The Handoff - Issue #7

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

Something to watch out for

Imagine walking into a resident's room in a skilled nursing facility and saying: "Don't worry you can go home now because a computer said you will likely be fine in a few days". Seems rather unlikely right? Well an investigation has come to surface as STAT news made accusations towards Medicare that artificial intelligence has been used to calculate the end of someone's care needs. Thus cutting off payment at that time. Essentially, this AI can trump physician's orders of needing continued care. This article discusses several cases of residents being discharged from skilled nursing facilities due to their insurance companies using this data to determine that their care could be concluded. AI was originally used to make length of care predictions for insurance companies. It should not be used for determining an end date for care. Government regulation is needed as people suffer the real life consequences of a heartless "robot".

Something to pull at your heartstrings

When nurse Laura King was tasked with writing her close friend Faye Low's eulogy she decided to write is as a children's book. Laura decided that Faye, a children's hospice nurse, wouldn't have wanted it any other way. Faye passed away from cancer leaving behind two children of her own. It was after the funeral that she was approached and asked if it could be used as a published story to help other children who found themselves in the same situation. Thus, this nurse written story was made- she even did the illustrations. The story is written to help children understand and adjust to the idea of their parent having cancer. Laura states in the article "Something that my friend was really, really passionate about was being honest with children, but in an appropriate way". The book discusses the visual and physical changes that they may see in their parent and also discusses actual loss. It is devastating that this book has a use, but insanely inspiring that a loss was used to help others just as Faye would have wanted. The book is linked below incase any of you other nurses would have a use for it or would want to support a nurse author!

Something to read (the fine print)

My nursing training experience included a brief 8 weeks of being extra hands for a swamped nurse who, if I was lucky, had time to show me how to do a few things. Then, as staffing numbers dwindled, I was patted on the back for being great and "graduated" from training early. Luckily, I had a great team that helped me along the way and I came out OK. I left that hospital however after about a year due to unsafe staffing and the stress it was causing me. If a bill for 2,000+ dollars had been sent to me for me to pay back for my "training" I would have absolutely thrown a fit. This article discusses several hospitals where new grad nurses didn't read the fine print and found that if they left their contracts early they would be required to pay back for supposed training time. Several of their training experiences matched mine. I know that when I was a baby nurse I definitely did not read the fine print when I signed on to work at that hospital. And the saying is that nurses eat their young...?

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