March break blizzard

We have traditionally had March Break blizzards it seems – with memories of traveling to Cape Breton for work for a few years and taking the gang along to play while I made employee visits, then spending an extra day at the Sydney Delta in a whiteout which turned out to my only day of ‘vacation’ in the week, ordering in pizza and a pay per view silly movie – good times, good times. This year is to be no exception in the whiteout department as since this morning we’ve had freezing rain, ice pellets, snow and wind, generally nasty weather. Sorry for those out on the road and glad I’m not working!

Not only did I finish The Weight of Water by Anita Shreve (good but not as good as The Pilots Wife) I have to agree with one of my workteam on that one, leisurely pursue the Saturday newspaper – you could do Club Amigo in Guardalavaca:

http://www.redtag.ca/cuba/holguin/clubamigo.php

for $588 leaving next weekend, which is an excellent value even for more money as we had a lovely week there a few years ago – and correct grammar on a Health Promotion term paper (content was good but the writing skills unfortunately came from her father’s side of the family).Since I’ve had lots of time on my hands to be surfing today I’ve come up with some eclectic offerings for my efforts:

First in response to Googling ‘nurse blogs’ I found a blog about using simulation in nursing education including lots of other links to e-education – very geeky but interesting and likely the way of the future for nursing students, am guessing it would appeal to the term paper author:

http://erictremblay.blogspot.com/2008/03/nursing-simulation-in-second-life.html

This was followed by a posting on a nursing blog about the nursing shortage, which although written about our American cousins could easily have been posted from Canada:

I agree the shortage of nursing is created by the work place situation in the hospital settings. There will never be enough nurses due to the fact of the revolving door situation. As fast as we can train nurses, experienced nurses are leaving the professions. Some nurses are leaving by choice, others due to burnout and injury.

As nurses are required to work mandatory overtime and work with morbidly obese patients nurses continue to have back injuries on the job. Unlike some professions that restrict employee hours to prevent client injury, nurses are required by employers to remain on the job after the shift or be faced with client abandonment. Due to the conflict between family responsiblities and work some nurses may have to leave the profession.

There is little support for nurses for childcare back up if the nurse is faced with staying late at work. For example if the nurse is forced to stay at work due to other staff nurses calling in sick, who will pick the child up from daycare? It is okay if there is a family member who can help but what if there is not? The nurse would be in trouble with CPS (Children’s Protective Society?) or in trouble at work for leaving the assignment. The nurse may need to change jobs or leave the profession.

Another issue is that nurses do not take care of each other. Too much back stabbing. If we took care of each other like we did our patients there would be no issues retaining staff.

Compared to engineers and other professions with the same time of education, nurses are poorly compensated wage and other perks. It is funny that nurses have worse insurance than people who are not in the healthcare industry. Nurses have a long way to meet the equality of other professions.

And finally a neat story about using rescued dogs to encourage hesitant readers as they are nonjudgemental, attentive, appreciative of the attention and generally a good audience:

http://karmadogs.org/services.html

Made me remember fondly all the dogs and cats who were ‘schooled’ by multiple offspring in earlier years.