurse Together

Being an RN for the past 32 years and continuing my education in hopes of becoming a nurse educator, I have always thought about the qualities that make a great educator. Since 2004, when I returned to school to obtain my BSN, and then again in 2008 to obtain my MHA (and soon will be completing my MSN) I have dealt with many educators thus compiling the traits of a quality educator from a student’s perspective.

I believe there are more than five qualities needed to be a great educator, however I will address five of the most critical, in my opinion.

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Incivility in Online Nursing Education from Nurse Together

Incivility in the nursing profession is not a new topic. Frankly, the word has evolved over the decades. What is called incivility today used to be called backstabbing, gossiping, sabotage, rude, impolite, discourteous behaviors, a lack of respect, a lack of manners, vulgarity, eating their own- well, you get the picture. The unprofessional behavior has been part of the nursing profession for decades and, by any other name, is still the same thing, one reason why the profession fails to become a strong player in the global professional marketplace. Publications are replete with articles about incivility among members of the nursing profession at work in a clinical setting. However, incivility in a nursing education setting is starting to surface as yet another forum where nurses can engage in professional misconduct that sometimes reaches the level of criminal impertinence. Educators have a role in creating a positive learning environment by communicating expectations, establishing policies, being impartial and fair within the confines of the rules, and by modeling respect that learners can model back. So, given the role of the educator, why does incivility still happen in schools?

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Nurse Practitioner Business Owners: Two Tax Dates You Must Know from Nurse Together

April 15th, the deadline to file your personal income tax, will be here before you know it. As a small business owner however, you will have filed tax reports and paid all sorts of taxes already.

Most small businesses operate on a calendar year. And even though tax events happen throughout the year, they are reported at the end of the business year and quarter, when they get submitted to different taxing authorities.

Paying attention to those timelines is critical. Countless business owners have lost their business by ignoring the IRS and other taxing authorities.

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Nursing School 101 for the 30 Something Crowd from Nurse Together

This is a topic I am intimately familiar with. When I began attending nursing school I was 30, worked part-time, and was married with a newborn and a four year-old. I was concerned about fitting in and going back to school after years away. I earned my nursing degree at 32 years old, my bachelor degree at 36 years old, and my Master’s degree at the age of 43. I currently teach college students, many of whom are adult learners! Why am I telling you all this? Because I can offer you some great tips from both the student and professor perspectives:

Use your life experience to your advantage. You may be going back to nursing school at an older age, but you bring with you a wealth of experience in many areas that you can put to good use. You have learned time management skills, the value of the educational dollar, and how to multi-task. Most 18 year-old students lack this experience.

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Why Earning Your BSN is Not Only Smart, It’s Practically Required from Nurse Together

As new legislative health care reforms are phased in over the next decade, the recommendations outlined in the Institute of Medicine’s (IOM) report, “The Future of Nursing: Leading Change, Advancing Health,” are gaining traction. The IOM pinpoints three key areas in which nurses should improve their practice:

Nurses should practice to the full extent of their education and training.

Nurses should achieve higher levels of education and training, through an improved education system that promotes seamless academic progression.

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Nursing Certification Has Many Rewards from Nurse Together

There are a myriad of advantages to becoming certified in your field of nursing. I am a Certified Occupational Health Nurse Specialist (COHN-S) and find that certification has many rewards! Here are a few reasons to consider:

Benefits your patients. According to the American Association of Critical-Care Nurses (AACN), nursing certification has been linked to better patient outcomes. Certification is credited with a reduction in medical errors, among other benefits. If I listed no other reasons to become certified, this one should be enough!

Accomplishment. Becoming certified in your field is both a professional and a personal accomplishment. Most certifications require extensive studying and experience to initially attain the certification. Once earned, you carry with you a keen sense of accomplishment as a certified nurse. You are seen by uncertified peers and management as a level above.

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The Expanding Role of the Nurse Educator from Nurse Together

A Clinical Nurse Educator is a registered professional nurse with an advanced education, including advanced clinical and educational training coupled with many years of expertise in a healthcare specialty. Nurse educators serve in a variety of roles that often range from nursing college dean to a clinical trainer for a medical device or pharmaceutical company.

A combination of clinical expertise and a passion for teaching are two of the core skills that strengthen the nursing workforce while providing peer mentorship. These specialized skill sets help to set apart the nurse educator from the rest of the clinical team.

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Study Tips for Nursing Students from Nurse Together

Being a nurse and teaching college in an allied health program, I am intimately aware of the large volume of information and new terms nursing students are faced with. It is necessary to learn this material to be both successful in your college career and to give the best patient care upon graduation. At times the amount of information fed to you each semester may seem insurmountable. But it's not – you'll make it! There are many different learning styles, but I am certain some of the following tips will apply to you and make your student life a bit easier!

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5 Attributes Every Student Nurse Should Have from Nurse Together

Initially it may seem easy to list the necessary attributes for a student nurse. We want them to be honest, ethical, hard-working, etc. These are certainly essential characteristics for someone who is preparing to take care of others. There are some other important qualities, however, which can make the difference between success and the lack thereof, of a student nurse. We need all the good nurses that we can get as we age as a population in greater numbers than ever before. We hope that those who choose nursing as a career do so for the right reasons, and not just for job security, money, etc. Let’s face it - nursing is hard. Nursing school is also hard. There are five additional attributes that can help individuals survive nursing school to become licensed in our profession.

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