Pediatrics Overview

By Laura Villarreal

The past couple weeks I have really considering what I want to do with my life. I know I want to be a doctor and I know I want to work with kids. My big question was, which career will give me that? I don’t think I am cut out to be a surgeon or work in a big hospital. I don’t like to be rushed or feel stressed. I have a lot of ideals for my perfect workplace that have to be balanced realistically. The number one obvious choice for a future career is a pediatrician. Pediatricians are generally located in doctors offices. They provide general care for children with health issues while collaborating with other health care providers to insure full quality care for each child. Being a pediatrician requires 4 years of college, 4 years of medical school, and 3 years completed in a residency program. Pediatrics also has many sub specialties within itself. These sub specialties will require another 3-4 years in a fellowship. I feel that something within pediatrics will be the right fit for me.

"More nurses, less death"

Written By: Hyaal Wehab

  A large problem that many medical services are facing today is a shortage of staffing in medical institutions. One of the largest fields of medical work is nursing, but it also faces many issues in its staff numbers. This week I am writing about an article regarding the positive impacts and support that proper staffing brings to medical institutions.

  A study in 2004 compared the staffing in hospitals in California and New Jersey. The numbers of nurses in hospitals located in California was much higher compared to those in New Jersey, and from this research they have concluded that just by having a relatively high amounts of nurses staffed, nurses tend to love the profession more and feel less burnt out. Not only does it help prevent nurses from feeling burnt out, but it also reduces the number of deaths and creates better income for patients. Since the patient to nurse ratio tends to be very uneven, it is hard for the staffed nurses to tend each patient with the same intensity due to the amount of energy they need to put in for each patient, and they feel very burnt out the more patients that they have to tend. The study claims that, if New Jersey had the same numbers of staffed nurses that California has, the death rates of their patients would decrease, and also decrease the amount of nurses that are “burnt out”. As the research continued, studies showed that when nurses cared for fewer patients, they were able to devote more energy and attention to each, which created better outcome for the health of their patients. After seeing the positive income of this study, many different states began to follow in California’s foot steps, and began creating specific staffing ratios, or staffing plans for nurses to create a better income not only for their patients, but also a healthier lifestyle for nurses. These ratios would ensure that nurses reach their patients on time for medications and check ups, and they are not overwhelmed. When these actions were taken, patient outcomes were much better when nurses began caring for fewer patients at a time.

  Staffing of nurses continues to grow into a larger issue as time goes on, beginning form the understaffing of professors in universities, and the competitive nature that most nursing programs hold. Students are not able to take these courses, which leads to the understaffing of nurses in hospitals. After reading this article, it is clear what impact that accurate staffing will bring to hospitals in many states. My questions are, how can the issue of staffing be fixed? Since the understaffing begins in universities and nursing programs, how can universities re-evaluate their requirements to reduce the amounts of understaffing? This article helped bring the issue of understaffing to my attention, and will hopefully bring this issue to the attention of many other individuals pursuing this field.

Article: More Nurses, less death

Evaluating Sources

Written by: Madison Elliott

The article I found this week was about bioethics and health and human rights. It explained bioethics as the study of the controversial issues arising with the recent advancements in healthcare technology and capabilities. Health and human rights was explained in a more abstract manner but I gathered that it basically outlined a person’s right to accessible and affordable health care.  In other words, the right to health. The article talks about how many people confuse law and ethics and use the two synonymously. It claims that health and human rights are being misguided through its ambiguity. Because there are so many gray areas, it's difficult to distinguish between right and wrong in some situations. For example, should an elderly person with a severe degenerative brain disease who cannot remember who they are with no familiy be euthanized? Some would argue yes, while some would argue no. But it is impossible to regulate something that has yet to be defined.

Its the Season for Sickness

Written by Alex Reddy

As summer comes to an end, we all recognize the substantial drop in our atmospheric temperature. We usually notice that the leaves begin to fall and that most neighborhood critters tuck themselves away for the winter. Among the many other changes during fall, I tend to notice the increase of illness among my friends and family. For as long as I can remember, I have always fallen ill in Autumn. As a college student I know that illness is always prevalent; However in the recent month, I’ve tend to notice that the majority of the students around me seem to be sick. So I ask myself, why is this? In this blog I’d like to share some common beliefs as to why we are more susceptible to falling ill in Autumn.

As a student located in the midwest, most of us know from experience that during fall the average temperature can range from anywhere between 40 degrees to 60 degrees. This alone can be a major red flag. After being accustomed to the warm summer heat for so long the cool temperature fluctuations of fall can actually cause some physical harm to the body. After reading up about falling ill in Autumn I stumbled across this quote, “In a study published this month in the journal Family Practice, researchers demonstrated for the first time that a drop in body temperature could in fact bring on a cold” (Lulic). This is scientific proof that the change in atmospheric temperature has a negative effect on your body. As we get our first glimpse of Autumn, this initial change in temperature effects our immune system so that it doesn't work as efficiently causing us to fall ill more easily (Lulic).

Another reason we may see a spike in illness during fall also has to do with dropping temperatures. As the weather gets colder many of us seem to make our way indoors more often bringing us in a closer proximity with strangers. This can happen in a variety of places, the most common for college students being a bus. Unfortunately, the cool temperatures of fall cause us to come in contact with others more often. This plus a depleted immune system is the main reason we find ourselves falling ill more often in Autumn then any other season. I thank Fall for bringing colorful leaves and pumpkins, but will always despise its nasty sniffles.

source:

Lulic, Miron. “Why do I seem to get sick every fall?” 5/4/2013. https://www.quora.com/Why-do-I-seem-to-get-sick-every-fall

Gender Stereotypes

By Laura Villarreal

In this week’s research, I looked at a very well known bias that men are doctors and women are nurses. As a woman aspiring to be a doctor, I am aware that I will face this stereotype every day. Starting off my freshman year of college, I have already experienced someone with this mindset. My chemistry teaching assistant, who is also my chemistry learning coach for the program I am in, automatically assumed I was a pre-nursing major and started talking about other girls that he helps too. I wasn’t offended but it was weird to me that he just thought that I was pre-nursing.

Even though women make up 50 percent of medical school students, people still make these assumptions. A study by Livescience says that when asked to pair the names Jonathan and Elizabeth with doctor and nurse, the people are more likely to pair Jonathan with doctor and Elizabeth with nurse. I feel like this discourages women to become doctors. Why go through years of medical school to get an M.D. when you won’t even be recognized for it in your workplace? I think nurses are a vital part of any hospital, but doctors go through more training and schooling so they should be recognized for it.

     Subconsciously, I still make the same assumptions between men and women. I think it has to do with the way nurses and doctors are portrayed. In Halloween stores, there is always “sexy nurse” costumes for women and “hot doctor” costumes for men. I have never seen costumes vise versa. I also think about the television show M.A.S.H. from the 70’s I used to watch with my dad when I was younger. It was set in South Korea during the Korean war and it was about a mobile army hospital. Most of the men characters were doctors and the women were nurses. At that time, there were more male doctors and more female nurses. I think that evolved into the gender stereotype we see today, even though it is not true anymore.

Information found on;

http://www.livescience.com/55134-subconscious-stereotypes-hard-to-budge.html

http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/06/14/assuming-the-doctors-a-he/?_r=0

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M*A*S*H_(TV_series)#Recurring_characters

Recognizing Significance

Written by Alex Reddy

Modern medicine is one of many impressive advancements upon us in the 21st century. It is both widely agreed with and disagreed with, and is used in a variety of different ways. Modern medicine is used to cure diseases, halt diseases, prevent diseases, ease symptoms, and even help in the diagnosis of certain illnesses (TeensHealth). Personally, I am a huge advocate for modern medicine and I am very thankful that the medical field devotes a large portion of its time to the discovery of new types of medicine. In this blog Id like to recognize the significance of the medical field and discuss how it continues to make such a large impact on our everyday lives.

The professional medical field is made up of a variety of very important positions; However, In this blog I’d like to focus on one group of positions that I view as the most important. The research and discovery of new types of medicine is only made possible through the hard work and efforts of the medical field. A recent discovery, found through research at University of North Carolina School of Medicine, uncovered some new possible ways to treat Crohn’s disease. Without continuous research in the medical field we wouldn't have made this discovery. Crohn’s disease is a long-term condition that causes inflammation to the inner lining of the digestive system (Nichols). Crohn's disease requires many surgical procedures and without proper treatment, is deadly.

Fortunately enough, parts of the medical field have been continuously laboring over research in order to help find new solutions and treatment options to Crohn’s disease and many others like it. Without the proper research, we would have never gotten as far as we are today. Dr. Shehzad Z. Sheikh stated, "The one-treatment-fits-all approach doesn't seem to be working for Crohn's patients,” (Nichols). Therefore, a team of medical professionals familiar with the field came together in hopes to find a better treatment method. Aside from this singular case, the medical field works to help make all of our lives more enjoyable when we fall victim to illness. I believe that this is a great and specific example of how important the medical field is to all of us.

Sources:

Nichols, Hannah. "Crohn's Disease: Discovery of Two Subtypes Could Lead to Better Treatments." Medical News Today. MediLexicon International, 14 Oct. 2016. Web. 14 Oct. 2016.

"Understanding Medications and What They Do." TeensHealth - the Web's Most Visited Site about Children's Health. The Nemours Foundation, n.d. Web. 14 Oct. 20

Male Nurses

Written By: Hyaal Wehab

   In my post last week, I talked about the issue based on the pay difference for male and female nurses. Thought field of nursing is mainly dominated by females, men seem to be payed more than women, but it turns out that men face more challenges and discrimination than women do. My post this week will be about an article, written by Julie K. Poliafico, regarding the large gap in the gender ratio in this profession, and the hardships that male nurses face in this industry.

   Florence Nightingale was the first woman to identify the modern form of nursing to this day. Although Nightingale played a large part in the evolution of nursing, many of nurses before and after Nightingale’s time, were men. Most of the male nurses at this time put their own lives at risk to perform the profession that they love. During the time of the Civil war, multiple men not only worked as nurses in the army/ navy corps to tend to those wounded or affected by the bubonic plague, but they also worked as soldiers to serve and protect this country. Their service was honored and appreciated by many, but by the end of the war, there was a large decline in the population of male nurses, and Florence Nightingale was part of the influence behind this. Ever since this time, it seemed as if it was much harder to keep men in the field of nursing, and to even influence them to join. Nightingale had great intentions and did believe that equality between the voice of men and women was very important, but she never mentioned the presence of men in the field of nursing, which was offensive to most men in the field, hence the fact that a large majority of the field, in her time, was made up of men. The decline of men in the field of nursing was not only influenced my Nightingale’s lack of inclusion, but also due to the discrimination that they faced by many. Since nursing was seen as a profession of care and compassion, men were looked at by many as “unmanly” or they were automatically classified as a homosexual due to their profession in such a female-dominated work force. Due to this, by the 1900’s, men were not able to be a part of the army/navy nursing corps nor were they accepted by all nursing schools; only a few continued to admit men. Of course, as time went on, this changed. Between 1992 and 1996, more men began pursuing professions in the field of nursing, despite the “unmanly” image and discrimination towards their gender. Now in present time, nursing admittance is not an issue for men anymore, but many men still fear being seen as “unmanly”. Although the number of men increased, it did not make it any easier to persuade the men to stay in nursing. Most men that attend nursing school to receive a BSN (Bachelors of Science in Nursing) end up dropping out, or failing out of nursing school before they even complete the required course to receive their degree. Many men tend to ditch nursing school due to the discrimination and challenges they face, but there are still very few that push through and fight through the challenges.

   In the United States, about 5% of nurses are men. This is not a large fraction compared to the amount of women in this profession, but it still recognizes the amount of men in this field, despite the discrimination. Many men that have stuck through this to receive their degree have said that they feel isolated due to the lack of male peers and figures around them. Although male nurses have said that they get along really well with most of their female colleagues, they still feel that they are excluded based on their gender. For example, many male nurses are not assigned to work with female patients due to the idea of making women “uncomfortable”, but female nurses are almost always assigned to male and female patients, which makes male nurses feel that they are not included. Two courts actually passed rules which allowed hospitals to not hire labor/ delivery room nurses, or prohibit male nurses from being in the delivery room due to the patient feeling more “anxious”. After doing certain studies, female patients have said that they do not find any difference in being examined by a male or female nurse; most women actually prefer being examined by male nurses. Male nurses also feel that they are overlooked when it comes to leadership opportunities simply because they are men. Due to the rates of discrimination that these men face, the American Assembly for Men in Nursing (AAMN), founded in 1971, was created to recruit more men into nursing, and provide support for men already in the field of nursing.

   Male nurses should be appreciated more due to their large contribution to the field of nursing. Male and Female nurses should work together to create an even larger, positive impact in this profession. After reading this article, I really appreciate the men in this field but also realize that there should not be discrimination in this profession, or any profession, because when people can come together, disregarding the gender, they create a larger impact. The only question that I really have is, how can the discrimination of male nurses based on their gender, come to a stop?  There will always be others that will firmly believe in this discrimination, but for those that want to put a stop to this, how else is it possible? I strongly believe that male nurses should be treated just as equal as female nurses, and vice versa.

Nursing's Gender Gap