The Gift: An Inspiring Nurse Story

We all have our own nursing stories to tell our colleagues and even our children. But the greatest nursing stories of all are those that inspire others to understand why nursing is more than just a calling; why every experience can be considered a gift.

His name was Randolph and he was ninety four years old, according to the neighbor who found him early one morning.  He was apparently out for his morning walk to buy a newspaper when he collapsed on his front porch.When I first laid eyes on Randolph, he was lying helplessly, but conscious, on a gurney in the emergency area of our small local hospital.He was dressed in a grey tweed suit, white shirt and a bow tie.His eyes were bright blue and staring straight at me.

Read  More at Nursetogether.com

Why I Won’t Give Up My Day Job: A Nurse’s Inspiration to Write

My communication skills as a nurse are much stronger than my communication skills as a person. In a patient’s room, I can lay out the plan of care, explain the diagnosis, and encourage a discussion about sentiments and feelings. But when the nurse hat comes off, it becomes a bit harder. I’ll admit I have difficulty expressing my feelings, but give me a computer or a pen and paper and I can bring up every thought and emotion that runs through my head. My feelings are unchallenged and remain fixed on the page. Nobody can change, question, or contest them. That is the reason why I continue to write. It has become my catharsis.

Read More on The Nerdy Nurse

Take Control of Your Habits and Discover How Powerful You Really Are

“Your beliefs become your thoughts, 

Your thoughts become your words, 

Your words become your actions, 

Your actions become your habits, 

Your habits become your values, 

Your values become your destiny.” 

― Mahatma Gandhi

The reality is that you – and the life you lead today – are the result of your habits. Changing habits can seem difficult to accomplish at first, but success is a result of your habits.

If you think about it, you’re living out your habits every day. From how early you get out of bed, to your morning routine, how you dress, walk, exercise, interact with others and even what you habitually think about and how you respond to the world.

These habits got you to where you are today…

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Real Food on a Budget: BushelBox to the Rescue!

Keeping a healthy lifestyle budget-friendly is important to us around here. Here, we tell you about five ways to make the alternative lifestyle more budget-friendly. At the top of that post, you’ll see our advice to share real food and natural health items with friends, which is exactly what we want to tell you about today.

Below, contributor Jaclyn shares how our sponsor BushelBox can help you save money and get your hands on real food and other natural living items on a budget

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Nurse staffing levels are the ‘surprise’ key to stroke survival, finds study

Researchers found having the optimal number of nurses available to care for patients in an acute stroke unit was the best predictor of survival – after other factors like age, blood pressure and the severity of the attack were taken into account.

“This proved to be a very clear and consistent predictor of stroke survival”

Phyo Myint

Just one additional trained nurse per 10 beds could reduce the chance of death after 30 days by up to 28%, according to the study. Meanwhile, the chance of death a year after someone had a stroke was cut by 12%.
The study, by the University of Aberdeen and the University of East Anglia, was based on data from eight hospitals in the East of England concerning nearly 2,400 acute stroke patients.

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Butterflies in My Stomach: The Brain-Gut Axis

Ever had that horrible sensation of butterflies in your stomach before giving a speech? If so, then you have experienced one of the common ways in which the brain interacts with the gut to influence our thoughts, feelings, and perceptions. In fact, the brain and gut are inextricably linked, to the point that we often don’t realize the important role this link plays in our psychological health. Disorders such as Irritable Bowel Syndrome and Functional Constipation illustrate how important the role of our thoughts and feelings are on our gut function. In this article, the link between the brain and the gut in our physical and psychological wellbeing will be discussed.
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Dealing with the Looming Cloud of the Possibility of Early Death

Five years ago, I had breast cancer. To rid myself of it, I had chemotherapy, radiation and a double mastectomy.
Flash forward five years. One day, I noticed a strange, bright red splotch on my breast, the breast where the cancer had been. The doctor did a biopsy of it, and the results came back malignant. It was an angiosarcoma, and the suspected cause was the radiation treatment I’d had five years before. This was a very rare form of cancer that, again, results sometimes from the radiation itself. That which was meant to heal me, made me ill.
On June 10, 2016, I had surgery to remove the cancer.
Fine and dandy. They got clean margins. Then, something awful happened. I was told that I had to have a CT scan to see if the cancer had spread throughout my body. (Nobody told me this beforehand.)
Enter fear, despair and disappointment. Enter the possibility of cancer and, therefore, the possibility of early death.
How am I dealing with this looming cloud of grief that is hanging over my head?
Below are some of my most useful techniques.

Read more on PsychCentral

The Doctor Who Gave Up Drugs

“Come and get your pills! We are selling pills with side effects guaranteed! Gastric bleeding, sir? These can erode your stomach lining and kill you.” Setting up a mock market stall called The Honest Pharmacy was just the start of The Doctor Who Gave Up Drugs (BBC One) – a blend of science documentary and social experiment which was both eye-opening and surprisingly entertaining.

Read More
Even More and BBC link

Finnish Open Dialogue: High recovery rates leave many psychiatric beds empty

This is a guest post written by Daniel Mackler the filmmaker. His three films show alternative methods of healing people with psychosis. In all the films relationships are ultimately what heal. Loving, healing relationships. Please visit these posts to look at the trailers and read a bit about each of his films. Here and here and here. You can purchase the films here.

All the films are now available for free viewing on youtube now as well. If you’ve not seen them yet, it’s well worth taking the time to do so.

The below article was written as a result of a conversation that Daniel and I had. He revealed that the psychiatric hospital he visited when making his last film, built in the 1950s was mostly empty. They don’t need the beds because their success rate is so high!

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President Barack Obama’s ambitious 1-million-person personalized medicine study

President Barack Obama’s ambitious 1-million-person personalized medicine study began to take shape this week with the announcement of four medical centers that will recruit volunteers starting this fall. A fifth center aims to sign up 350,000 participants by blasting the general public with ads coming soon to your web browser or mobile phone.
The White House’s announcement yesterday of $55 million in awards from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) fires the starting gun for the Precision Medicine Initiative (PMI) Cohort Program. The plan is to recruit 1 million or more people who are willing to share their health and genetic information over many years to help researchers develop individualized treatments. Other countries have similar studies underway, but the U.S. version aims to be larger, more diverse, and more patient-centric—participants will help shape the study and be able to see their data. NIH Director Francis Collins calls it “the largest, most ambitious research project of this sort ever undertaken.”
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What’s up, doc? Tell me over my smartphone, please

This year, a German businesswoman arrived in Washington DC and promptly developed a painful sinus infection. She searched online and found a local doctor, Suzanne Doud Galli. But instead of ordering a taxi to visit Dr Galli’s office, the patient arranged a virtual consultation via her smartphone from the comfort of her hotel room, with the help of an app called HealthTap.

The app’s algorithm matched the patient’s symptoms with Dr Galli’s expertise. Dr Galli prescribed medicine and sent the prescription electronically to a pharmacy near the patient’s hotel — all in about 10 minutes.

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Home Remedies for Chronic Fatigue Syndrome

Some of the home remedies for chronic fatigue syndrome include the use of bee pollen, maca root, iodine, B-complex vitamins, vitamin C, ginseng, licorice, astragalus, alfalfa, oats, St. John’s Wort, and valerian root, as well as certain behavioral remedies including acupuncture and chiropractic care.
This unfortunate condition afflicts millions of people around the world, and while the small percentage in terms of the global population often leaves this disease below the radar, it can significantly affect the lives of those who suffer from it. Unfortunately, there is no clear cause of chronic fatigue syndrome, although experts believe that it can be a result of genetic, environmental, infectious, biologic, and psychological factors. That may seem like a wide range of possibilities, so most people treat the symptoms rather than whatever may be causing the condition. It is also known as myalgic encephalomyelitis or post-viral fatigue syndrome. Someone is diagnosed with chronic fatigue syndrome if they experience the symptoms of the condition for more than 6 months.

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Low Stomach Acid: The Risks, the Symptoms, and the Solutions

The multi-billion dollar antacid industry has you believing that stomach acid is bad for you.
While you may use antacids for heartburn relief or indigestion, they are not a cure for what causes these problems in the first place.
Contrary to popular belief, indigestion is usually caused by low stomach acid - also called hypochlorhydria- and it affects up to half of our population.¹
Treatment that further neutralizes stomach acid can make your digestion worse.

Why Stomach Acid is Good For You

Stomach acid or hydrochloric acid (HCl), is a very powerful digestive agent, and much more important than you realize.

HCl's important functions include:

• Breaking down proteins into the essential amino acids and nutrients your body needs in order to stay healthy.
• Stimulating your pancreas and small intestines to produce the digestive enzymes and bile necessary to further breakdown the carbohydrates, proteins and fats you eat.
• Preventing disease by killing pathogenic bacteria and yeast normally present in food.

As you age, your stomach acid tends to decrease anyway. Add a poor diet of processed foods and you may find that you have both digestive and immune problems

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Six rules to help you avoid consuming partially hydrogenated oils.

Here are six rules to help you avoid consuming partially hydrogenated oils. Don't think for one minute that this is all you need to do for your heart and your health. Eliminating partially hydrogenated oils from your diet is just one piece of the puzzle. This is not the place to educate you about heart health and other medical issues. But if you don't understand heart health, then learn about it - please - for your own and your family's well-being. And if you are avoiding squarely facing up to the issue, and possibly kidding yourself, then go to a cardiologist for a checkup if you haven't already done so. That applies to women too. Heart disease is the number one killer of women in the United States.

Six rules to avoid eating bad fats
(and don't be deceived by
"cholesterol free" products)

1. Don't eat any product which has the words "partially hydrogenated" or "shortening" in the ingredients list.
2. If the label says zero trans fats, don't believe it. If the words "partially hydrogenated" or "shortening" are in the ingredients list, it DOES contain trans fat.

3. Be careful when consuming products with labels from outside the United States. Sometimes they contain partially hydrogenated oil but it's not on the label.

4. In restaurants, bakeries, and other eateries, ask whether they use partially hydrogenated oil for frying or baking or in salad dressings. If they say they use vegetable oil, ask whether it is partially hydrogenated. Don't be shy about asking. Assume that all unlabeled baked and fried goods contain partially hydrogenated oil, unless you know otherwise.
5. Keep saturated fat intake low too. This is very important.
6. Remember that polyunsaturated fat and monounsaturated fats are good fats.
To learn more about good and bad fats, click here. 
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See also 

The Approval Trap: How to Ditch the Fear You Didn’t Know You Had So You Can Find Your Inner Authority

When my daughter was two years old, she loved to draw. The funny thing is, she never asked me if it was okay to draw on the walls. She assumed it was fine. White wall, colorful crayons, good idea. She had inner authority: she didn’t stress about it; she knew just what she liked. She never second guessed herself, wondering if she was good enough. She certainly didn’t wonder if she was smart enough, attractive enough, or funny enough. She assumed that she was all of these things and more, and most importantly, she was undeterred in accomplishing whatever she set her mind to.

Read More from Positively Positive

The Davis Autism Approach

Disclaimer: This Blog is posted for interest only; this post does not advocate any particular treatment.

Within the Davis Autism Approach, in our aim for simplicity, we have chosen to use ‘Autism’ as the umbrella term for Autism, Asperger Syndrome (AS), High Functioning Autism (HFA) or Pervasive Developmental Disorder-Not Otherwise Specified (PDD-NOS). We hope this is acceptable to you.

The Davis Autism Approach is a non-invasive, gentle approach designed to allow autistic individuals to participate more fully in life. 

This one-on-one program can be conducted by a Davis Autism Approach Facilitator or by a parent or loved one who can be trained and mentored by a Davis Autism Facilitator-Coach.

Read More from the Davis Autism Approach

Can Autism be cured

Disclaimer: This Blog is posted for interest only; this post does not advocate any particular treatment.

Things are heating up. Last week I posted Vaccines DO Cause Autism, but That’s Not The Point, and things got ugly. But I’m not going to stop there. It’s the month where everyone lights it up blue… and there’s nothing wrong with that. But I think we need to focus on more than blue lights. We should be asking the question: can autism be cured?

According to many of your recent comments, autism cannot be cured. You say that autism is a genetic, neurological disorder that some children are born with.

Well, I hate to disagree… but, I disagree.

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Psychiatric nurses threaten strike over staffing shortages

The Psychiatric Nurses Association is to vote on proposals for industrial action over staffing shortages in the profession.

Delegates at the association’s annual conference in Co Cavan voted to put a proposal for a ballot on industrial action to a special executive council meeting next month.

The union says up to 1,000 new nurses are needed to fill 600 current vacancies and to replace retiring staff across the mental health services.

General secretary Des Kavanagh said the association could not trust the HSE to guarantee a proper nursing workforce was in place. Nurses had no faith that the strategies being pursued by the HSE to recruit and train nurses would meet the “chronic shortages” faced in the coming years, he said.

More from the Irish Times

Permission granted for national children's hospital

An Bord Pleanála has granted planning permission for the new children's hospital on a campus shared with St James's Hospital in Dublin.

The project will bring together the three existing children's hospitals - Temple Street Children's University Hospital, Our Lady's Children's Hospital, Crumlin and the National Children's Hospital, Tallaght.

There has been much controversy of the suitability of the site

Read more from RTE

Meet Your Second Brain: The Gut

Most of us can relate to the experience of having butterflies in our stomach, or to a visceral gut-wrenching feeling, and how often are we told not to ignore our “gut-instinct” or “gut-feeling” when making a decision.
Even from our simple slang, it’s clear just how symbolically connected the gut is to our emotions. Now, there’s tangible proof to support these popular metaphors.
We all have a microbiome, and they are as unique as our neural pathways
Research has shown that the body is actually composed of more bacteria than cells. We are more bug than human! Collectively, these trillions of bacteria are called the microbiome. Most of those bacteria reside in our gut, sometimes referred to as the gut microbiota, and they play multiple roles in our overall health.
The gut is no longer seen as an entity with the sole purpose of helping with all aspects of digestion. It’s also being considered as a key player in regulating inflammation and immunity.
Read more from mindful.org

The Cancer Whisperer

Perhaps the only dreams that die are the ones that come true. They cease to exist in the very instant that they pass from imagination to reality. Until then they live on in the recesses of your mind,veiled by disappointment and hopelessness, like old love letters tied up in red ribbon and left in an antique box in the attic. Forgotten and unfulfilled.

Sometimes it can take a near-catastrophe to pull your dreams back into the forefront of your consciousness and convince you to dust off all the reasons you abandoned them. Sometimes you need to teeter on the rim of death to put them back into play.

I wrote The Cancer Whisperer last summer because cancer had dropped my neglected dream of being an author into my arms like a newborn baby, wide-eyed and irresistible, demanding my complete attention. I barely had a choice in the matter. It just wanted out.

Read more on the website Sophie Sabbage: the Cancer Whisperer

5 Truths Only Depressives Understand & How to Fight Back

There are some things that only depressives understand. It’s hard to describe to people who have never experienced it before and most of the time too painful.

But today, I’m going to try.

As someone with clinical depression, I fight these truths on a cycling basis. After years of healing and proactive recovery, I’ve grown to be a pro at pulling myself back out of the darkness. As strong as I’ve gotten, however, I still get hit with these issues when I least expect it.

It’s a battle to open up about what we’re feeling or thinking because a part of us believes our distortions are true. To say it out loud would surely break us.

I’ve learned that by letting the people I love in, I give myself permission to heal, and so do you. We get nowhere with silence.

Depression isn’t something to grit your teeth and bear; it’s a malady only love will heal. [tweet it]

It’s my hope that sharing these truths with you, the depressed or the compassionate, will either help you feel less alone or better understand a loved one in your life who can’t speak up yet. Below each truth, I offer how I fight back against the distortions, and also how you as a supporter might be able to support someone who’s going through a low point.

Here are the 5 truths only depressives understand (and how to fight back).

Read more from the blog 'Strong inside out'

Newly published charter of rights for people with dementia

Former president Mary Robinson has said a newly published charter of rights for people with dementia would help society view the condition in a new light.

Ireland’s first such document is the culmination of work carried out by the Irish Dementia Working Group and the Alzheimer Society of Ireland (ASI).

The Charter of Rights for People with Dementia stresses the need for a parity of rights for the 48,000 people estimated to have the condition in Ireland.

Specifically, it highlights policy gaps in the areas of stigma and the “inadequate and inappropriate” nature of services.

Read more 

Remedies for Your Anxious Mind

This week's theme: Soothing an anxious mind.

When you're antsy, jumpy, or feeling anxious, a walking meditation can be the best thing to help transfer all of that inner movement into focused attention.

Sometimes, simply pausing, taking five deep breaths, expanding the inbreath and slowing the outbreath, can steady us, and give us a moment of open awareness.

One of the best ways to soothe the nerves is to find other people to be with and talk to, which is how we discover that most people feel anxious to some degree—it isn't just happening to us.

Here’s hoping you all find moments to enjoy being mindful this week

Taken from Mindful Newletter extract

Three Simple Mindfulness Practices You Can Use Every Day

Every minute of our lives serves up something new and gives us an opportunity to learn. But when it comes to the usual ways of learning—reading, writing, and listening to others—we often lose the freshness of direct experience and instead just shovel information into our brains. Mirabai Bush suggests how to learn more deeply and with more enjoyment.

Read More from Mindfulness.org

Study could help tackle memory loss associated with conditions such as Alzheimer’s and other types of dementia

Our brains can act the same way as email by filing irrelevant thoughts into a neurological trash folder.
Forgetting memories can be the result of an active deletion process rather than a failure to remember, according to new research.
The findings point towards new ways of tackling memory loss associated with conditions such as Alzheimer’s disease and other types of dementia.
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The Lancet: We now live in a world in which more people are obese than underweight, major global analysis reveals

• By 2025, around a fifth of adults worldwide will be obese
• Over a third of UK men and women, and over 40% of US men and women will be obese by 2025.
  
• Interactive maps and country by country data available below

In the past 40 years, there has been a startling increase in the number of obese people worldwide--rising from 105 million in 1975 to 641 million in 2014, according to the most comprehensive analysis of trends in body mass index (BMI) to date, published in The Lancet.
The age-corrected proportion of obese men has more than tripled (3.2% to 10.8%), and the proportion of obese women has more than doubled (6.4% to 14.9%) since 1975. At the same time, the proportion of underweight people fell more modestly--by around a third in both men (13.8% to 8.8%) and women (14.6% to 9.7%).

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10 Old-School Nursing Skills You Don’t See Anymore

Nursing, along with the rest of the medical field, is constantly evolving to ensure better patient outcomes. Nursing skills, in particular, have changed quite a bit over the last several decades. Some skills have even been discarded completely for the sake of safety or efficiency. Here are 10 interesting examples of old-school nursing skills that have either drastically changed or are no longer practiced:

1. Reusing syringes and urinary catheter

Read More at Scrubs Blog

The Role of Nurses in Increasing Health Literacy

As nurses, we tend to take for granted how much our patients know about their own health conditions. The truth is, many don’t know much, and by overestimating their health literacy we are hindering their road to a recovery. With new standards in health care going into effect that entail more patient involvement in their own treatment, it is imperative that nurses learn how to properly assess health literacy.

What is Health Literacy?

In most cases, a patient ultimately has the final say in how they are treated medically. Even routine procedures are not first performed without their consent. While this measure seemingly protects their rights, it could hinder their recovery if they are not sure of what is happening to them.

Read more at Scrubs

Things for which I would never apologise - ever

Not answering phone calls from work or checking work email while I'm on vacation. Leave me voicemail if it's really important and I'll call you back.

This policy stems from the time the house supervisor called me and asked me to come in one morning for an "incentive shift." I replied that sorry, I couldn't come in, and got subjected to a lecture about how not-a-team-player I was and how my coworkers were going to suffer. I said, "Yeah, yeah, but I'm in CANADA" and that was that

Read more at Head Nurse Blog

What is grounded theory?

Grounded theory (GT) is a research method concerned with the generation of theory,1 which is ‘grounded’ in data that has been systematically collected and analysed.2 It is used to uncover such things as social relationships and behaviours of groups, known as social processes.3 It was developed in California, USA by Glaser and Strauss during their study—‘Awareness of Dying’.1 It is a general methodology for developing theory that is grounded in data which is systematically gathered and analysed.

Read more from Evidence based nursing 

Methylation: What It Is And How It Affects You

Methylation is crucial to happiness and well-being.

Making too much or not enough methyl impairs our ability to think clearly, have meaningful relationships, a healthy body, and live a fulfilling life.

In today’s world, methylation problems are commonplace due to food and environmental toxins, emotional trauma, genetic errors, and stress.

Conditions that have a direct link to methylation imbalances include, but are not limited to: bipolar disorder, behavior disorders and ADHD, autism, schizophrenia, Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, autoimmune diseases, and cancer.

Symptoms include, but are not limited to: depression, high anxiety, obsessive compulsive disorder, perfectionism, panic disorder, addictions, PMS, chemical and food sensitivities, amenorrhea (absence of menstruation), infertility, hair loss, anemia, elevated blood sugar, high blood pressure, memory loss, violent behavior, postpartum depression, hypothyroidism, skin rashes, headaches, insomnia, tinnitus (ringing in the ears), sensitive skin, spaciness, racing thoughts, arthritis, asthma, allergies, weight gain, weight loss, acne, premature greying of the hair, and chronic infections.

Read more

Overmethylation

Are you creative?  Low motivation during your school years?

You may be overmethylated.  Most overmethylated persons in the general population tend to be creative or sensitive types.  These individuals may be attracted to professions or hobbies in music and the arts, architecture, education, writing, social services or causes, and philosophy.  Often, they are "underachievers" and may experience learning issues.  

Individuals with methyl-folate imbalances may have elevated levels of serotonin, dopamine, and norepinephrine and low blood histamine.  They may experience high internal tension and anxiety, depression, sleep disorders, food and chemical sensitivities, and have a tendency to overreact to life experiences.

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Americas most trusted profession

Yet again, nursing has been rated the most trusted profession in Gallup’s annual poll on the honesty and ethics of various professionals. Considering the fact that nurses have topped the list nearly every year, this is hardly surprising. However, it’s interesting that nurses have almost always managed to beat out other professionals, including medical doctors and pharmacists, in the minds of Americans when it comes to trustworthiness. When we took the time to consider why this might be the case, we came up with the following potential explanations:

Read more at Scrubs Blog

How Changing Demographics Affect Nursing Practice

I personally have noted that as a nurse you run into people from tons of different cultural and socioeconomincal background.  And as a nurse caring for an adult population, I’ve noted that taking care of a 42 year-old patient is quite different than taking care of an 85 year-old patient and it’s important to be

Read more from the Nurse Eye Roll blog

Reduce the Stress Factor

The life of the average young person is a lot more stressful than it used to be. The pressures of jobs, looks, boyfriends, girlfriends and keeping credit in phones to name but a few! But all this and then school/college can sometimes be too much for a lot of people. Most people don’t realise how stressed they are until it is too late, so check out the common signs of too much stress here. It is very important that stress is spotted early so something can be done about it.
Read more on spunout.ie

WORLD-RENOWNED NUTRITIONAL TESTING & THERAPY FOR MENTAL HEALTH DISORDERS

BIO BALANCE NUTRITIONAL APPROACH TO MENTAL HEALTH

A world-renowned nutrient therapy to treat depression and anxiety is now available for the first time in Ireland. Led by father and son team, Dr. Edmond O’Flaherty and Dr. Andrew O’Flaherty, who both have a special interest in mental health, the treatment is based on a nutrient therapy programme that, in conjunction with conventional medicine, has proven hugely successful in countries such as Australia, Norway, the USA and Canada.

Speaking about the pioneering treatment, Dr. Edmond O’Flaherty said: “My journey to this work started in 1999 when I read an article by Prof. Andrew Stoll of Harvard on fish oil. I had a patient with severe OCD and she had a wonderful response to a high dose of Omega-3, so I started looking for other natural nutrients that might help with mental health issues.”

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Top 10 Stress Relievers to Reverse Nurse Fatigue

Nurse fatigue is a huge problem. 60% of all nurses report feelings of burnout. If there are 3.1 million of us in the United States, that means over 2 million of us are burned out!!  In my book, From Exhausted to Extraordinary: Strategies to reveres nurse fatigue, I provide nurses simple proven strategies to reduce fatigue and burnout.

Why does nurse fatigue happen?

Nurse fatigue happens from chronic, toxic stress. When we don't feel like we have the resources to meet the demands placed upon us, we feel stress.

Read more and solutions

From RT connections blog