Mutiple Realities

Follow the Money

A Universal Truth, Yes?

To Serve Patients or to Serve those Who Serve Patients

Real Productivity

Why not include meal time not taken by staff in nursing care hours? This practice would force managers to ensure that staff had breaks before the manager could meet productivity goals.

Does this strike a chord witrh anyone?

Nurses can learn from other oppressed peoples

The Negro is a sort of seventh son, born with a veil, and gifted with second-sight in this American world,--a world which yields him no true self-consciousness, but only lets him see himself through the revelation of the other world. It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one's self through the eyes of others....One ever feels his two-ness,--an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body....

--W.E.B. Dubois in The Soul of Black People

The Swiss Army Nurse

I had to go to the Pyxis (drug cabinet) three times. The first time a patient’s family wandered up to me. They had an “important question.” I never got to finish. The second time a coworker needed a stat drug. I let her go ahead of me; then I got a phone call while I was waiting. Then I just plain got distracted and forgot. Thirty minutes later everybody is upset because he hasn’t gotten his medicine.

-from Confessions of an ADD Nurse

The Perfect Storm

Scrubsgallery.com You've Come A Long Way Baby Contest

The Scrubs You'll Wear

Congratulations!

You are now a nurse.

You're off to Med-Surg!

Please don’t wear a skirt!

Your scrubs are form-fitting,

But don’t fit too tight.

No colors for you,

They are whiter than white

Not making anyone guess

Who said gesundheit.

The back is stamped RN

Out in plain sight.

You have wireless on your head

And GPS in your shoes.

You can be found

Whenever they choose.

You'll scan up and down halls. Look 'em over with care.

About some you will say, "I don't need to go there."

With your head loaded with sensors and your shoes full of feet,

your legs are rested and don’t feel like concrete.

And, if it should happen

That your patient has a bug,

Your scrubs are woven with a bug-killing drug,

And sleeves that cinch up when given a tug

If your patients are resting

Or simply digesting.

Put your sensors on stealth

Cause quiet is good for their health.

With noise and beeps you’re not fed up,

‘Cause safety glasses are heads-up.

And, you’ll know what you need to know

Without information overflow.

And when things start to happen,

Don't worry. Don't stew.

The fabric is cooling

Keeping you fresh the whole shift thru.

Old school isn't always the right school

The oppressed, instead of striving for liberation, tend themselves to become oppressors,

--Paulo Freire from Pedagogy of the Oppressed

Are everyone's basic needs being met?

Watch as Paul Farmer Talks About His Life

Toys in the Attic

They have no consciousness of themselves as persons or as members of an oppressed class.

---Paulo Freire from Pedagogy of the Opressed

Over Stimulated

I left work an hour ago, but my brain brought mementos along for kicks. In the shower the running water first sounds like the monitor. Then the phone rings. No, wait that really is my phone. I don’t know. The sounds keep coming back like mosquitoes surveying your head. I can still feel my stethoscope around my neck. Finally, I sigh, “I wonder if I’m getting overtime for this.”

--quotes from Confessions of an ADD Nurse

If I Were King of the Forest

Healthcare Napkins All

I found this presentation to be clear and concise. I think other visual thinkers will find it worth viewing.

Healthcare Napkins All

View more documents from Dan Roam.

Metaphors to Live By

United States Postal Service

http://www.lakeforest.edu/alumni/spectrum/spring04/seuss.asp

Saturday Night Special

Same Old Story

Context Trumps Values

Context trumps values. A study at the Princeton Seminary found that intentionally hurried, seminary students, conflicted between being on time to help with an experiment or to stop to help a “victim” they encountered while walking to the experiment, ignored or “did not perceive” the ethical dilemma the victim created and continued on to the experiment 90% of the time. Gladwell paraphrased these findings saying:

. . . the convictions of your heart and the actual contents of your thoughts are less importa nt than immediate context of your behavior . . . the words “you’re late” had the effect of making someone who is ordinarily compassionate into someone . . . indifferent to suffering.

Dawn Freshwater has written, “As nurses we would do well to question our own responses in situations of stress and conflict and the manifestations of oppression in everyday clinical practice”