DiversityNursing Blog

Being able to read, write, and speak a second language is a highly desired skill in almost every career. However, being a Multilingual or Bilingual Nurse within the healthcare industry has some exceptionally high benefits that make such skilled individuals a prized asset to any team.

This is especially true in the United States where there's an influx of non-English speaking individuals. In fact, the US now has 41 million native Spanish speakers with another 11.2 million people using it as their second language. That's more people speaking Spanish in the US than all of Spain!

All of these native Spanish speakers, along with other non-English speakers, require healthcare services which emphasizes the value of having bilingual staff on hand. Consider these benefits of being a Bilingual Nurse:

1. Numerous Job Opportunities.  Most hospitals, clinics, insurance companies, schools and other healthcare organizations are centered around major cities, most of which contain high immigrant populations with areas of mega-cities dedicated to specific cultural groups. Take for example Miami's famed Cuban neighborhood entitled Little Havana or Seattle's bustling Little Saigon, the economic and social center of the region's Vietnamese community. Every one of the healthcare offices servicing these areas is in need of trained and experienced Nurses that can communicate directly with patients who aren't fluent in English. This means high demand and significant income opportunities for the flexible and Bilingual Nurse.
   
   
2. Satisfaction for Helping a Diverse Population.  Many individuals pursue Nursing out of a desire to help others. A Bilingual Nurse is in a unique position to significantly improve the quality of care patients receive due to their ability to not only assist them in the routine ways, but also to help them better understand medical terms, symptoms, and treatment options in their native tongue. 
   
   
3. Added Value to Employers.  Individuals pursuing a MSN degree that are also able to speak a second language, enhance their potential worth to their employer. A Bilingual Nurse can converse and assist more diverse groups of people to better market the employer's organization as being open and welcoming to people from different language and cultural backgrounds.
4. Exciting Foreign Job Prospects.  Some people are born with an itch to travel, and being bilingual is perhaps the single biggest factor in fulfilling that desire. That's because the ability to speak another language, translate, and converse opens doors to employers in non-English speaking countries. 
   
   
5. Critical to Ensuring Data is Accurate.  In this digital age of computers and consolidated electronic health records, it's important to stay on top of data input and security. Most larger hospitals and healthcare organizations have some basic translation services at their disposal to help with patients who are not native English speakers, but this often isn't the case with smaller offices, clinics, and other practices. And even if they do, too frequently errors in translations can come up. That's why it's so important for these organizations to keep a staff of Bilingual Nurses on hand to help collect information from the patient themselves and ensure that client files are correctly uploaded and stored. This provides inherent benefits both to accurate record keeping and patient safety.

In the end, not only are there many great benefits to being a Bilingual Nurse, but it's very important for healthcare organizations, whether they're large hospital systems or specialized clinics, to have Nurses with multiple language capabilities. The world today is becoming ever more diverse and interconnected. The ability to speak multiple languages alongside nursing or doctoring skills, is a very valuable and marketable commodity that also helps improve patient outcomes and safety.

Technology has made people's lives much easier. There are specialized apps for almost everything and everyone. Some very helpful technology exists for Nurses designed to make your life easier. Here’s the 2015 Top 10.

Epocrates

This is the #1 app in the medical community. It has a lite and a premium version and does many things including calculators such as BMI and lab and coding guides.  

Human Anatomy Atlas

This app is designed for Nursing students. It contains 3,800 three dimensional images of the human anatomy. It also includes quizzes about things like bone and muscle structure.

MedPage Today

MedPage gives you the latest news in the medical community and helps you stay up-to-date on the latest medical advances.

Nursing Central

This app includes 17 million journal articles, 4,600 medications, and 56,000 dictionary terms. 

Black's Medical Dictionary

This is an easy to use medical dictionary from a company that has been around for over 100 years.

Nursing Care Plans

With this app, you can make 100 customized care plans covering most medical topics.

MediBabble Translator

For Nurses working with non-english speaking patients, this translator app is a must have. 

Symptomia

This simple to use app lets you put in patient’s symptoms and it tells you possible diseases associated with these symptoms.

Davis Mobile: Nursing Procedure Checklist

With this app, Nurses stay on task with checklists covering 169 common Nursing procedures.

Nursing Shift Planner

A must have time management app designed for Nurses. You can input specific tasks to be done and even set up auto reminders.

There are apps out there to satisfy every Nurse’s needs. The use of technology for Nurses not only make your life easier, but it can also ensure better patient care.

Interested in more blogs like this one? Join our bi-weekly newsletter for free!

How can you tell if a burn wound has become infected? Wouldn’t it be great if a new technology can alert you to an infection without having to remove the bandage? Scientists in the UK are in the development phase of a bandage that changes color to alert you to an infection. As you know, antibiotics are often prescribed to help stave off infection, however this new technology may help prevent the need for antibiotics.

Burn wounds are a relatively common affliction. Alongside the obvious suffering that a wound of this nature can cause, infections can be a life-threatening problem.

Infections are the primary cause of complications in burn injuries, especially in children. This is partly due to a child's immature and less aggressive immune system. 

Significant thermal injuries can also induce a state of immunosuppression, further increasing the chances of infection. 

Even a relatively mild hot water scald can readily become infected.

Many deaths from burn injuries are due to sepsis, and even milder infections can prolong hospital stays. The likelihood of permanent scarring also increases with infection.

Diagnosing burn infections

Diagnosing a bacterial infection in young burn patients can be troublesome. The area around a burn wound may be red and inflamed, symptoms that normally indicate an infection; this makes a direct sample of the area essential for clarity.

The young patient's discomfort must also be considered. Removing the wound covering is an unpleasant procedure, and interference with the injury can lead to slower healing times. 

Currently, it takes around 48 hours to definitively diagnose an infected burn. Dr. Amber Young is involved in ongoing clinical trials of this new early warning system for burn infections. 

She says:

"Children are at particular risk of serious infection from even a small burn. However, with current methods clinicians can't tell whether a sick child might have a raised temperature due to a serious bacterial burn wound infection, or just from a simple cough or cold."

Because of the time delay in diagnosing an infection, and the desire to remove the invaders before they dig their heels in, antibiotics are often prescribed preventively. This has its own drawbacks. Antibiotic resistance is a genuine concern throughout medical institutions worldwide.

Researchers at the University of Bath, in conjunction with the Healing Foundation Children's Burns Research Centre and the University of Brighton - all in the UK - have created a groundbreaking solution to these serious issues.

The team has developed a prototype color changing band-aid when a wound becomes infected. The wound dressing on an uninfected area displays a discrete circular design:

Within four hours of an infection, the color and pattern change:

Dr. Toby Jenkins, project leader says:

"Our medical dressing works by releasing fluorescent dye from nanocapsules triggered by the toxins secreted by disease-causing bacteria within the wound. 

The nanocapsules mimic skin cells in that they only break open when toxic bacteria are present; they aren't affected by the harmless bacteria that normally live on healthy skin."

Bacterial biofilms

Research has shown that bacteria infecting a wound tend to congregate in biofilms. These films consist of mutually attached bacteria, coated in polymer. 

Within their exopolysaccharide cocoons, bacteria are afforded some protection from attack by antibiotics and the patient's natural immune system.

This ground-breaking, chameleon-like Band-Aid works by detecting these biofilms. The dressing is made of a hydrated agarose film that contains the tiny capsules of colored dye. These capsules are "trained" to specifically recognize Escherichia coli, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Staphylococcus aureus and Enterococcus faecalis.

The team found that the color change response is stronger for bacterial strains that are considered to produce good biofilms. This could lend itself to an even more specific indicator in the future. The system might indicate not only whether there is an infection, but also what specific type of bacteria is present.

The experimental wound dressing is in the early phases of development but is soon to be tested on real patients. 

An innovation that can save lives, money and assist in the global problem of antibiotic resistance is a literal game-changer.

Similar medical innovative articles: 

Virginia And Her Bionic Eye

This Medical ID App Could Save Your Life

If you’re feeling unappreciated, read this story to know that many people very much appreciate what you do. They’re not always very good at expressing themselves in a positive way. But most of you understand your patients feelings because as this husband explains, they’re going through one of the worst days of their lives. Many of my friends are Nurses and they are awesome just like you, Every Day.

When Bobby Wesson looked at his sleeping wife last week, he had no plans of his emotional reaction going viral. But that's exactly what happened.

Nurses are at times some of the most underappreciated yet hardworking people you'll find in medicine. Rayena Wesson is a trauma nurse at an Alabama hospital. She was taking a nap before work when her husband felt inspired to share her story with the world. "In an hour she will wake up, put on her scrubs and get ready for work," he said. 

"The tools and items she needs to perform her job will be gathered and checked meticulously... She will occasionally stare off blankly as we talk; silently steeling herself for the coming shift. She thinks I don't notice. "

Then, Wesson explained what his wife spends her work day doing.

She will kiss the baby, she will kiss me and she will leave to go take care of people that are having the worst day of their entire lives. Car wrecks, gunshot wounds, explosions, burns and breaks - professionals, poor, pastors, addicts and prostitutes - mothers, fathers, sons, daughters and families - it doesn't matter who you are or what happened to you.

She will take care of you.

She will come home 14 hours later and remove shoes that have walked through blood, bile, tears and fire from aching feet and leave them outside.

Sometimes she will not want to talk about it. Sometimes she can't wait to talk about it. 

"Sometimes she will laugh until she cries and sometimes she will just cry," he wrote. "But regardless of those sometimes she will be on time for her next shift."

Since writing the post, Wesson has become a viral hit with people commending him for speaking out on behalf all the hardworking nurses out there. The post has been shared more than 145,000 times on Facebook and published on numerous media sites. 

"My wife is a nurse," Wesson wrote. "My wife is a hero."

Co-signed on that one.

Similar Touching Stories Here

Empathy: The Human Connection To Patient Care [VIDEO]

A Nurse Reflects On The Privilege Of Caring For Dying Patients

If you are looking to change your career path or try something new in the Nursing field, click below to access our diverse job database.

If you’re thinking about continuing your education, this article offers some important questions to consider in helping you decide if an online program will accomplish what you want to achieve. We all know continuing your education, if at all possible both financially and personally, will enhance your career, your life and your earning potential.

For nurses who wish to advance their careers, pursuing an online master's or doctoral degree ​may be a great choice, experts say. Doing so can lead to higher salaries and roles with greater authority over patient care.

Some experts say that when it comes to graduate-level study, the nursing field is starting to move away from the master's degree and shifting more heavily toward doctoral degrees such as the Ph.D. or the Doctor of Nursing Practice. But master's degrees are still viable options for some students, and institutions including Capella University​ and Pennsylvania State University—World Campus ​are continuing to offer them online.

"A lot of schools have eliminated that master's degree for advanced practice nurses. That's not what we've opted to do," says Patrick Robinson, dean of the School of Nursing and Health Sciences at Capella University, which offers master's, Ph.D. and DNP degrees online.​​

It's important for online learners to select the nursing program that's best suited to meet their goals.​ Experts recommend asking the following questions about a program before deciding to enroll.

1. Which type of degree is best for your particular career?​​ In many cases, students will pursue a master's degree if they want to specialize in a specific area of nursing, experts say.

That was the case for Renae Epler of Hershey, Pennsylvania, a recent graduate of the online master's in nursing program offered through Penn State. The program allows students to choose specializations in nurse education and administration. Epler, who now works as a patient safety analyst at a hospital, chose the latter.

"For me, it was the right way to go," she says. "I didn't want to pursue a doctorate – something I didn't know for sure I wanted. This was a good place to start, I think."

When it comes to doctorates, the Ph.D. is generally meant for those who wish to become ​research-focused nursing scientists and develop the knowledge base on which nurses practice, says Robinson, of Capella. The DNP, meanwhile, is geared toward those who hope to use the science of nursing to advance nursing care out in the field​, he says.

There are other options out there, too. A bridge program allows students to save time and money by combining the curricula of two degrees. For example, the RN-to-MSN in care coordination offered at Capella gives registered nurses who don't have bachelor's degrees the opportunity to complete a Master of Science in Nursing.

2. How much time and money can you spend on a degree? Different degree programs cost different amounts of money and require various time commitments. When choosing a program, it's important for students to estimate how long it might take them to complete all the requirements and budget accordingly. A Ph.D. typically requires a student to complete more credit hours than a DNP or a master's degree, for example, Robinson says. 

At Capella, the Ph.D. requires 96 credits at $660 per credit​. The DNP requires 52 credits at $775 per credit​, and a master's requires 56 at $399 per credit​.

3. Is the program accredited? When looking into an online program, a student should verify whether it ​is accredited and if it ​is accepted in his or her current state of residence to meet licensing and other requirements​​, says Michele Pedulla, assistant academic graduate program chair at Kaplan University​'s​ School of Nursing. 

For instance, at Kaplan, the online nursing master's programs are accredited by the Commission on Collegiate Nursing Education, she says. Other schools' programs may be accredited by the Accreditation Commission for Education in Nursing.

4. Is there an on-campus component? Online nursing graduate degree programs can be structured in different ways. Some – like those hosted by Capella​, Penn State​ and Kaplan​ ​– enable students to complete all of their requirements, including the clinical experience​, in a location​ of their choice; others, like many of Vanderbilt University's, require students to spend some time on campus. 

Both options have advantages. The former allows for more flexibility. As for the latter, at Vanderbilt the weeklong on-campus component provides an opportunity to interact with faculty and other students. 

"It allows them to network with other students, hear renowned speakers, work together with professors and really become engaged," says Mavis Schorn, senior associate dean for academics at Vanderbilt's School of Nursing.

5. Who are the faculty, and what kind of support will you receive? Especially in an online course, where a student rarely, if ever, sees an instructor ​in person, communication and resources are ​key, experts say. 

A student should research whether a nursing program offers assistance such as academic advisers, writing help ​centers and library resources, says Pedulla, of Kaplan.

In the program offered at Penn State, students interact with the instructor and each other through online discussion boards, among other forms of communication, and there's an online help desk to address any technical issues they may encounter, says Judith Hupcey, associate dean for graduate education and research at Penn State's College of Nursing. 

"It's about more than just cost and speed," Hupcey says. "It's the quality of the program you're getting."

If you’re an ER Nurse or you’ve been to the ER for treatment, you know timing is everything. I remember when my son was at camp and we received a call that we should pick him up and take him to the ER due to a deep cut that needed stitches. Fortunately the camp was only 45 minutes away. It was around 10:30pm when we picked him up and as we drove from camp to the ER we wondered, like anyone traveling to the ER, what’s the wait time going to be until my son gets treated? Will we be there all night? We were very lucky. Our local hospital’s ER this particular evening was practically empty. Whew!

We all know this is usually not the case, and in large cities, never the case. Here’s an interesting article about how Reading Hospital in PA reduced their wait time in the ER.

Nationwide hospitals are more frequently being overcrowded with longer wait times. Reading Hospital faces the same struggles in their emergency department with an annual patient volume of over 130,000, more than 20,000 admissions and 300-500 ED patients daily, the Level II trauma center in Reading, Penn. sees its fair share of people come through their doors. 

Emergency department overcrowding is not limited to this one facility. Mary Bilotta, MSN, RN, AGCNS-BC, CEN, emergency division clinical nurse specialist, stated, "Availability to access providers is not always easy." Limited office hours send patients to the ED when they would otherwise go to their primary care physician. When they do go to the PCP, the doctor sometimes sends them to the emergency department for routine tests or evaluation. The extra patients clog the system and increase the wait times for everyone. 

Information Overload
Google is a double-edged sword for health data. The public can easily access information on the internet, which means they search for their symptoms and come looking for sometimes specific treatment.  The instant gratification of the internet age rears its head as patients go from Googling to the hospital doors. Vanessa Hetrick, BSN, RN, CEN, staff nurse, emergency department, said, "When I take care of patients, they say, 'I don't have time to wait for my PCP, so I come to the emergency department.' " 

The emergency nurses and physicians treat everyone who presents for care.  Timothy Marks, RN, MSN, CEN, NE-BC, division director, emergency services, explained, "Emergency departments are the safety net for the healthcare of the community. We take care of everyone who comes through our doors.  We take this responsibility very seriously but at times the volume of patients exceeds the available resources." Treating all those patients exhausts both resources and clinicians.

Reading Hospital knew something had to be done, for the sake of their community and their healthcare professionals. They began a concentrated effort to improve time management in the emergency department and decrease wait times for patients. 

Marks said, "We had that multi-level support because, among many factors, we had dissatisfied patients leaving without care." That was a risk to the community.  The chief nursing officer, chief medical officer, chief operating officer and other high-level executives participated in discussions with frontline staff. When there is buy-in from the C-Suite, they found, more staff want to be involved and achieve results.

All Hands on Deck
Charles F. Barbera, MD, MBA, FACEP, chairman, department of emergency medicine, noted, "It was seen not as an ED problem, but a hospital program. We're a microcosm of all the programs in the hospital." 

While everything comes to a head in the emergency department, leadership recognized all blame can't be placed there. They tackled the issue with a no fault approach.  The CNO and CMO supported a process improvement plan and put nurses and physicians in charge. We created an ED-to-acute care sub-committee to face the challenge of long emergency department throughput times head on.

To begin the transformation, the sub-committee came up with guidelines, some of which were referenced from the Emergency Nurses Association, which included streamlining the triage process to include minimal questions. A greeter nurse meets patients and guides them to the right area for more timely treatment.  Immediate bedding was implemented whenever an available treatment space existed.  Involving the frontline staff in decision making about their work, usually trims minutes from the process.  Marks added, "We took a hard look at how we staff in the emergency department." How could they remain fluid and still meet patient needs?

When they started the improvements in 2013, the average throughput time in the emergency department at Reading Hospital for admitted patients was 6 hours. The current throughput time is 4.5 hours. The25% reduction was the result of teamwork and an examination of three areas where improvements were needed most.

Triple Threat
A few years ago, getting patients out of the ED and to a hospital bed seemed to take forever. They asked themselves, how can we shave off time? Nurses on the floors get notification from the computer system that they are receiving a new patient and are  encouraged to review the newly staff built , streamlined report of pertinent information. The bed assignment, in some cases, triggers an automatic dispatch of the transport team to move the patient. "When we first started, we had a timer on our board that starts when a bed is assigned," said Hetrick. The board shows a green happy face. If the patient is not moved within defined timeframes, the face turns sad from yellow and subsequently red.

That effort ties into another prong of the approach-improved electronic medical records. "We leveraged technology to make it work in our favor," Barbera explained. For instance, shortcuts in the EMR were developed for certain recurring diagnoses among ED patients. 

Hetrick added, "We optimized our standard protocols for chest pain, for example, and we can start the treatment process right away without calling a provider." The streamlined EMR system lets the ED staff talk to the whole hospital in a sort of universal language. She continued, "The flow is so much easier now that everyone can see the same thing. By keeping the patients and families at the center of what we do, we all are a team. It's not this department versus that department." 

One process change for patients was having a Front End Provider present in triage at peak times to interpret EKGs within ten minutes of arrival and start the care process. As a result, the hospital has a door-to-balloon time for patients experiencing a STEMI time of about 40 minutes.

Collaboration between different members of the inter-professional team is the name of the game in the third prong of the approach. With a patient-centered admissions philosophy, emergency department physicians and hospitalists work in parallel.  The ED physician used to spend time proving the patient couldn't go home. Now, hospitalists are brought into the loop right away, especially with complex patients. There are at least two hospitalists stationed in the ED, the hospitalists determine what the patient needs to get the right level of care.   

With everyone accountable for their departments, things run a lot smoother. "It has to be a collaborative effort," reminded Bilotta. With this focus, Reading Hospital increased patient and community satisfaction while making care more efficient.

Related Articles:

5 Million Health-Care Jobs Created By 2020, Regardless Of 'Obamacare,' Report Says

It seems that Google is involved in just about everything these days! Here’s the latest announcement. The American Heart Association is teaming up with Google on a project for heart health and conquering heart disease. Hopefully their huge investment will yield some promising results for everyone.

A company whose name is synonymous with eyeballs on the Internet is turning its attention to hearts. 

Google Life Sciences, a research group recently spun off from its parent corporation, is teaming with the American Heart Association in a $50 million project to find new ways to fight heart disease. 

The heart association's half, $25 million over five years, is the largest single research investment in its history. For the Google group, its latest biomedical venture will join projects that include whiz-bang devices such as driverless cars, contact lenses that monitor blood-sugar for diabetics and health-tracking wristbands. 

The project was announced Sunday at a heart association conference in Orlando. 

Heart disease is the world's top killer, a problem that "seems ripe for new innovation" and disruptive, unconventional thinking, said Andy Conrad, Google Life Sciences' chief executive. Progress has been slow and "we should shake it up a little bit," he said. 

Besides cash, Google has tech tools to offer such as sensors to monitor the health of "people in the wild" versus just when they go to doctors and huge capabilities for data analysis. The company is aiming for a cure, Conrad said. There's no guarantee of success, but "the only thing we can promise is that we'll try harder." 

By early next year — Valentine's Day, "a big heart day," Conrad said — a team from Google and the heart association hope to pick a project leader, who might be a cardiologist, a nurse or "a teenager from Wisconsin," depending on what skills and ideas that person can bring to the table. The team is looking for "a maverick," he said. 

The venture "really allows us to think about ... doing research in a different way," said Dr. Robert Harrington, chairman of the Stanford University School of Medicine and a member of the heart association's board. 

Traditional research has brought only incremental improvements in heart disease treatment. 

"We are trying to do something disruptive here," Harrington said.

Most of us have heard of macular degeneration, which eventually robs people of their eyesight. But, have you heard about a new procedure done at UC Davis Medical Center that has restored a woman’s eyesight? The patient led a very interesting career for 40+ years and started losing her eyesight shortly after retirement.  Due to a new technology, she can now see her friends and family’s faces, read and enjoy the beautiful sights around her.

Virginia Bane was a trailblazer, both as a female business leader and an early embracer and purveyor of cell phone technology in circa-1980s Silicon Valley.

So when age-related macular degeneration stole her central vision after retirement, naturally she welcomed an innovative solution.

In a first-of-its-kind procedure for Northern California, UC Davis doctors implanted a pea-sized telescope in Bane’s eye, gradually restoring her ability to see faces, colors and print. Today the 92-year-old still enjoys reading, seeing friends and living independently – thanks to both her pioneering spirit and what she fondly calls her “bionic eye.”

“The outcome of this is one of the most wonderful thing I've had and if I didn't have it, I could not appreciate the things I see today,” Bane said at her Pollock Pines home. “I can see my family. I can see people's faces that I could never see before. I can see outside and long distance in my yard that I would not have been able to see without the scope.”

A leading cause of blindness

Bane was familiar with both technology and medicine from her 40-year business career, mostly spent in management during an era of relative gender inequality in the workplace. She started her first management job at 23 and retired 40 years later as the president of several corporations that provided pager and cell phone service, repairs and physicians’ exchanges in the Bay Area and Southern California.

“I had around about 70 employees between the corporations, and dealt with the attorneys and government agencies for licensing, but it was very rewarding,” Bane said. “It was very difficult, but I enjoyed every bit of it.”

It was soon after her retirement to a new painting hobby that Bane’s eyesight began its gradual decline due to age-related macular degeneration, a fairly common disorder among senior citizens and the leading cause of blindness in the U.S. for patients over the age of 60.

 “There is no pain with it, so at first you don't realize that you have it. I noticed it mostly in my reading and then of course, trying to draw,” she said. “Because of the light and the dark, and the shadows, it was very difficult to distinguish if something was in front of me at that time. It got so bad that at 84 I stopped driving my car.”

The disease affects the retina. Bane reached a point where she could no longer see images on an eye chart, and could only detect a doctor’s hand when waved directly in her face.

“This means you can't see the faces of your family members, you can't read a book, you can't watch TV,” said Jennifer Li, an associate professor of ophthalmology who cared for Bane at the UC Davis Eye Center. “There are a lot of things that we take for granted every day that people with this condition are unable to do.

“As you can imagine, patients like Virginia really suffer a lot from their disorder. They lose a lot of sense of independence.”

New treatment option

Bane came to the Eye Center after she reported seeing purple through one eye, a trait that stumped her local physician (“I went to UC Davis because they are advanced in everything about the eye,” Bane said). In 2012 the center was able to offer her a new technology, the implantable miniature telescope.

The pea-sized device is fixed in the eye and has two lenses that help magnify an image to about three times normal size, allowing the user to utilize undamaged parts of the retina.  Users still wear glasses to adjust their focus from reading to distance.

The device, approved by the Food and Drug Administration in 2010, is the only medical/surgical option available that restores a portion of vision lost to the disease. UC Davis Health System's Eye Center, in collaboration with the Society for the Blind, is one of the few in California and the nation to offer the innovative procedure.

Bane would be the first patient in Northern California and among the first 50 individuals in the U.S. to receive the implant. Candidates must be 65 or older with untreatable end-stage, age-related dry-form macular degeneration, with no other ocular diseases such as glaucoma and with adequate peripheral vision in the second eye.

“I've been very fortunate in that some people can go completely blind, and I have been able to still maintain and see things through the eyes,” Bane said. “When I had the opportunity to have the telescope lens implant, I was excited and ready to go.” 

Hard work

UC Davis cornea specialists Li and Mark Mannis implanted the scope. As expected, Bane did not wake from the hour-long procedure with immediately improved vision. Use of the device involves an extensive yearlong process of “visual rehabilitation” with UC Davis occupational therapists to adjust the brain to the larger image the telescope produces.

“They're going to use the telescope to look for things with the center part of their vision, look at faces, watch TV, try and read – but they still need their other eye to help them move around, to make sure they don't bump into things and to allow them to continue to be mobile,” Li said. “A lot of the training requires them learning how to use their eyes again and learning which to use under what circumstances, so that they’re able to go back and forth easily without thinking.”

The regimen involved twice-weekly appointments and hours of practice at home – trying to “find” the scope, teaching the other eye to resist taking it over (which causes double vision) and learning to move the device from place to place to enable reading.  Several weeks into training, things seemed to gel.

“I was sitting looking at TV, and golf was on,” Bane said. “All of a sudden, I could see the ball go into the little cup. I was thrilled to death because I knew then I’d ‘found’ the scope.”

Bane had high praise for her occupational therapist, Terri Hayward.

“She’s wonderful, she has the patience for everything – and she was learning at the same time I was because I was the first one to have the scope,” Bane said. “She did a marvelous job for me and I know she does for everyone.”

Restored independence

Three years out, Bane has vision ranging from 20/80 to 20/100, which equates to very readable letters on an eye chart.

“I couldn’t see, couldn’t read, couldn’t see the faces of other people, couldn’t see anything on TV unless I was sitting right on top of it,” Bane said. “With the scope, then of course, I can do all these things. Say if I'm watching television, I can tell you what color eyes people have, describe their faces and everything, the things that I could never have done before.”

The improved vision should remain indefinitely, Li said, thanks in no small part to Bane’s enthusiasm and training discipline.

 “She's achieved a lot of her (vision) goals, and hopefully she'll be able to continue doing the things that she enjoys for the rest of her life,” she said.

Here’s an interesting article about how to make the mentor/mentee relationship work through a new American Nephrology Nurses’ Association program called the “Pay It Forward Challenge”. Some excellent points are provided about how to make this important relationship work such as living near each other so you can meet in person for meetings. This seems pretty intuitive, but they have confirmed meeting in person is far better than trying to have meetings over the phone. Read on from some great tips about starting or improving mentor/mentee relationships.

Pairing two nurses in a mutually beneficial mentor-mentee relationship can be a little like Match.com. As part of the mentor matching program for the Organization of Nurse Executives, New Jersey, a nurse manager new to leadership lists what she or he wants out of the relationship and where in the state she or he lives, and the ONE NJ Mentorship Committee finds a mentor with the expertise to meet those needs, said Bettyann Kempin, RN, MSN, NE-BC, NP-C, a member of the committee and assistant vice president of medical/surgical services at The Valley Hospital in Ridgewood, N.J.

The success of well-matched pairs who commit to a year of the program can be an important career boost for the new nurse managers, Kempin said.

“The relationship didn’t end after a year,” she said of her own experience as a mentor.

How each nurse gets involved

To become a part of the American Nephrology Nurses’ Association program, potential mentors and mentees complete an online survey that asks for contact information and a list of goals they have developed, said Cindy Richards, BSN, RN, CNN, the organization’s president and pediatric renal transplant coordinator at Children’s of Alabama in Birmingham.

Any ANNA member can participate in the association’s Pay It Forward Challenge, which Richards announced at her recent induction as president; however, mentors must have at least one year of nephrology experience to give them the “solid background needed to help mentor a newer nephrology nurse.”

The nurses have the benefit of pairing with some of the leading nurses in nephrology, which might not always be possible at the mentees’s own organization, Richards said.

For ONE NJ’s program, which focuses on providing guidance for nurse managers, mentees and mentors attend a once-a-year workshop where nurses who want to participate as mentees share what they need help with. Then the mentorship committee sorts through its selection of mentor nurses “waiting to be called up the ranks,” Kempin said.

The program has 17 pairs this year, up from fewer than a dozen when it started four years ago, Kempin said.

Ask your mentor anything

One of the important aspects of the programs is the safe arena for the mentee to ask the mentor the “afraid-to-ask questions,” Kempin said. “It’s almost like big brother, big sister.”

The relationship can provide new nurses with clinical skills, problem-solving and critical-thinking skills and a way to discuss issues that arise on the job, Richards said. “As mentors, we need to foster a positive, encouraging environment for younger, newer nurses.”

Many mentors in the ONE NJ program have said they would have appreciated such a relationship when they were new managers, Kempin said.

“I would have loved to have been able to ask questions of other folks rather than research it and speak with other people I might know,” she said, adding that her network would have been wider faster with a mentor.

Nurses also have the opportunity to step out of their organizations and gain perspective. “They’re getting a different view of acute care hospitalization,” Kempin said.

What makes it work

After receiving feedback from its first mentor-mentee pairs, ONE NJ discovered pairing nurses who are geographically close and who can have face-to-face meetings was key to developing successful relationships.

“Telephone conversations don’t cut it,” Kempin said.

The feedback helped ONE NJ develop a 25-page, evidence-based toolkit of resources that describes the phases of a mentor-mentee relationship, explains the responsibilities of each role, has partnership agreements and relationship assessments and includes checklists for goal formation, meeting preparation and progress evaluation, according to the “Developing Leadership Talent: A Statewide Nurse Leader Mentorship Program” article published in the February issue of Journal of Nursing Administration.

“It’s a nice backbone to the program,” Kempin said.

ONE NJ checks in with the pairs every couple of months during the year to ensure they’ve met in person and are using the toolkit. “Having us check in on them helps keep them on track,” Kempin said. Because the workshop that kicks off the mentorship program happens annually, all of the participants are on the same timeline, she added.

For the ANNA’s one-year program, the mentor leads by example and shares her knowledge and the values of being a professional nurse and “the specific value set needed to work with chronically ill nephrology patients on a long-term basis,” Richards said. “The mentor must also be willing to acknowledge the mentee’s progress and explore where the mentee desires to go in ANNA and nephrology nursing.”

As part of Richards’ new Pay It Forward Challenge, the ANNA will recognize at its national symposium one pair in 2016 and one pair in 2017 with the most robust achievements, Richards said.

Without mentorship to expand their networks, “a lot of times, people get stuck,” Kempin said. But mentorship programs help nurses grow.

“We get rave reviews about it,” she added.

As the Nursing shortage continues so does the need for Nurse Educators. We thought you’d enjoy this article where Judy Burckhardt, Ph.D., MAEd, MSN, RN, Professor & Dean, Nursing and Healthcare Programs at American Sentinel University lists the Top 10 Best Things about being a Nurse Educator and why she feels it’s a natural step for many Nurses.

The need for more highly educated nurses and the growing shortage of nurse educators has broadened the career horizon for new nurse educators. The demand offers a high-level of job security and opportunities to advance quickly.

More importantly, nurse educators play a pivotal role in healthcare by strengthening the nursing workforce, serving as role models, and providing the leadership needed to implement evidence-based practice and improve patient outcomes. 

Judy Burckhardt, Ph.D., MAEd, MSN, RN, Professor and Dean, Nursing and Healthcare Programs at American Sentinel University says that teaching is an integral part of nursing and that becoming a nurse educator is a natural step for many nurses.

"Whether they choose to work in the classroom or the practice setting, nurse educators prepare and mentor patient care providers and the future leaders of our profession," she says.

Dr. Burckhardt says that many nurse educators typically express a high degree of satisfaction with their work and that mentoring students and watching them gain confidence and skills are some of the most rewarding aspects of their jobs. She shares her 'Best Things About Being a Nurse Educator' for nurses considering nurse education as their career path.

Dr. Burckhardt's Top 10 Best Things About Being a Nurse Educator:

1. The opportunity to educate nurses that will care for my loved ones and me

2. The ability to pass on what I have learned from great nurse educators

3. Hearing from previous students that their daughters/sons have gone into nursing because of their parent's experience in nursing school

4. The chance to make an impact on the future generation of nurses

5. Passing on the "tricks of the trade" to do things easier, without breaking protocols

6. Wearing a white lab coat while supervising students in clinical

7. Seeing the difference between how students appeared the first day of nursing school and seeing them function as great professional nurses in the clinical setting

8. Hearing from students that I had a positive effect on their decision to finish nursing school and become nurses

9. Working with a group of individuals that want to make the world a better place

10. Being able to replicate the activities of nurse educators who shaped who I am as a professional nurse 

Dr. Burckhardt says other benefits of being a nurse educator include access to cutting-edge knowledge and research, opportunities to collaborate with health professionals, an intellectually stimulating workplace, and a flexible work environment. 

She points out that The American Association of Colleges of Nursing (AACN) documented that nursing schools nationwide are struggling to find new faculty to accommodate the rising interest in nursing among new students.  

"Given the growing shortage of nurse educators, the outlook is bright for nurses interested in careers in academia," adds Dr. Burckhardt. "At American Sentinel, our Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) program with a specialization in educational leadership was designed to provide nurse education leaders with credentials that validate credibility and competence to academic and business leaders. Students will be taught by experienced nurse educators and surrounded by colleagues who share their education-focused goals."

SOURCE American Sentinel University