Monday | April 17, 2023

Healthcare starts with you. This is your beat.

Good Morning Readers, 

I hope you had a safe weekend. Our team is back from Florida and feeling all of the feels from connecting with nurses at the Nurses Connect event in Fort Lauderdale. Here are some of the best moments from the week. We are off to host another event in May and are so excited to share details with you soon! 

Stay safe. Be healthy. Be kind. 

Tamara AL-Yassin (aka Nurse T)

CEO | The Nursing Beat 

P.S. We have some exciting giveaways and prizes coming up for Nurses Week! Stay tuned for all the details.

Are you a nurse serving on a board?
Help the Nurses on Boards Coalition toward their mission of improving the health of communities through the service of nurses on boards by taking this survey. They seek to demonstrate the value of nurses in board seats, identify perceived barriers and publish and disseminate measures of success related to desired outcomes. 

MORNING BRIEF 🍳 ☕️

FDA Says Don’t Use Certain O&M Halyard Surgical N95 Respirators

According to the FDA, laboratory tests have shown that specific O&M Halyard surgical N95 respirator models, surgical masks, and pediatric face masks aren’t up to quality standards and could fail to provide fluid barrier protection. As a result, it is now recommending consumers, health care providers, and facilities stop using the N95 respirators and exercise caution with O&M’s surgical, procedure, and pediatric face masks. 

There are only two surgical respirators from O&M that the FDA recommends everyone steers clear of FLUIDSHIELD Surgical N95 Respirator Mask, Orange, Level 3, small and regular sizes (model numbers 46827 and 46727). The FDA has a long list of O&M surgical, procedure, and pediatric face masks that should not be used when fluid barrier protection against splashes, sprays, or splatter is needed. The FDA recommends reporting problems with O&M respirators and masks using the MedWatch Voluntary Reporting Form. 

US Supreme Court Temporarily Blocks Texas Mifepristone Ruling

After Texas Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk ruled to halt the use of the abortion drug mifepristone earlier this month, the Biden Administration has been appealing the decision, trying to get an emergency request to preserve the FDA’s approval of the drug. However, the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit issued a mixed decision that stayed the most impactful parts of Kacsmaryk’s ruling. Now, Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., responsible for overseeing the appeals court, has issued an order that briefly pauses Kacsmaryk’s ruling until Wednesday at midnight. 

The Biden administration wasn’t the only entity to file the emergency application. Danco Laboratories, which produces Mifeprex, also filed an application, asking the justices to defer to the FDA’s scientific expertise regarding the drug’s safety and efficacy. The US Supreme Court justices are now reviewing the briefs and lower court rulings.

New Study Offers Clues Why Some People Are Prone to UTIs

Some 50 to 60% of women in the US will experience at least one urinary tract infection in their life, and nearly 25% suffer from recurrent UTIs (at least two in six months or three in 12 months). Why only a quarter of people get recurrent UTIs has remained a mystery. Still, a new study suggests a potential answer: UTIs may change the DNA in urinary tract epithelial cells. This could cause the cells to change their size and kick off an immune response that ultimately makes them more susceptible to UTIs.

The study’s results come from mouse experiments and stem cell cultures, and it’s unclear how the findings translate to humans. Ultimately, however, the research could offer solace to recurrent UTI sufferers who think they’re doing something wrong or have poor hygiene. 

COMMUNITY PICKS 🌼 

Combat tired legs during your next set of 12-hour shifts with these compression socks! These come in a six-pack and are available in a wide variety of colors and patterns!

🧑‍💻 THAT REMOTE LIFE powered by

We’re Literally Begging You to Join LinkedIn

We’re determined at Nurse Fern to get more nurses on LinkedIn as it is the answer to the following:

• Does anyone work in X position at X company? I have a few questions.

• How do I find contracted remote nursing jobs?

• Where do recruiters find remote nurses?

• How do I find smaller startup healthcare companies?

• How do I build community as a remote nurse?

• How do I get my opinions and nursing voice seen and heard?

It's no secret that anytime we post about LinkedIn, those posts get the lowest engagement. Just ask me about last month’s feature. But we will keep trying because it is the best-kept secret in a remote nurse job search. If LinkedIn scares you and you have no idea how to build a profile that gets you noticed by recruiters, look at Nurse Fern’s LinkedIn Light Up.

Ready to find your remote nursing role? Nurse Fern caters to remote job postings to nurses leaving the bedside. Check out our daily remote nurse job postings on Nurse Fern.

🧭 MAP OF THE MODERN NURSE powered by

Trauma alters our brain structure, making us more vulnerable to intense emotions. 

Goals of emotional regulation include: 

• Naming and understanding emotions

• Decreasing the frequency of unpleasant emotions 

• Reducing human suffering

Here’s why emotional regulation is hard:

• Lack of skills you were not taught

• Rumination collecting of worse-case scenarios

• Emotional overload: you are living in a state of hyperarousal and do not know where to start

• Myths about emotions being bad or weak or that extreme emotion is “just my personality” 

• Biology mental health diagnosis

Enter Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT). DBT is based on the Biosocial Theory and is utilized by Debriefing the Front Lines as a way to help those who are sensitive to the environment, reactive to events, become overwhelmed with emotion, and are slow to return to calm as a result of the cumulative care taking trauma (CCT) experienced on the front lines of our healthcare system. 

Debriefing the Front Lines offers debriefing packages, subscriptions, and scholarships to nurses navigating the physical, emotional, and spiritual effects of CCT. 

DAILY DIVERSION 💊

It’s one thing to know and understand the different parts of the human body. Still, seeing an up-close look inside our skeletal, muscular, respiratory, nervous, digestive, reproductive, and urinary systems is another. If you’re ever in Las Vegas, head to Luxor Hotel & Casino for Bodies The Exhibition to view 13 whole-body specimens and more than 260 organs and partial-body specimens.

🤯 ONE BIG NUMBER

Thanks for reading! 🤓