Career ladders getting higher for nurses—what about allied health?

Posted on by Kurt Jensen

All cardiac care professionals could see more professional development, opportunity.

With the switch to value-based medicine, more nurses are becoming hospital CEOs reads an article published online today in Hospitals & Health Networks Magazine.

Three hospitals in the six-hospital Memorial Healthcare System in Florida are now run by nurses—for RNs, it seems, the career ladder has grown longer, with more nurses climbing higher in healthcare management.

Beyond Florida, an August 2016 article in Becker's Hospital Review listed 33 nurses who transitioned to hospital CEOs.

Why are more hospitals tapping nurses to run the organization? Management competencies are changing, says Lamont Yoder, RN, of the American Organization of Nurse Executives to H&HN Magazine's Maggie Van Dyke.

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Team-Based Care Isn’t Controversial

Posted on by Kurt Jensen


The Future of Nursing, in particular, has created considerable controversy regarding whether APRNs should be licensed to practice independently in primary care settings. The hot-button issues that are part of that controversy, such as practice independence, competition, and restraint of trade, are not germane to the present discussion on cardiovascular team-based care. Issues that are germane to cardiovascular team-based care, such as interdependency, cooperation, autonomy, efficiency, and effectiveness, however, are not controversial. (read the 2015 ACC Health Policy Statement on Cardiovascular Team-Based Care)

The Institute of Medicine, in collaboration with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, published a report entitled The Future of Nursing: Leading Change, Advancing Health in 2010, which the ACC's Health Policy Statement mentions as generating "considerable controversy between nursing organizations and physician organizations."

TEAM-BASED CARE ISN't CONTROVERSIALThe statement suggests that arguments over practice independence have no relevance to the well-substantiated argument in favor team-based care, but it's easy to see how those lines get blurred. Professionals feel threatened when scope-of-practice barriers are taken down for professionals with a different educational knowledge-base.

The issue? These fears can be very influential in maintaining state regulatory barriers to team-based care.

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Special Report (4): Robotics improve efficiency and reduce radiation exposure

Posted on by Kurt Jensen

In 2011, the Society of Cardiovascular Angiography and Interventions published new guidelines for a Radiation Safety Program for the Cardiac Catheterization Laboratory.

With regards to procedures, they recommended limiting exposure duration, reducing dosage, limiting high-dose high contrast use, reducing magnification, and increasing distance from the x-ray beam to name a few.

Mayo Clinic reduced doses by 40 percent over a 3-year period in a case study released in 2012, where researchers noted that "the physician's expectations [had to] change from a desire for excellent image quality to a desire for low radiation dose and acceptance of clinically adequate image quality."

Technology itself might not be able to change culture, but it can significantly improve many relevant factors, as demonstrated by trials and testimonials of Corindus's CorPath system.

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Special Report (3): Mitigating Work-Related Musculoskeletal Pain

Posted on by Kurt Jensen

Most references to musculoskeletal pain suggest they are best treated by identifying and treating the cause of the pain. But what if the cause of pain is work-as-usual for cardiovascular professionals in the Cath Lab?

In our special report series we've already discussed the recent research that showed non-physician Cath Lab personnel reporting more musculoskeletal pain due to interventional procedures involving radiation. We also shared pieces from Dr. James Goldstein's editorial on the subject, discussing the importance of the issue and suggesting ways to advocate and educate. We're also planning on discussing new technological applications that allow cardiovascular professionals to avoid radiation during procedures.

But in this piece, we'll take a lighter look at ways to mitigate musculoskeletal pain including stress reduction techniques and some alternative approaches.

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