Here’s where the rubber hits the road as far as drug names go. As a nurse, you need to know: The generic and common brand names for all medications frequently used in your area of practice How to look up any unfamiliar medication prior to administering it And, as a patient advocate, you must teach those under your care: To learn the generic and brand (if taking a name brand drug) names of their medications or at least keep a current...  Read More »

Our Last Semester columnist, Chelsea, is no longer in her last semester. She’s no longer looking for a job, either. After passing the NCLEX a couple of weeks ago, Chelsea is quickly moving on to the next phase of her life. Here’s a look inside her first REAL nursing gig: Not only am I a real nurse, but now I actually have a job! (This grown-up stuff isn’t quite so scary anymore.) I came to the realization that my first...  Read More »

Our Last Semester columnist, Chelsea, is no longer in her last semester. She’s no longer looking for a job, either. After passing the NCLEX a couple of weeks ago, Chelsea is quickly moving on to the next phase of her life. Here’s a look inside her first REAL nursing gig: Not only am I a real nurse, but now I actually have a job! (This grown-up stuff isn’t quite so scary anymore.) I came to the realization that my first...  Read More »

Healthcare facilities invest large amounts of money on external recruitment agencies to bring nurses through their doors. But for some facilities, the most effective recruitment strategies begin right at home. “Instead of investing $100,000 in an agency that would recruit five nurses over the year, we opted to do something different,” says Robert L. Dent, RN, MBA, NEA-BC, FACHE, vice president of nursing at Midland Memorial Hospital...  Read More »

Former pilot Gary L. Sculli, RN, MSN, ATP, no longer works in the skies. But some might say he now leads his nursing unit to even greater heights. Aviation safety concepts Sculli learned during his previous career are changing the way his staff members practice nursing at Baptist Memorial Hospital in Memphis, TN. Now nurse manager of a 40-bed unit, he has transferred his knowledge and experiences in the air to the bedside in the quest to...  Read More »

Recruitment—and even more importantly retention—are becoming more and more significant as the United States continues to deal with its nursing shortage. In order to retain nurses, hospitals must be places that people are “dying to work at.” But it is hard defining what those hospitals will look like. Regardless of what the future holds for healthcare and hospitals, most experts agree that recruiting and retaining enough employees...  Read More »

By Richard Freedberg, RN, MSN, MPA I teach in a community college that offers four different nursing programs designed to build on the past experiences and accommodate the busy lives of our diverse students. There are differences among the entry and upper levels of students in all of the programs, but there are also some striking similarities. One common thread shared by all is the question: “When will I feel like a nurse?” This...  Read More »

Are you nervous about your senior year of nursing? Are you busy studying feverishly for the NCLEX exam? Could you use a little refresher on some nursing skills you haven’t used lately? No matter where you are on your nursing journey, our Quick-E clinical pocket guides can help. We just published 12 new editions a couple of weeks ago and we’re already hearing great reviews about the glossy covers, the tabs for easy navigation,...  Read More »

When Gwinnett Medical Center in Lawrenceville, GA, decided to cut nursing paperwork by 50% to increase nursing time at the bedside, it was an all-hands-on-deck approach. “What we found was that it was the paperwork that was keeping us from patient care,” says Deborah Briese, RN, BSN, CCRN-CMC, who is in charge of Provision of Care chapters for the facility. In October 2007, medical-surgical leadership chartered a nursing documentation...  Read More »

By Richard Freedberg, RN, MSN, MPA Have you ever had one of those days? You introduce yourself to the patient assigned to you in clinical, “Hi, I’m Rick, your student nurse,” and he or she responds, “Great, another rookie! I feel like a guinea pig! Why don’t you just go practice somewhere else?”  Your experience seems to plummet from there. What went wrong? How can you establish a relationship? How can...  Read More »