The Handoff - Issue #10

Hello fellow Nurse, this is your weekly handoff. Some quick and dirty nursing news that’s worth sharing. Enjoy!

Something... else.

 This astonishing clip of a nurse sleeping on the jobs at Auburn Rehabilitation center has gone viral after a colleague reported it to their local news station. Now, the video has over 1.6 million views. Why is a video of a poor exhausted nurse viral? Well, when you see the clip you'll definitely question if exhaustion is the cause of this standing and swaying sleep routine. "It remains unclear if the employee's behavior was caused by sleep deprivation, a medical emergency or something else"... I'm going to go with "something else". It is still unclear if there has been any disciplinary action taken towards this staff member, but the rehab facility claims to be taking immediate action and launching an internal investigation. Although, it makes you wonder why the colleague felt it had to go to the news to get the attention it needed to make a change. Has this nurse been complained about before? The New York State Department of Health has launched an investigation into this matter as well. Say, wasn't that show "Nurse Jackie" also set in New York... 

Something to talk about next shift

You hear all the time nowadays about technology taking people's jobs. Factory workers are replaced by robots. Store employees are replaced by self checkout lines. Some pharmacy staff have even been replaced by the Pyxis machine! Nursing is one job that can never be replaced by technology. Maybe not replaced, but with the World Health Organization predicting a  nursing shortage of 9 million by 2030, we may need some robot assistance. Funded by 5.3 million dollars, an Artificial Intelligence nurse is projected to roll out to hospitals in the next two years. The "nurse" is equipped with cameras for monitoring patients, assessing wounds, collecting patient information and apparently more. Designed to help nurses free up their time, the robot has been in training since 2020. However, knowing that certain human interactions cannot be learned from internet data, actors have been acting out medical scenarios in front of the AI nurse so that it can learn how to react. Haven't we learned from those Sci-Fi movies about robots becoming too smart though?? I can see the Sci-Fi movie preview now: robots in scrubs coming out of a hospital swinging stethoscopes like lassoes. 

Something to be proud of

Research nurse Isabel Octaviano writes this article to discuss the roles that bedside Oncology nurses play in clinical research. The article is informative, but also an applause to highlight just how much bedside nurses do EVERYTHING. She discusses their help with reporting patient information to Oncologists that the patient may have forgotten or didn't even know was worth reporting. Oncology nurses also assist in assessing patients and knowing who to recommend for potential clinical trials. With trial medications constantly rolling out in cancer treatment specifically, it is huge to know how much these nurses help. Octaviano goes more in depth on how clinical trials look as well, worth a read if you're considering going into research nursing! 

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