Free Republic

EVERETT, WA — An Everett nursing home is being accused of neglecting a 97-year-old man and allowing his penis to slowly rot off. A lawsuit was filed against the Everett Rehabilitation and Care Center earlier this week. The lawsuit alleges that nursing home staff failed to adequately care for a patient who had developed penile cancer. The man died March 31, 2008, about two weeks after he was rushed to the emergency room and doctors made the grim discovery. They were the first to report that the man's penis had disintegrated, Seattle attorney James Gooding said Thursday. “They were shocked...

An elderly woman is raped in her room, and police arrest a 21-year-old ex-convict with acute psychiatric problems. When the victim is interviewed by investigators five days later, she shakes with fear. A frail man blind in one eye is slashed in the throat by a gang member, police say. About a year earlier, the same assailant allegedly had stabbed him in the face with an ice pick. A man in a wheelchair dies of head injuries so severe that his doctor says it looked like he was hit with a baseball bat. One of the suspects is a 24-year-old...

A group of anesthesiologists sing a cute parody.

New York City, N.Y., Jul 28, 2009 / 05:12 am (CNA).- "It felt like a horror film unfolding," said Catherina Cenzon-DeCarlo, the Brooklyn nurse who says she was forced to aid an abortion against her will. Now Cenzon-DeCarlo is speaking out, describing the terror she felt as she was asked to sacrifice her religious convictions for the sake of her job.Catherina Cenzon-DeCarlo, a devout Catholic, says she has been having nightmares and difficulty sleeping ever since the incident took place on May 24, reports the New York Post."I couldn't believe that this could happen," Cenzon-DeCarlo told the Post, describing how...

Royal College of Nursing has become the only major medical insistutions to withdraw its opposition to assisted dying to neutral meaning it will neither support nor oppose a change in the law. The College, which represents 400,000 members, has now adopted a neutral stance after a three month consultation. The deaths of Sir Edward Downes and his wife Lady Downes at Dignitas clinic in Switzerland reignited the debate over the so-called right-to-die. The case was particularly controversial as although Lady Downes, 74, was suffering from terminal illness, Sir Edward was not, 85. Earlier this month an amendment to the Coroners...

Members of the BNP should be banned from being nurses, according to a motion passed at Unison’s Health Care Service Group Conference today. Delegates voted unanimously in favour of the motion, submitted by the National Nursing Sector, which calls for a law to prevent BNP members becoming nurses. It also calls for support from the NMC, which states that nurses should not discriminate against patients on the basis of race, but does not ban BNP membership outright. Proposing the motion, Mick McKeown, nursing sector committee member, said that the racist views of the BNP were incompatible with the public service...

WASHINGTON, March 20, 2009 – The Army, Navy and Air Force nurse corps are highly trained, capable and critical to the wartime mission of each service, the corps’ leaders told a congressional committee this week. The Senate Appropriations Committee’s defense subcommittee heard testimony March 18 from the services’ nursing chiefs. Each reported a healthy force that plays a vital role in maintaining the health of America’s servicemembers and saving lives on the battlefield. Despite a nationwide nursing shortage, all three services have had success in recruiting and retaining nurses, the leaders said. New incentive and training programs will help boost...

As I work with new mothers in the hospital, I often hear comments like, “nursing my baby scares me more than labor.” During pregnancy, you have probably been inundated with unwanted (and usually inaccurate) advice about breastfeeding, so it’s no wonder that you are terrified to nurse. These 20 simple tips will help you to relax, forget about the myths you have heard and enjoy your breastfeeding experience. 1. Get support Good support is imperative for new nursing mothers. The key is to find support from someone who really knows what they are talking about and from someone who is...

The U.S. healthcare system is pinched by a persistent nursing shortage that threatens the quality of patient care even as tens of thousands of people are turned away from nursing schools, according to experts. The shortage has drawn the attention of President Barack Obama. During a White House meeting on Thursday to promote his promised healthcare system overhaul, Obama expressed alarm over the notion that the United States might have to import trained foreign nurses because so many U.S. nursing jobs are unfilled. Democratic U.S. Representative Lois Capps, a former school nurse, said meaningful healthcare overhaul cannot occur without fixing...

Imagine that you have lung cancer. It has been in remission, but tests show the cancer has returned and is likely to be terminal. Still, there is some hope. Chemotherapy could extend your life, if not save it. You ask to begin treatment. But you soon receive more devastating news. A letter from the government informs you that the cost of chemotherapy is deemed an unjustified expense for the limited extra time it would provide. However, the government is not without compassion. You are informed that whenever you are ready, it will gladly pay for your assisted suicide.

New babies never grow old for veteran nurse By Fred Solis Linda Pulliam / Photo Credit: Catholic Advance Wichita, Feb 7, 2009 / 01:52 pm (CNA).- Even after 18 years working as a registered nurse in labor and delivery, Linda Pulliam never tires of the excitement and joy of bringing new lives into the world each day."When they are born it’s just a miracle, and it never gets old," Linda Pulliam, a registered nurse at the NewLife Center at Via Christi Regional Medical Center said. "It’s an exciting place to work because grandma and grandpa are waiting outside the door...

Friday February 6, 2009 Victory for Christian Nurse Facing Sack for Offering to Pray for Patient WESTON, U.K. February 6, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Caroline Petrie, the nurse from Weston-super-Mare who was suspended without pay for asking a patient whether she would like to be prayed for, was reinstated by North Somerset Primary Care Trust last night. The dramatic turn-around by North Somerset Primary Care Trust comes days after extensive media coverage and news reports which revealed that Mrs. Petrie, a born again Christian and mother of two, was suspended after her employers discovered that she had asked a patient...

MILWAUKEE — Please, please accept a high-paying job with us. In fact, just swing by for an interview and we'll give you a chance to win cash and prizes. Sounds too good to be true, especially in an economy riddled with job cuts in nearly every industry. But applicants for nursing jobs are still so scarce that recruiters have been forced to get increasingly inventive. One Michigan company literally rolled out a red carpet at a recent hiring event. Residential Home Health, which provides in-home nursing for seniors on Medicare, lavished registered nurses and other health care workers with free...

I've been a registered nurse for 30 years, so the future of American health care is one of my greatest concerns. Now that Mr. Obama has won the election, I decided to investigate what may be facing patients and health care workers. I started my research at Barack Obama's website and his Plan for a Healthy America. What a waste of time.  It read like a treatise from a beauty pageant contestant. What kind of medical expertise does Barack have? Remember this youtube  where his teleprompter malfunctioned?  He stumbled through an excruciatingly inept explanation of how health care costs can...

LAS CRUCES, N.M. -- A New Mexico infant is dead and another is getting treatment at a hospital for a rare illness called enterobacter sakazakii. The New Mexico Department of Health said the illness is sometimes associated with baby formula. A baby boy in Otero County has died from the bloodstream and central nervous system infection. Now the state is advising safe ways to feed infants, including breastfeeding. “We're doing lab tests right now we're working with the Centers for Disease Control, and the Food and Drug Administration to look at every possible avenue. Right now it hasn't been linked...

<p>Police who videotaped a man having sex with his comatose wife in her nursing home room violated his constitutional rights, an appeals court ruled Thursday.</p> <p>David W. Johnson, 59, had an expectation to privacy when he visited his wife, a stroke victim, at Divine Savior Nursing Home in Portage, the District 4 Court of Appeals ruled. Therefore, police violated his constitutional rights against unreasonable searches when they installed a hidden video camera in the room, the court said.</p>

Writes countries must continue to examine the moral, medical, ethical and legal aspects of direct killing of disabled infants By Hilary White July 17, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) - A professional journal for pediatric nurses has produced an article examining the ethics of infanticide according to the Dutch Groningen Protocol. The Protocol permits the killing of babies in the Netherlands on the judgement of a physician based on "quality of life" criteria. The article, appearing in the May-June 2008 edition of the Journal of Pediatric Nursing, and jointly authored by J. Catlin and Renee Novakovich, talks about the effects of the Protocol...

Karen Coughlin, a psychiatric nurse in Taunton, Mass., remembers the evening four years ago when her 14-year-old son asked her if any patients had tried to kill her that day. “I was astounded, but he was serious because he’d heard about co-workers going to the hospital for injuries,” Ms. Coughlin said. “I’ve been hit, I’ve been kicked and spit on. I’ve had a knife pulled on me. I love what I do and many of the patients I work with, but I don’t love the conditions I work in.” Three years ago, an enraged patient — 6 feet 4 inches...

A former nurse accused of intentionally injecting bleach into two patients at a dialysis center was arrested Friday, police said. Two witnesses said they saw Kimberly Clark Saenz, 34, draw bleach into syringes and inject it into two patients' dialysis lines at the DaVita Dialysis Center on April 28, Lufkin police said in a statement. Both patients survived, but one required treatment at a hospital, police said.

HULL, UK, April 9, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) - In Hitler's Germany, long before 1939, vulnerable patients in nursing homes, insane asylums and orphanages were being killed by medical practitioners, including nurses, in the Nazi eugenics programme Aktion T4 that some estimate killed as many as 200,000 to 250,000 people. Next week, Linda Shields, a professor of nursing at Hull University in Yorkshire, will give a speech outlining the implications for the profession today of the participation of nurses in the Nazi programme. Professor Shields will speak at the Royal College of Nursing's Annual Research conference on the implications today of the...

Dear Prudie, I am a first-time mother to a beautiful 11-week-old boy. Right after having him, I was visited in my hospital room by a "lactation consultant." This person pulled out my chart without asking me and said, "I see you had a breast reduction done 10 years ago. That was extremely selfish of you."

Monday I start doing care plans. The next week is clinicals and I have do a care plan for each one of my patients and I'm feeling a little 'intimidated'. Want to know what your first care plan experience was like,etc.etc.etc. and some pointers for doing mine.

I was recently shadowed by a high school senior during a couple of shifts. She was considering becoming a nurse and had an interest in Emergency Nursing. She followed me as I provided care for patients with a broad spectrum of problems- from a known narcotic seeker who demanded (read: screamed) that we address his pain, to a homeless patient with a peritonsilar abscess and no access to continuity of care, to a nonogenarian woman who suffered cardiac arrest and whose family had kept her on "full code" (all measures to maintain life) status because they could not let her...

The NHS wins when its patients die By Charles Moore  Last Updated: 12:01am BST 13/10/2007     Florence Nightingale's famous Notes on Nursing, published in 1859, state that "the greater part of nursing consists in cleanliness". In my edition, the foreword points out that much of Miss Nightingale's writing, excellent though it is, is now out of date. In particular, the need for cleanliness is well understood. That foreword was written in 1946.Now it is 2007, and we learn that nurses in the hospitals run by the Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust told patients suffering from diarrhoea to "go in...

NEW YORK — A new mother who wants extra breaks so she can pump milk during a nine-hour medical licensing exam has asked a judge to settle her dispute with the board that administers the test. Sophie Currier, 33, requested additional break time during the test, saying that if she does not nurse her 4-month-old daughter, Lea, or pump breast milk every two to three hours, she risks medical complications. The exam allows a total of just 45 minutes in breaks, and the National Board of Medical Examiners has refused to give Currier the extra time she says she needs....

In June, Brooke Ryan walked into a Nicholasville Road Applebee's restaurant to celebrate an anniversary lunch with her children. She walked out humiliated, in tears and without the lunch. But the incident over breast-feeding her 7-month-old son at Applebee's has spurred the soft-spoken 34-year-old to start a public awareness campaign on the rights of breast-feeding women in Kentucky. "On a small scale, I want Applebee's to change its policy," Ryan said. "On a large scale ... I want breast-feeding to be accepted." The dispute with Applebee's began June 14. Ryan chose a booth in the back of the restaurant away...

A kitten needed help and got it from an unusual source that came to the rescue. Meet Jade -- a three-year-old Rottweiler with a soft-spot for cats. The kitten was just a few days old when its mother died. So, Jade stepped in. She never had any pups of her own. But, surprisingly, she was able to start nursing the kitten. Veterinarians say that's rare, but it can happen.

CLEARWATER, FL, July 25, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) - A North Country Gazette exclusive alleges, with evidence, that Michael Schiavo, who ordered the starvation of his wife Terry Schiavo in 2005, has a history of hostility towards co-workers, stalking women, vindictiveness and general unprofessional behavior. Last year, the Gazetter reports, Schiavo was involved in a complex tangle of accusations against co-workers at the Pinellas County Jail. The first alleged incident occurred on July 31, when co-worker Diane Cross illegally gave prescription medication, a muscle relaxant called Robaxin, to nursing supervisor David Richardson in order to alleviate his extreme back pain. Schiavo did...

A Prescription for the Nursing Shortage Click here to launch the Podcast Player It’s funny how historic events can have unexpected impacts many decades after memories have begun to fade. America, in fact, is facing a crisis in the next few years that could be traced directly to actions in Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan. Many young people today have no idea of the scale of World War II -- and I expect it explains why some are impatient regarding the War on Terror. It's hard to fathom now, but nearly 20 million Americans served their country in that conflict....

Robot teachers for USA nursing institute By Thomas Claburn 7 June 2007 12:15 AEST General News Educators annoyed by the mental absence of gadget-engaged students now have their revenge: they can be physically absent while they teach. The Nursing Institute of West Central Ohio today said it would begin using the Remote Presence Robotic System (RP-7) to allow nursing faculty to teach from remote locations. Debi Sampsel, executive director of the institute, said in a statement that the RP-7 would help alleviate a shortage of nursing faculty. "As baby boomer nurses in education approach retirement, this technology will provide them...

God has a way of bringing patients into my life who serve to remind me of what this nursing stuff is all about. Through these encounters, He restores my sense of the holy purpose of nursing. Without this sense of altruism, nursing becomes nothing more than an application of mere science and aesthetics; The patient is reduced to nothing more than a problem to be fixed- the "kidney stone in room 3"- rather than a human being in need of care. Dealing with malingerers and drug-seekers on a daily basis tends to make me more cynical and suspicious than I...

Graduates of the Preparatory Iraqi Nursing Course take a moment to smile for the camera after receiving their certificates of training at the Civil Military Operations Center at the Victory Base Complex, Feb. 19. There were 18 Iraqi females who graduated from the PINC. VICTORY BASE COMPLEX -- Eighteen Iraqi women have successfully graduated from the first Preparatory Iraqi Nursing Course at the Civil Military Operations Center located in the Victory Base Complex in Baghdad, Feb. 19. “This is a happy day for me,” said Amel Hadi, a PINC graduate. “I always wanted to be able to help people and...

Language is the capital that drives the economy of human communication. Each social or professional culture presides over its own unique lexicon. The observer will also note further subdivisions related to slang or specific specialty. Nurses and physicians often use abbreviated terms among ourselves. We do this for two reasons: 1: It saves time; 2: The other person knows what we are saying (as long as the speaker is not just making something up in order to sound cool, which happens from time to time). But I was reminded this week about how easy it is to fall into the...

...Seventy-five thousand dollars is the average yearly cost of living in a nursing home, whether you pay out of pocket, whether you have long-term-care insurance, or whether you’re on welfare and your stay is paid for by Medicaid. (In 2005, Medicaid paid an estimated $54 billion of the $122 billion national expenditure on nursing homes.) Few elderly people or their families make a deliberate, considered decision to move to a nursing home. More often, institutionalization follows an accident or sudden illness. The broken hip is a typical trigger. First the patient goes to the hospital, and then to the nursing...

As hospitals strong-arm health-care professionals to adopt abortion-friendly policies, one nurse is hailed a hero for clinging to her pro-life beliefs. If you have ever wondered what difference one person can make, consider Mary Bauer. At 48, she changed careers, got a degree in nursing and accepted a position in the labor and delivery unit at a Chicago hospital. But it’s what happened on her first day of work -- and her reaction to it -- that really set Bauer apart.     Fresh from orientation and looking forward to her new job, Bauer was told she would be assisting in the...

You’re just out of high school and faced with the strife “What plan will I make for the rest of my life?” Your friends are off to college with clothes that are cool, But your goals are different, you choose nursing school. You study all the “-ologys”, you’re learning so quick, You’ve just got to know what makes the body tick. And after many courses you begin to find You’re understanding the workings of the body and mind. Then theory turns to practice, your thoughts begin to bloom.

Tonight was one of those shifts that puts the world into perspective for me. I was the primary nurse for a man who had a sudden-death cardiac arrest; his wife heard a loud thud, turned on the light, and saw her husband of fifty-two years crumpled in a heap in the doorway of the bathroom, blue and dead. She was a small woman, and he was rather tall. She could not get him out of the doorway. She called 911, and seven minutes later, the paramedics arrived, find the guy asystolic (no heartbeat) and then started CPR. Mark this: seven...

SOUTH BURLINGTON, Vt. - Carrying signs with slogans such as "Best in-flight meal ever," scores of mothers breast-fed their babies at airports around the country Tuesday in a show of support for a woman who was ordered off a plane for nursing her daughter without covering up. "It's about raising consciousness about our culture's sexualization of the breast. Breast-feeding needs to be supported wherever and whenever it happens. Babies don't know the meaning of `wait,'" said Chelsea Clark, 31, wearing a "Got breast milk?" T-shirt as she nursed her 9-week-old son at the Burlington airport. About 25 women turned out...

When I decided to become a nurse, I made up my mind from the beginning that I wanted to work in the Emergency Room. I have never worked anywhere else as a nurse. Besides being a constant source of challenge and education, being an ER nurse has other benefits. Here are just a few: 1. The look on a belligerent drunk's face when you explain to him or her EXACTLY where that big ol' tube is going. 2. Wearing your pajamas to work. 3. The sense of awe that you get when looking at some of the things you find...

Op-Ed Contributor LATE on a summer afternoon not long ago, the water at Lucy Vincent Beach on Martha’s Vineyard was warm, and the toxic jellyfish that had plagued bathers weeks earlier had floated out to sea. Body-surfing in on my last wave, I suddenly felt as if someone had whacked my leg with a lead pipe studded with nails. On the 1-to-10 pain scale we use with patients, I would have called it a 14. When I rubbed the area with my hand, my whole palm stung. Apparently those toxic jellyfish hadn’t all left. A crowd of passers-by gathered to...

CAMDEN, N.J. (AP) - A severe shortage of specialized nurses has led to increasingly long wait times for rape victims in Camden County, which has one of the highest volumes of sexual assaults in the state. Rape counselors and nurses say the shortage has forced some victims to wait for hours in emergency rooms, where they are told to refrain from showering, eating, drinking water, brushing their teeth and changing their underwear in order to preserve evidence. The state mandates that nurses are on call 24 hours a day to meet with victims and collect forensic evidence. Yet according to...

LONDON (Aug. 7) - A rare photograph of Florence Nightingale went on display Monday to mark the 150th anniversary of the famous nurse's return to Britain from the Crimean War. The faded black-and-white photo, taken in May 1858, shows Nightingale reading on the grounds of her family home in Hampshire, southwest of London. It is one of only eight known photographs of one of nursing's most important figures. She shunned publicity, believing it would detract from her efforts to improve conditions in British hospitals. The photograph, which is going on show at the Florence Nightingale Museum in London, was taken...

It's become a stock image in the immigration debates: the flooded emergency room, halls packed with sick illegals seeking subsidized care. But now that image's negative is at the heart of a far smaller battle—not over the immigrants awaiting care in the E.R., but the immigrants providing it. The immigration bill passed by the Senate last week includes a provision that would allow unlimited entry to foreign-trained nurses until 2014, and as a committee attempts to reconcile that bill with the less permissive House version, an open door policy for foreign nurses has a shot at becoming law. A free...

We need to have some of that sense of urgency of St Paul who said, "Woe is me if I do not preach the Gospel." The aim is not simply to win arguments, but to win hearts. The best way to conquer your "enemy" is to make him your friend. Few people see the turn of a century and fewer still the turn of a millennium as we have. Sad to say, many of those who were privileged to experience this awesome shift of time did not take note of the reason for it all. Very few realised it was...

ANN ARBOR, Mich. -- The lifeguards find bare breasts distracting. That's one of the reasons officials at the Ann Arbor, Mich., YMCA said they've banned breast-feeding at the pool. But nursing moms counter that's no excuse. The breast-feeding mothers plan a nurse-in at the Y Saturday to protest the ban. However, Krista Dragun, one of the protest organizers, said they'll be nursing their babies in the lobby, not the pool area. She said they want the Y to adopt a more mother-baby friendly policy for the pool. Y officials note there's no eating or drinking allowed at the pool for...

Cooing at new-born babies banned A West Yorkshire hospital has banned visitors from cooing at new-born babies over fears their human rights are being breached and to reduce infection. A statement from Calderdale Royal Hospital in Halifax said staff had held an advice session to highlight the need for respect and dignity for patients. On one ward there is a doll featuring the message: "What makes you think I want to be looked at?" But Labour MP Linda Riordan said the measures were "bureaucracy gone mad".

St. Rita's Nursing Home Reveals Democratic Hypocrisy

<p>St. Bernard Parish officials say that 32 of the home's roughly 60 residents died on Aug. 29, more than a week ago.</p>

Women in favor of public breastfeeding are demanding the right the nurse their infants in the stands at sports arenas, but say they feel pressured to leave their pricey seats and feed their babies in bathrooms or first aid stations. ``They've paid for their seat, they have the right to be in that seat, so they have the right to breastfeed their baby there – that's our understanding of the law,'' said Lezlie Densmore of La Leche League in Massachusetts. None of the area's three major sports venues have written policies on breastfeeding, creating confusion among mothers over what is...

Men Can Also Offer Their Babies a Nipple Infants in the 'Sucking' Phase of Development Are Also Soothed by Father's Breast By SHANNON ROGAN and EMILY KAGAN Jun. 16, 2005 - It's Father's Day and daddy has taken the baby for a walk. A few steps from the house the baby starts to fuss, so daddy picks her up and offers her … his nipple? Strange as it may sound, an article published in the The Times of London suggests that when mom is not around, a man's nipple may be just as comforting to a crying baby.