Augusta University: New collaboration teaches empathy via virtual reality. “LIVE [Learning through Interprofessional Virtual Experiences] uses virtual reality to train nurses through end-of-life simulation, which teaches them empathy and helps them practice techniques to better support their future patients and families.”
Bernews: Emancipation Website & Art Exhibition Launch. “Earlier this week, the Department of Culture unveiled an exhibition entitled ‘Pioneers Who Persevered: Black Nurses in Segregated Bermuda,’ which is currently on display at the Bermuda Society of Arts. ‘The exhibition is partially virtual and links to a new Emancipation website developed by the Department, which chronicles key milestones in Bermuda’s history,’ a spokesperson said.”
Boston Globe: ‘I felt like I was drowning’: Exhausted and burned out, nurses are leaving their jobs in droves. “During the peaks of the pandemic, nurses witnessed the suffering and death that COVID can bring. They held the hands of dying patients. They worried about becoming sick themselves, or bringing the virus home to their families. And sometimes, instead of gratitude, patients in the throes of illness responded with abuse. At first, nurses said, adrenaline kept them going. But when COVID receded, other sick patients flooded hospitals. There was no time for health care workers to rest. With each successive surge of the virus, more experienced nurses have opted to leave. And the conditions for those who remained have become even worse.”
San Francisco Chronicle: Here’s why hospital nurses, the pandemic’s ‘health care heroes,’ are so ticked off. ” Understaffing at Bay Area hospitals predates the pandemic, but two years of COVID-19 have made it worse. All told, hospitals in California are short the equivalent of more than 40,000 full-time nurses, a UCSF study reported in August. That’s almost 14% fewer than needed, a shortage the researchers expect to last until 2026 when enough nursing students graduate to match pre-COVID levels. Older nurses are leaving the profession faster than new ones can begin, and many in mid-career say they can’t wait to leave, the study found.”
STAT News: Doctors often turn to Google Translate to talk to patients. They want a better option. “‘I do think it is the future,’ said Breena Taira, a clinical emergency medicine researcher at UCLA Health whose recent study evaluated Google-translated discharge instructions in seven languages. Tech giants like Google and Microsoft, which have invested heavily in voice recognition software, have expressed interest in exploring medical translation. ‘We just have to be really aware of what the limitations are,’ Taira said, including significantly lower accuracy rates for languages that aren’t widely spoken.”
University of British Columbia: New COVID-19 study links nurses’ mental health to quality of care. “The study, published recently in the journal Healthcare, found that the more severe the mental health symptoms reported by nurses, the more likely they will rate the quality of care in their work units in hospitals, long-term care homes and community health centres as poor.”
Route Fifty: Travel Nurses Saw a Pay Increase During the Pandemic. They Could Lose Those Benefits. “In the last few months, several groups, including the American Hospital Association (AHA), the American Health Care Association/National Center for Assisted Living and 200 members of Congress, have called for an investigation into claims that agencies that place travel nurses around the country have been ‘price gouging’ hospitals in need of staff.”
BBC: Thousands of Australian nurses go on strike as Covid cases mount. “Thousands of nurses in Australia’s most populous state have gone on strike, protesting against stagnant pay and staffing shortages. It comes despite an order by the state’s industrial relations commission to call off the strike. It is the first industrial action taken by nurses in almost a decade. The Omicron variant has led to a recent surge of cases, putting the country’s testing and hospital systems under further strain.”
Stanford Medicine: Psychologists launch free, online emotional-wellness tool for health care workers. “Stanford Medicine psychologists have created a free mental health resource that health care workers, and anyone, can access online for emotional support.”
NBC New York: Long Island Nurses Make $1.5 Million in Fake Vaccine Card Scam: DA. “Two nurses working on Long Island are accused of forging official COVID-19 vaccination cards and entering the information into New York’s statewide database — a scheme that allegedly brought in over $1.5 million. The district attorney in Suffolk County announced Friday the arrests of Julie DeVuono, 49, and Marissa Urrao, 44, who worked at Wild Child Pediatric Healthcare in Amityville. DeVuono was the its owner and operator, the DA said.”
New York Times: A Shrinking Band of Southern Nurses, Neck-Deep in Another Covid Wave. “Even as new cases peak and begin to decline in the Northeast and Upper Midwest, the nation’s hospitals are still confronting a crushing influx of patients. In Mississippi, the latest wave of infections has pushed nearly all of the state’s acute-care hospitals to capacity.”
CBC: 3 Ontario nurses disciplined for social media posts related to pandemic launch $1M libel suit. “Three Ontario nurses who have faced discipline for their stances on the pandemic are suing the Canadian Nurses Association (CNA) and a media outlet in British Columbia, with the libel suit seeking $1 million. Kristen Nagle of London, Kristal Pitter of Tillsonburg and Sara Choujounian of Toronto have been investigated by the College of Nurses of Ontario (CNO) for sharing their controversial views about the pandemic on social media.”
The Atlantic: Hospitals Are in Serious Trouble. “Here, then, is the most important difference about this surge: It comes on the back of all the prior ones. COVID’s burden is additive. It isn’t reflected just in the number of occupied hospital beds, but also in the faltering resolve and thinning ranks of the people who attend those beds.”
NPR: Short-staffed and COVID-battered, U.S. hospitals are hiring more foreign nurses. “Billings Clinic is just one of scores of hospitals across the U.S. looking abroad to ease a shortage of nurses worsened by the coronavirus pandemic. The national demand is so great that it has created a backlog of health care professionals awaiting clearance to work in the U.S. More than 5,000 international nurses are awaiting final visa approval, the American Association of International Healthcare Recruitment reported in September.”
Philadelphia Inquirer: Pa. nurses after 22 months of COVID-19 and a new surge: ‘It is so defeating’. “As the United States enters a third calendar year of the pandemic, and braces to see whether this omicron- and delta-fueled case surge will cause hospitalizations to spike further, we talked to four nurses, who described units full of COVID-19 patients, most of whom are unvaccinated and many of whom are now skewing younger. They described the emotional toll — ‘defeating,’ ‘disheartening,’ ‘frustrating,’ and ‘exhausting.’”
