Tuesday | May 23, 2023

Healthcare starts with you. This is your beat.

Hey-O Nursing Beat Friends!

It’s time for your Two-for-Tuesday fact break, but it has a twist this week! We’re going to play trivia with it! Here are your two questions for today:

1. What percentage of the human body is actually just water? 🌊
   

2. On average, how much saliva does a person make each day? 🤤
   

Click the links to find out the answers! 

Big love and even better health,

Kel M.

Managing Editor of TNB

TODAY ON TNB'S BLOG 💬

MORNING BRIEF 🍳 ☕️

To Be or Not To Be a Male Nurse

The pioneers of nursing we always hear about are women, such as Florence Nightingale and Clara Barton. But the proportion of men in nursing has steadily increased in the US — by 59% in the last decade. About one in eight nurses in the US today is male, but what’s it like being in the gender minority in this field? Becker’s asked 40 male nurses this question, and 27 shared the advantages and disadvantages.

FDA Panels Gives the Go-Ahead to Maternal RSV Vaccine 

Just weeks after the FDA approved the first-ever vaccine against the respiratory syncytial virus (RSV)—called Arexvy which is approved for adults age 60 and older—the FDA’s advisory committee for drugs and vaccines has given the green light to another vaccine, this one to be given during pregnancy so that newborns are protected with maternal antibodies from birth. As a result, three RSV vaccines and one monoclonal antibody against RSV are all under FDA consideration this year.

Practice Alert Advises Prone Positioning Tips to Avoid Injury

Patients requiring prone positioning therapy for an extended period—at least 12 hours a day—may be at higher risk for complications, such as pressure injuries, airway obstruction, nerve injuries, and enteral nutrition issues. The American Association of Critical-Care Nurses released new standardized guidelines on May 16th that provide best practices to reduce the risk of these complications. It’s imperative to ensure the benefits outweigh the risks for each patient, one coauthor said.  

COMMUNITY PICKS 🌼 

We spend 12 hours a day (often more) in scrubs that sometimes lack personality. So add a little flair to your uniform by including one of these fantastic glittered badge tags. They come in a ten-pack, so you can share a few with your friends on the floor!

TECH TUESDAY with NURSE MANNY 🤖

Hippocratic AI

While it may appear to have the same hype as crypto and NFTs, large language models (LLM) are here to stay and are increasingly evolving into niche applications. Think of an LLM as a computer program, a type of AI focusing on understanding and generating human language that can understand and generate human-like text due to being trained on large datasets. Arguably the most famous LLM is ChatGPT; while impressive, it is a general knowledge LLM. Hippocratic AI is an LLM specific to healthcare applications and can understand and generate healthcare speak, not solely physician speak. The company’s founders recognized that healthcare includes physicians, nurses, pharmacists, dieticians, dentists, EMTs, and so forth and included all of them in certifying the LLM. The LLM passed several certifying tests, including 88.6% on the NCLEX. 

The founders’ focus on safety reassures me; the product will be released once healthcare professionals, not venture capitalists, say it’s ready. Check out this great interview to find out more. Of course, we’re many years away before AI replaces clinicians. Still, I think it will soon help give access to healthcare services, filling the gap of decreased healthcare workers associated with the pandemic. 

DAILY DIVERSION 💊

Want to be a nurse entrepreneur but need help figuring out where to start? The need is everywhere, and you can get involved in many ways. Check out these 38 ideas for new nursing businesses. Perhaps you’ll be your own CEO!

🤯 ONE BIG NUMBER

Thanks for reading! 🤓