Stress Management: An Inexpensive Necessary Modality for Nurses from Nurse Together

Most nurses, as most people, often pay little or no attention to the cumulative effects that chronic daily stress has on their bodies, which materially affects their ability to care for themselves and, in turn, relate to and care for their patients, until it is too late.

Chronic daily stress also creates a significant threat to the emotional health of nursing staff, and since the degree to which a nurse is emotionally healthy affects the extent to which he or she can meet job expectations, hospital administrators, as well as the individual, must find modalities to manage these threats. Doing nothing will lead to increased insurance premiums for health insurance, workersʻ compensation insurance and general liability insurance, all of which materially affect the “bottom line” for the hospital, and greatly impact the “quality of life” of the nurse.

For the full article please go here.

Health Care Articles Blog

Please visit our new "Health Care Articles" BLOG

access

You are invited to submit your articles for consideration to be published.
Please send inquiries to: info@aihcp.org

5 Tips to Give Yourself a Break! from Huffington Post

There's a great lyric from the movie "Once" that goes like this: "... you have suffered enough and warred with yourself. It's time that you won." If you're up to something, your own business, raising kids or just about any pursuit, you'll be better off if you can stay positive and give yourself a break.

"Happy employees produce more than unhappy ones over the long term ... Moreover, they're not sprinters; they're more like marathon runners, in it for the long haul." ("Creating Sustainable Performance," Harvard Business Review, January-February 2012, Gretchen Spreitzer, Christine Porath)

Don't you want to be your own "happy employee"?

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:

For the full article please go here.

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.

For the full article please go here.

Age-Related Memory Loss More Common in Men from Health.com

WEDNESDAY, January 25, 2012 — Men in their 70s and 80s may be more likely than women of the same age to develop the memory loss and cognitive problems that often herald Alzheimer’s disease, a new study has found.

In the study, which appears in the journal Neurology, Mayo Clinic researchers examined 1,450 elderly people in Minnesota every 15 months for an average of three and a half years. During that time, 7.2% of the men and 5.7% of the women developed the mental-function problems known as mild cognitive impairment (MCI), with or without any accompanying memory loss.

The findings surprised the researchers because previous studies have suggested that more women than men ultimately go on to develop Alzheimer’s and other forms of full-blown dementia. The fact that men appear to have higher rates of MCI but lower rates of dementia may hold important clues for preventing or delaying cognitive decline, the researchers suggest.

For the full article please go here.

7 Reasons Working Too Much Is Bad For Your Health from Huffington Post

If you're the last one to leave the office, or constantly picking up an extra shift, you may see the benefits in that paycheck, but all those extra hours are also affecting your health.

A study released this week found that workers clocking at least 11 hours a day have a higher risk of depression than people working a standard seven- or eight-hour day. And that finding joins a host of others suggesting a link between clocking long hours and serious health problems.

Luckily, the weekend offers us a two-day respite from the stresses of all those long days. Below, we've compiled some of the ways working too much hurts your health, as well as a few of our favorite ways to

For the full article please go here.