Discuss current trends in health care

[ifeoma2000]

List five advanced nursing journals and two nursing journals or artcles that discussed the trends.

How dose it relate to the nurse administrator

[Pepper The Cat, BSN, RN]

Please do your own homework

[EmergencyNrse]

Current trends in healthcare?

I'm not citing any journal articles. Like Pepper said "Do your own homework".

Here is my answer though:

Nursing is not billable as an expense therefore you are nothing but overhead to a hospital. Expensive, the trend is to eliminate dependency on a large nursing staff.

Medical shorthand-

Because there are those too stupid or lazy to learn/interpret medical shorthand it was just easier to lower the standards. Now you really don't use it so there is no reason to hire someone that KNOWS how to use it. Used for over a hundred years it's now gone for "safety concerns" because idiots either didn't know or failed to have it clarified by the doctor. Now anyone of the street can process doctor orders because it's dumb-ed down. Why use nurses?

Mixing Medications-

Nurses use to make up their own injections and piggybacks. Now it's all made up by pharmacy. They proclaimed that nurses were making too many mistakes. Lets not hold weak nurses accountable, lets just take that responsibility from them in the interests of "patient safety". With these lower standards a trained monkey can administer medications anymore. Why hire nurses?

IV Pumps-

ALL fluids and all medications have to be placed on a pump. Mainly due to medicaid/medicare billing. Nurses are no longer responsible for calculating drip rates. With "guardrail" settings on IV pumps you really don't need nurses to even start the medication. A CNA or pharmacy tech can do what the nurse use to be responsible for... why pay for a nursing professional?

Nursing is under attack. You can agree or disagree.

Lower standards, dumbing-down of the profession, lesser nursing responsibility. How much longer until they cut us out altogether?

What are we REALLY responsible for now?

We smile, say Hi. We ask them about their pain... Pain is important.

We take their vitals. We give them pain medication. Then after a dozen trivial tasks and 25 pages (of mandatory government documentation that has to be satisfied for medicare/medicaid) we might get back to reassess their pain and take their vitals again. Smile. Ask them if there is anything you can do to make them "mostly satisfied" with their visit. It's all about the press-ganey and gallop polls. ALL tasks that can be done by someone else. You certainly don't need a degree to do it.

Staffing shortages are all too common. There are limited or no resource pools to draw relief or help during census surges. LPN's are all but gone from the hospital. A new trend is now to turn away associate degree nurses. Where is the part-time staff? I don't see any part-time staff anymore. Sign on bonuses? Gone. Administration has taken the position of "put up or shut up". The strike in Minnesota last July was settled before it happened. It was to keep them quiet. The problems still exist. God help us.

(There is still time to change your major.)

[NRSKarenRN, BSN, RN]

several ideas and articles cited in nursing activism/ healthcare politics ndnursing management forum.

your school libriarian can tell you what journals are available.