Robert Wood Johnson Foundation

The Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center (TTUHSC) School of Nursing and the Health Sciences Center of Cisco College in Abilene have teamed up to revitalize a program designed to help licensed vocational nurses pursue an associate degree. The Texas Board of Nursing withdrew approval for Cisco College's Associate Degree Nursing (ADN) Program in January because of fewer than 80 percent student passing rates.

What if you could reduce the number of babies or toddlers hospitalized by accidents or poisonings by more than half? Or provide a five to seven point IQ boost to babies born to the most vulnerable mothers. Well, there is a way. The Nurse Family Partnership (NFP) was founded 40 years ago by David Old and funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) to improve child and maternal health through the influence of nurses.

Emerging trends in patient care combine with advances in health care technology as thousands of nurses who care for acutely and critically ill patients gather this week in Orlando, Fla. The American Association of Critical-Care Nurses (AACN) hosts its annual National Teaching Institute & Critical Care Exposition (NTI) Saturday, May 19, through Thursday, May 24. Some of the discussion topics include benefits and risks of health care technology and eliminating health care-associated infections and medical errors.

Mary Stahl, RN, MSN, ACNS-BC, president of the American Association of Critical-Care Nurses (AACN) and clinical nurse specialist in medical cardiology at the MidAmerica Heart Institute in St. Luke’s Hospital in Kansas City, Mo., discusses how health care reform will impact the profession (like electronic health records and 'change fatigue') and how critical-care nurses can best advance their own career.

For the first time in years, new nurses are not simply falling into jobs after school. But a new nurse residency program at Baystate Medical Center in Springfield, Mass., will help some get a job but likely outside of a hospital setting. Because of health care reform, the trend now is toward more nursing jobs in home-based care. The difficulty is that those nurses need to be experienced since a nurse or doctor will not be down the hall to ask for help.

Should medical centers be able to refuse to hire nurses and physicians who are overweight? At least one hospital thought so, but it recently changed its mind. Citizens’ Medical Center in Victoria, Texas (southeast of San Antonio), issued a hiring policy in 2011 which declared that overweight health care professionals need not apply.

"Transforming Nursing for Healthcare’s New Age" was the theme of the 2012 New Jersey League for Nursing (NJLN) convention March 28-30 at the Tropicana Casino & Resort in Atlantic City, N.J. "Our theme underscores the vital role that nurses and nursing will have in shaping our profession’s future and the future of our nation’s nursing and health care," said NJLN President Eileen P. Williamson, RN, MS, senior vice president.

Ab Brody, RN, PhD, GNP-BC, is an assistant professor at New York University’s College of Nursing. Pat Iyer, RN, MSN, LNCC, is president of Avoid Medical Errors, a Flemington, N.J.-based company dedicated to helping consumers stay healthy. Andrew Lopez, RN, is a Mantua, N.J.-based nurse entrepreneur, who has several social media businesses. Their professional nursing lives might be diverse, but all three use Twitter professionally and personally to connect with people who have similar interests, connects them to their patients, knowledge and opportunities.

There's been a steady stream of reports predicting a dearth of nurses in the coming years. One recent forecast from The American College of Medical Quality projects a national shortage of 300,000 to 1 million nurses in 2020. So when Marc Anders of St. Paul, Minn., switched careers from bartending to nursing and started a two-year nursing program in 2008, he thought he would have it made in landing a job. Anders did get a job out of nursing school, but was laid off last October when the employer shut down.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has announced what it calls "significant" steps to reduce unnecessary, obsolete or burdensome regulations on hospitals and health care providers. One rule states that all eligible candidates, including advanced practice nurses (APRNs) and physician assistants, must be reviewed by the medical staff for potential appointment to the hospital medical staff. These employees must then be granted all the privileges, rights and responsibilities accorded to medical staff members.

Students from all disciplines are expected to take their classroom lessons into the real world — but none more so than nursing students. That’s why prospective nurses choose the University of Maine’s School of Nursing. In fact, the university is setting its nursing program apart. Educators with real world experience, a supportive environment where nursing students learn to lean on each other for support, and the opportunity to learn in real-world settings all contribute to University of Maine’s successful program.

Nurses can never know how they will react to an emergency, such as a severe allergic reaction or a patient's hemorrhaging, until they are tested. But advances in simulation labs can help prepare them for those rare events. This month, the College of Nursing at Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wis., will begin construction on a $4 million simulation lab to prepare students for events they are unlikely to encounter during their training.

Among adults with depression and poorly controlled diabetes mellitus, coronary heart disease or both, a collaborative care intervention incorporating a team-centered care approach is associated with improvements in depression-free days and quality-adjusted life-years, according to a report. This team-based collaborative care management included nurse care managers who worked with the patients and their primary care physician to optimize the systematic management of chronic illness.

We're facing a severe shortage of primary care physicians in the nation. The Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) predicts a shortfall of 29,800 primary care physicians by 2015, and 65,800 by 2025, mainly because of the anticipated increase in demand for services from the Affordable Care Act (ACA), relatively lower incomes and growth in the elderly population. Allowing nurses to act as primary-care providers will increase coverage and lower health-care costs. So why is there so much opposition from physicians?

During Nurses Week (May 6-12), nurses are celebrating all facets of their field including how highly the profession values education and training. The competence of new nursing grads can come under review, according to Lani Dickinson, MBA, BSN, RN, CNO at Doctors Medical Center in Modesto, Calif. "Residency programs show at the end of the first year of employment, nurses are practicing with someone with almost two years more experience," says Dickinson.

Yale University officials say they will be moving the School of Nursing out of New Haven to a campus in West Haven and Orange. The school will be the first major Yale program relocated to West Campus and will double the number of people there.

Three nursing programs in Tulare County of Visalia, Calif., will graduate more than 200 registered nurses this year — but none of the area medical centers have job openings. The problem: baby-boomer nurses can't afford to retire.

Oncol­ogy nurses are key to qual­ity can­cer care in an ever-€‹evolving health­ care sys­tem. Experts and patients alike are call­ing on the pro­fes­sion to opti­mize its con­tri­bu­tions to bet­ter meet patients’ needs for qual­ity can­cer care. Oncology nurses can lead in shap­ing the trans­for­ma­tion and future of our nation’s health ­care sys­tem to achieve the best out­comes through­out the can­cer continuum.

Technology is being integrated into every area of health care. From meaningful use to accountable care, health care trends are transforming nurses' roles, responsibilities and career trajectories. Key to being part of this change is nursing informatics. What does that portend for nursing?

Imagine this scenario: An oncology nurse encounters a new young male patient in the infusion center one morning. They enjoy good conversation, and she becomes a source of encouragement in his cancer battle. He finishes treatment. Fast forward five years: He has completed nursing school and now works with HIV-infected patients in San Francisco. His inspiration was that oncology nurse, who likely would tell you, "I was just doing my job." Sounds like a heartwarming movie script, doesn’t it? It is, and the story is real; it’s one of many in an upcoming true-to-life documentary about nurses in bedside to boardroom roles, to be released in October.