Free Republic

Program will address ‘insidious problem’ with racism in medicine: nurses association Nursing students at the University of Illinois soon will receive “diversity, equity, and inclusion” training via virtual reality courtesy of a $20,000 grant to address racism. The American Nurses Association, which awarded the grant through its National Commission to Address Racism in Nursing, says the funds will address an “insidious problem” with racism in nursing. But other medical professionals and scholars say the project is a waste of money. The university’s College of Nursing plans to use the grant to hire a software engineer to create virtual reality training...

Heather Pressdee, a nurse in Butler County who was already facing charges related to giving patients lethal doses of insulin, is now facing charges related to the mistreatment of 19 additional patients. 41-year-old nurse allegedly administered lethal doses of insulin to three patients beginning in 2020. Now 19 additional patients have been found to have been mistreated while under her care at five different care facilities. In total, 17 patients under Pressdee's care have died. Now, she is facing two new charges of first-degree murder, 17 counts of attempted murder, and 19 counts of neglect of a care-dependent person. The...

At a time when registered nurses are going on strike to protest staffing shortages, thousands of applicants who want to enter or advance in the profession are being turned away from nursing schools. Nearly 78,200 qualified applications were not offered spots at nursing schools last year, according to the American Association of Colleges of Nursing, which represents schools with baccalaureate and advanced degree programs. This includes nearly 66,300 applications for entry-level bachelor’s degree programs. The number of applications turned away from baccalaureate programs has been higher in recent years than it was prior to 2019. (One person may submit applications...

Mandatory wearing of masks in hospitals and skilled nursing facilities in Marin County will return in November to curb an anticipated spread of respiratory diseases, including COVID-19, according to county officials. The masking requirement will take effect from Nov. 1 through March 31, 2024, Marin Health and Human Services officials said Wednesday. Once the measure has taken effect, all individuals within higher-risk health care settings in Marin County, especially in patient care areas, will be required to wear masks. Children below the age of 6 and those with valid medical reasons are exempted from the mandate, county officials said. Under...

A student earning her Doctor of Nursing Practice degree from the University of Alabama says she left the school after a professor brought Critical Race Theory (CRT) and other diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) ideas into the classroom. She said the ideas were offensive and dangerous. Sarah Budde, an emergency room RN in Florida, thought Alabama would be the best place for her to pursue her doctorate. However, she changed her mind after taking the multicultural and social education for leadership personnel class taught by Dr. Nirmala Erevelles. "As a student, I paid for this program and paid for the...

<p>Cops have launched an investigation into a series of mysterious assaults on crippled astrophysicist Stephen Hawking. The probe reportedly began after the author of the best seller "A Brief History of Time" was left stranded in his wheelchair in the garden of his country home last summer on the hottest day of the year.</p>

A study has found that health managers should consider the levels of a range of staff, beyond just doctors and nurses, when assessing patient safety. Research shows hospitals with higher levels of allied healthcare professional (AHP) staff, such as physiotherapists, radiographers, dieticians and occupational therapists, report significantly lower mortality rates. The findings showed that for hospitals where doctors and allied health professionals had to cover fewer beds, there were significantly lower mortality rates. However, for hospitals where there were more healthcare assistants and assistants to allied health professionals in the staffing mix, there were higher mortality rates. The study also...

The Republican senator wanted to make a point about America’s COVID policies compared to the rest of the world. On Thursday, Sen. Rand Paul wanted to know if the dean of Johns Hopkins School of Nursing was ‘pro-choice.’ ‘Are you pro-choice in regards to patients making individualized medical choices?” Paul asked Dr. Sarah Szanton. “Broadly, thank you, yes,” Szanton replied. Paul was beginning a larger discussion to note that other nations have enjoyed more medical freedoms than most Americans have had. “Are you aware that your university doesn’t allow choice with regard to vaccination, that you require all of your...

A massive, coordinated scheme to sell false and fraudulent nursing degree credentials has been brought down by a joint federal law enforcement operation, Justice Department officials said Wednesday. As first reported by ABC News, officials said the scheme involved peddling more than $100 million worth of bogus nursing diplomas and transcripts over the course of several years -- fake credentials that were sold to help "thousands of people" take "shortcuts" toward becoming licensed, practicing nurses. Officials said the forged diplomas and transcripts were sold from what had been accredited schools to aspiring nurses, in order to help candidates bypass the...

GRAND JUNCTION, Colo. (KDVR) — A class action lawsuit filed Tuesday by Rathod Mohamedbhai LLC outlines years of alleged sexual assault that was recorded and photographed on the phone of a registered nurse at Saint Mary’s Hospital, SCL Health and Intermountain Healthcare. Christopher Lambros, 61, allegedly drugged and sexually assaulted, and/or took lewd photos and videos of patients for at least 10 years while he was an RN, primarily in the Intensive Care Unit in Grand Junction. Lambros received his nursing license in Colorado on June 12, 2012. Around the same time, he was hired by Saint Mary’s, SCL Health...

An acute nursing shortage is clogging or even closing hospital emergency rooms across Canada, pushing an already stressed national health system to the brink with potentially severe consequences for patient care. Burnout from the Covid-19 pandemic, abuse from patients and salary discontent have seen nursing staff quitting their jobs in droves, and experts say the situation is only likely to worsen. The impact on emergency care is such that Ottawa police recently had to take a shooting victim to hospital in their squad car, rather than wait for an ambulance, and an elderly woman who fell and broke her hip...

College Station, Texas I was fired from my nursing job this year for refusing to take “implicit bias” training. After 39 years of providing equal care to all my patients without regard to their race, I objected to a mandatory course grounded in the idea that I’m racist because I’m white. I fear every healthcare professional will soon be forced to make the same awful decision I did: Falsely admit to being racist or abandon the medical field. My ordeal started in September 2021 when my employer, Dallas-based Baylor Scott & White Health, rolled out its annual training modules for...

Medical education, medical research, and standards of competence have been upended by two related hypotheses: that systemic racism is responsible both for racial disparities in the demographics of the medical profession and for racial disparities in health outcomes.

Half of nurses in the U.S. are now battling against violence on wards, one of the largest nursing unions in the country said today. In its bi-annual survey, National Nurses United found more than 48 per cent of nurses said they were facing a small or significant spike in violence at work. This was more than double the 21 per cent that said there were more assaults in their hospitals in March last year. Cases included patients spitting on nurses after being told they had tested positive for COVID-19, and scratching, hitting or even threatening healthcare workers with firearms. Hospitals...

Healthcare workers fearful of repercussions from former nurse RaDonda Vaught's conviction, Director of Enterprise & Investigative Reporting, MedPage Today Healthcare workers are alarmed by the conviction of former Nashville nurse RaDonda Vaught, who now faces prison time over a medical error. "We could all and probably have been close to this situation because we're continuously stretched too thin," Kelsey Fassold, RN, an ICU nurse, said in a LinkedIn post. "We try so hard to do the best by our patients while the odds are stacked against us." Jeremy Faust, MD, MedPage Today's editor-in-chief, said in an Inside Medicine post that...

The suspect remains at large, but a manhunt is now underway. The woman is suffering from third-degree burns over her upper body and hands, and lacerations to her head. There were no witnesses when the incident took place shortly before 5.30 a.m. in one of the hospital's break rooms after the pair were heard arguing. The suspect was hired as the state's hospital workers were wracked by COVID infections caused by the Delta and Omicron variants.

The state of Connecticut has issued a new order putting COVID patients in nursing homes as hospitals see overcrowding thanks to the latest COVID variant. The state will issue the order despite Democrat governors in multiple states like New York, Pennsylvania and New Jersey forcing nursing homes early in the COVID pandemic to take COVID patients — decisions that resulted in as many as 50,000 elderly people dying as COVID spread in their facilities. The spread of COVID in nursing homes in New York was so bad after Andrew Cuomo issued his order that 15,000 or more nursing home residents...

Disgraced former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo was torched by a former mob boss over the Democrat’s COVID nursing home scandal, saying that he "would never do that." The former boss of the Gambino crime family in New York City, Sammy "The Bull" Gravano, tore into Cuomo in a new series alongside former Colombo caporegime Michael Franzese over the deadly scandal that became a black mark on the former governor’s administration. "I hate to get into Governor Cuomo. I will a little bit because he’s Italian and I can’t stand it," Gravano said in the clip obtained by Fox News,...

Nurses are calling the nursing shortage in the U.S. and Oregon "historic and catastrophic." Officials leading the Oregon Nurses Association held a virtual press conference on Thursday and said the staffing issue has been many years in the making, starting before the pandemic. They want hospitals and state lawmakers to step in to fix the situation. “Oregon’s health care system has been broken for a long time. Our pleas for changes to make the system patient-centered have been ignored by hospital executives for decades,” said Matt Calzia, a registered nurse and nurse practice consultant with the Oregon Nurses Association (ONA)....

In a press conference Monday afternoon, Governor Hochul confirmed that she would sign an executive order giving her the emergency power to deploy the National Guard to cover staffing shortages caused by the midnight deadline for anyone who remains unvaccinated in violation of her state's Wuhan coronavirus vaccine mandate. "I will be signing an executive order to give me the emergency powers necessary to address these shortages where they occur," Hochul declared. "That's going to allow me to deploy the National Guard who are medically trained, deploy people who've been retired who may have had a license lapse, [and] bring...