PixelRN

Nurse Kim

I was terribly flattered to find that someone out there considers PixelRN to be one of their favorite sites. Not so flattered to find that they thought my name was Kim. There are many illustrious nurse bloggers out there named Kim (Emergiblog and Asthepumpturns come to mind.) I am not one of them though. Hi. My name is Beth and I'll be your nurse.

Passing the NCLEX

It's that NCLEX time of year again. While most of us are stressing out about Christmas, I know there are a select few of you who are stressing out about NCLEX.  I want you to know, it's not as bad as you think. I actually wasn't too nervous about taking the NCLEX back in 2004. In fact, I felt pretty confident. Why? Because my nursing school had a good passing rate. Something like 92%. That means that 92% of the students from the previous class had passed the NCLEX on the first try. While I wasn't at the tippy-top of my class, I knew that my grades were respectable. Perhaps even admirable. So statistically speaking, it would be very unlikely that I wouldn't pass. In the end I think passing the NCLEX comes down to three factors:

1. NCLEX Practice questions. Take lots of them and when you do, don't get bogged down by the details. The point of taking the practice questions is to get you to think like a nurse. As a nurse you will have to prioritize everything you do, and therefore the questions are formatted as such. So many questions boil down to prioritization (i.e. You have 4 tasks. Which one should you do first?) And that's where your ABCs come into play...
2. ABCs. Airway, Breathing, Circulation. Live it, love it, learn it. So many questions are based on this hierarchy. So even if you come across a question with a drug or a disease that you've never heard of (I'm not gonna lie to you - it happens) you can always try to pare the question down to the ABCs.
3. RELAX!!! I can't stress this enough. I think there are some pretty smart cookies out there that fail just because the get themselves all in a tizzy before they take the test. Don't be that student. You will have ample time to take the test. Just take a deep breath before every question, and give it your best shot.

And finally, congratulations to Not Nurse Ratched, RN(!!!), who passed the NCLEX early and inspired me to write this post! Creative Commons photo courtesy of Nicole St. John

Nurse Nesting Dolls

Nurse Tchotchke alert! So I kind of have a love-hate relationship with these nurse tchotchkes. Some of them are just so unbearably tacky that they are kind of fabulous. Others are just plain weird. I was really quite charmed by this one from Etsy:

The store is called HomeCraftsCatalogue. It's a bit pricy at $32, but hey - it's hand-painted. I don't know why I was so taken with this. I don't even like cats. There's just something really whimsical about it.

And you thought your Nursing Orientation was difficult

The other day I was talking to a veteran CCU nurse. She told me that she worked at the hospital where the first defibrillations were studied and performed. Like many health care studies, the testing was done on animals - dogs in this case. She then went on to tell me that one of the requirements for working in her CCU (back in the 1970's) was that you actually had to defibrillate a dog to show that you were competent in that skill! Yes, the dogs were sedated before hand, but still. Nurses see (and do) the craziest things.

An Explanation of sorts, and a pecan recipe.

I know some of you have been wondering about my blogging hibernation. Yes, it's true; I've been taking a hiatus from blogging about nursing. I'm still working as a nurse, though. I've been lucky enough to pick up some shifts working in the recovery room, but most of the time I've just been enjoying motherhood. In the meantime, I wanted to share a recipe with you. My mother in law has always made these sweet and crunchy pecans around the holidays, and this year I am making them as a Thanksgiving appetizer. They are so awesomely delicious that I have to hide them as soon as they cool down, or else they will all magically disappear before the time they are to be served. It's a wonderfully easy recipe and the result is just so darn good. I'm thinking about going to my hiding place as I write this: Jane's Candied Pecans 4 1/2 cups of pecan halves 2 egg whites 1 1/2 tbs of water 2/3 cup of sugar 1 tsp each of salt, cinnamon, coriander, allspice, and ginger. Beat egg and water with a fork until frothy. Mix together sugar, salt, and spices. Coat all of the pecans with the egg mixture, and then toss with the sugar and spice mixture. Spray a large cookie pan with non-stick spray. Spread out pecans on tray. Bake at 275 for 55 minutes, flipping pecans every ten or fifteen minutes with a spatula. Place on wax paper to cool. Store in airtight container. Hide in the deepest, darkest corner of your house, so they won't disappear. Enjoy! Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

Should EMRs be subsidized through advertising?

My friend, Phil Baumann recently brought this company to my attention: Practice Fusion offers a web-based application for physicians and practitioners that can also handel billing. What sets them appart from the competition? They're product is free. So how can they offers this? It is funded through ads. Granted the ads seem small and unobtrusive. You can see the CEO demoing the product here. But do ads have any place in an EMR (Electronic Medical Record)? I would say no, absolutely not. The CEO says that one of the great things about these ads (for those that are byuing them presumably) is that they are ultra-targeted, meaning that they take the actual info from your EMR and serve you up ads based on that. So if you are being treated for breast cancer, you or your physician is served up ads for perhaps drug cancer drugs. I think this is wrong. Pharmaceutical companies, or any medical device companies are of course free to advertise their products and services. This is the way business works. But keep these ads out of the EMR. I already have a lot of concerns with the way drugs are being marketed. And believe me, I'm not one of those poeple who are always railing against "Big Pharma." "Big Pharma" has enabled us to have so many wonderful drugs that improve people's lives. But I am also very concerned that drugs are too often prescribed in an excessive and haphazard way. A practitioner shouldn't be describing a drug because they saw an ad for it. They should be prescribing it because there is evidence that doing so will benefit the patient. Do I have any other suggestions on how to pay for EMR technology? Not really. Keep EMRs free from adverising.

Dr Val's New Digs

Recently at the BlogHer DC conference I had a great time hanging out with Dr. Val. In case you didn't know, she's left her old post as medical director for Revolution Health and has ventured out on her own at Getting Better with Dr. Val. This is an excellent health care site, with great content, design, and navigation (the triumvirate of great web publishing, IMHO!) Dr. Val is very prolific so you can always count on having something new to read on her site. I love Dr. Val's approach to creating content. She features lots of interviews, like this one of a 32 year old who had a stroke. Did you know she's also an artist? Yes, she also creates comics, and will feature a new one every Friday. I like this one, which will be part of her "fanstasy" series, to illustrate what health care professionals *wish* they could do:

Subscribe, add her to your medical blogroll, or if just too darn lazy for all of that, you can always follow her on Twitter: twitter.com/drval. I do!

Why I'll Probably Quit Nursing

There's been a lot of recent discussion about nursing salaries and the nursing shortage. I wanted to chime in because (a) I love to over-simplify things, and (b) I am on the verge of becoming one of those nurses they refer to - the kind who works 2-3 years after school and then quits. The reasons aren't complicated. Here's why I'll probably end up quitting:

• The money sucks.
• It takes its toll on you physically.
• I don't want to work nights, weekends, or holidays.

Sure there are many peripheral issues - nurses dumping on each other, lack of autonomy, lack of time and resources to get the job done right. But other than that it's a personally rewarding, and (at times) intellectually challenging job. It feels good to help people when they are sick. I love being the voice of calm in a storm. I love working as a team and saving lives (sometimes.) I just don't love it enough to get over the three points that I listed above. It's that simple. If I became a nurse when I was 22 I might have gotten a few more good years in, but sadly, I didn't. So if there's any constructive advice springing from this negative view of nursing it would be this: Get 'em in while they're young. The earlier you start your nursing career, the later your burnout will be.

BlogHer DC Wrap-up

On Monday I attended BlogHer DC, put on by the good folks at Blogher. This was an excellent event. I'll admit, I went there with skepticism. This whole google wordpress drama has kind of put me into a existential tailspin with regards to blogging, plus I never really got the whole "BlogHer" thing. Really the only reason I wanted to go was to get to meet Mother Jones, RN in person and to hang out with the guys from JNJ to talk about social media. As it turns out, the event itself was great. The best part of the day was getting to meet so many other bloggers and to hear about the wonderfully creative things they are doing. (Hmm... Did that sentence make me sound like a high school art teacher? I had a blast hanging out with MJ! I taught her all about Twitter and now she's one of the regular *medtweeps.* It was also great to see Dr. Val. She has a great new site, and I'll be blogging about it very soon. I also met a very technically savvy blogger named Roni who blogs about weight loss, food, and healthy living. She gave me some great technical help with wordpress that's going to enable me to improve OrientedX3 and take it to the next level. I also enjoyed hanging out with Rob and Marc from Johnson & Johnson. It's interesting to see what they are doing with social media. Some have been very distrustful when they see corporations like JNJ entering the social arena and I think they are missing the point. Expect a big blog post on that later in the week. And finally, in case you missed it, I wrote a summary of my trip to Blog World Expo and the future of healthcare blogging over at TravelNursingBlogs.com

The Future of Health Care Blogging: Blog World Expo 2008

I recently was fortunate enough to attend Blog Word Expo 2008, the world's largest blogging and new media conference. Part of my agenda was to meet with other health care bloggers like Kim from Emergiblog, and Dr. Val Jones from GetBetterHealth, to discuss the possibility of putting together a track dedicated to health care bloggers at next year's conference. We also met with Rob Halper, who oversees the Johnson & Johnson Youtube channel, and Shane Pike, of HealthCareToday. Together we brainstormed ways that we could make this happen. The result? A health care blogger track is a sure thing for next year (September 2009), and it's going to be the first event of its kind that will bring all types of health care bloggers together. Potential topics include: HIPAA issues, using blogging to affect change in health care policy, and using your blog to leverage your expertise in your field. If you're interested, Emergiblog has a poll up where you can see the list of topics and vote on the best ones. One of our goals for the health care blogger's track is to include all types of bloggers in the health care arena. That includes nurses, doctors, students, EMTs, technicians, medical librarians, social workers, pharmacists, researchers, and patients. One of the great things about health care blogging is that it brings together people from all specialties, and the result is one of the largest (and liveliest) ongoing multidisciplinary discussions on the state of health care. If you are still new to this idea of people blogging about health care, I would urge you to check out Grand Rounds. It's a weekly roundup of some of the best blog posts with a medical theme. Blog World Expo is a worthwhile and energizing experience for any type of blogger. If you have a blog, whether it be about nursing, or any thing else, I would urge you to go.  Presentations included topics such as how to make money from your blog, building readership on your blog, and how to analyze your blog statistics. One of the best things about Blog World Expo was getting to meet other bloggers face to face. I had known of Kim and Dr. Val through their blogs for a couple of years now, but this was the first time I had a chance to sit down and have a conversation with them. It was a very energizing experience. If you'd like to learn more about Blog World Expo and the health care blogger's track, stop by Emergiblog and leave a comment with your email. Kim, the author of Emergiblog, is putting together an email list and will be updating us through out the year on this event. Hope to see you there!