Tuesday | April 11, 2023

Healthcare starts with you. This is your beat.

☀️ Hey-O Nursing Beat Friends!

I hope you all have shaken off your sugar comas from the plethora of Easter candy sitting around the nurse’s station. (I can neither confirm nor deny that I ate an entire bag of Cadbury Royal Dark Mini Eggs in one sitting…my stomach, however, will proudly testify against me.) Anyway, in light of our recent gastric distresses from an influx of Peeps, Cadbury mini eggs, and Dove chocolates, here are some fun gastric medical facts for your Tuesday. 

🤢If you passed gas consistently for six years and nine months, you would have produced enough gas to create the energy of an atomic bomb!

🍪In the average human lifetime, one person spends approximately five years eating and will consume about 7,000 times their weight in food!

Big love and even better health,

Kel M.

Managing Editor of TNB

MORNING BRIEF 🍳 ☕️

NP Sentenced to Federal Prison for “Ghost Office” Insurance Fraud

Defrauding Medicare and commercial insurers of nearly $12 million finally caught up with Alexander Istomin, a 57-year-old RN and NP who ran fraudulent billing scams in Rhode Island, Florida, and New York. Istomin was sentenced on April 5th to seven years in federal prison after he pleaded guilty in October 2022 to 11 counts, including “health care fraud, mail fraud, aggravated identity theft, and causing the introduction of misbranded drugs into interstate commerce,” according to the US Attorney’s Office in Rhode Island.

Istomin had a “ghost office” in Rhode Island, where he received mail but did not actually see patients. But he billed for in-person services at this office, sometimes even for patients not in the US when he claimed he saw them. Istomin also sometimes billed for appointments when he was out of the country, including during visits to his home country Russia.

Almost 40% of Michigan Nurses Expect to Leave Their Jobs Within a Year

Two out of five nurses in Michigan plan to leave their jobs in the next year, according to a new study published in the journal Medical Care. The study reported the findings of a survey of 9,150 practicing nurses in Michigan and a survey of 1,224 nurses who left their position within the past two years. Among the respondents of the first survey, 39% said they plan to leave their current position within the next year, and 28% planned to reduce their clinical hours. In addition, 18% said they planned to pursue travel nursing. 

The results were less surprising considering that 84% of the respondents met the criteria for “emotional exhaustion,” according to the study authors. The workplace concerns cited as most influential were adequate staffing, patient safety, and staff safety. Learn more about the study’s key findings in this infographic. 

Nurses Protest Staffing Levels in Austin, Texas

Nurses at Ascension Seton Medical Center in Austin, Texas, held a protest on April 6th to push back against their administration’s “refusal to address RNs’ deep concerns about patient care and safe staffing,” according to a press release by National Nurses United. Nurses at the hospital voted to unionize with a 72% vote in favor in September last year, leading more than 900 nurses to join the National Nurses Organizing Committee, an affiliate of NNU, and making their institution the largest private hospital in Texas, to form a union. 

The union has been negotiating its contract since November after that vote, and it’s now using its voice to raise concerns about chronic short staffing that endangers patients at the hospital. The news release noted a New York Times  investigation last year, which found the hospital chain has $18 billion in cash reserves even as it touts its labor cost cutting.

COMMUNITY PICKS 🌼 

Here’s another great idea for your soon-to-graduate preceptee! Gift them a pack of these report-made-easy notebooks to take some stress out of getting and giving shift reports!

TECH TUESDAY with NURSE MANNY 🤖

Chatbots and Mental Health

Would you chat with a robot about your mental health? AI therapy bots are chatbots trained in therapies, including cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), a psychotherapy technique involved with bringing awareness to and correcting perceivably negative cognitive thinking. Leading platforms in this space include Woebot, Wysa, and Youper. All three utilize CBT techniques and have the best use cases in treating anxiety and depression, among other conditions. 

Woebot monitors the moods and the tone of the user as the user talks to the bot and expresses their emotions and problems. The bot, much like a human therapist, will give advice and ask further questions to adjust negative thinking or solve a problem. Youper functions much like Woebot; however, it also utilizes alternate therapeutic techniques, including acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT), dialectic behavioral therapy (DBT), and problem-solving therapy (PST). In addition, Wysa has a library of self-care tools to assist with user needs and offer human well-being coaches to blend AI-trained chatbots and human interventions.

DAILY DIVERSION 💊

The lopsided smile of Harvey, a Husky at a San Diego shelter, just melted the heart of Seattle resident Sherry Lankston, so she finally drove more than 2,500 miles to adopt the sweet dog no one else seemed to want. See the photos of Harvey with his new brother River here. 

🤯 ONE BIG NUMBER

Thanks for reading! 🤓