Published
How about a patient's "right to die" or an institution discontinuing care to terminally ill patients against their will. There are states where these are legal (Oregon and Texas, respectively) and I hadn't heard about either of them until I took a biomedical ethics course in my non-nursing undergrad.
Work hours. At one time every nurse in America wanted to go to 12 hour shifts because they thought it would be cool to have 3 and 4 days off in a row. Now, I keep hearing how much they hate working the 12-hour shifts and they can't get back to the old 5 day/8 hour shifts. Maybe with the economy going in the dumper, the 12 hour shifts will now end.
I did a paper a few years ago on mandatory lift teams which some states have passed legislation on because of the increased back injuries among nurses. There had been a federal bill before Congress to attempt this but it failed. California has tried to pass this as well without success. Washington and Texas currently have laws on this.
California has mandatory nurse/patient staffing ratios currently 4:1 for RNs in the acute hospitals. Other states have debated passing similar laws.
Some states have medication aides that can pass meds. This gets a lot of discussion on the General Nursing Discussion Forum when it comes up. A lot of RNs and LPNs don't like that aides are being given the right to pass medications in some states. You can pull up the threads on allnurses and read them. This is something that has come out of the nursing shortage.
Another nursing shortage thing is IV therapy being granted to LPNs. Interestingly, it is not allowed in all states. Those that do allow it require a certain number of hours the LPNs must take to learn the skill and then they are restricted to what they can actually do.
The traveling nurses spawned the Nurse Compact Law which not all states participate in either. It is licensure reciprocity in the participating states. Makes it convenient for the nurses who do these travel jobs and have to get a new license in every state they go to for work. It has sparked talk of a national nursing license for all of us rather than just a state license.
cammie3690
1 Post
I need help, Im a nursing major and I am required to write a paper about a debatable issue that hasnt been worn to the ground. It can be about anything really but he'd rather us make it about our major. No euthanasia, abortion, stem cell research... basically nothing that has been worn to the ground... I really need an A on this paper... so if someone could tell me some new fresh ideas. PLEASE