NP World News: Why NPs Need Full Practice and Prescriptive Authority
NP World News is the official news publication of nurse practitioners. Its contributors and columnists are thought leaders in the NP profession.
This is the second of 5 columns I will write for NPWN this year on subject of NP practice, health and health care reform.
Click “Read Full Post” if you would like to leave a comment.
Depression Affects 1 in 13 American Adults and 1 in 12 Teens
Depression is a tough and it makes everything else tougher. Many of my patients don’t recognize that depression is a disease just like diabetes, high blood pressure or the flu. It is a medical problem and there are medical solutions that can help. But first depression must be recognized as a problem.
During these uncertain times, depression is on the rise. The economic crises combined with living in a country at war with terrorism can create a sense of gloom that can lead to depression. If enough stressors pile up – things like losing a job, a home, facing a health crisis or suffering the loss of a loved one – they can topple even the most resilient soul.
Read this post to learn what can be done.
Is It Bad to Take Medications?
This blog is dedicated to helping non-medical consumers make smart choices about how to handle their health and health care. Nowhere, and I mean nowhere, is there more misinformation or more misconceptions than where medications are concerned.
Sometimes when I advise prescription drugs to treat uncontrolled medical conditions patients react as if I am literally trying to poison them. I find the majority of patients, regardless of their intelligence, are not well educated about either the danger of not treating certain conditions or the benefit of treatment with the right drug at the right dose.
Read this post if you are willing to set your preconceptions aside and look at the whole medication question from a health professional’s perspective.
7 Tips for Staying Energized
Here are 7 safe, solid and proven tips to help you stay energized all through the day.
BTW – these don’t come from me, they are from patients who have read my book and then come up with their own ways to make healthy lifestyle behaviors work in their lives. Those that do the following things say they have energy all day - and they are losing weight, too!
Smart Women Missing Stroke Risks and Warning Signs
Stroke is the third leading cause of death in both men and women (right behind heart disease and cancer). It occurs equally in men and women until age 75. After age 75 women are at much greater risk for stroke than men. Stroke incidence has been increasing in women of all ages. In recent years strokes have surged in the age 45 to 54 age groups – groups usually at low risk for stroke. Why? Experts believe it’s because of an increase in risk factors that lead to stroke.
In a recent study published in the February 2009 issue of the medical journal Stroke researchers reported that 215 women, all having at least one risk factor for stroke, were unable to identify their risks. Furthermore they did not consider themselves to be at risk and were doing nothing to reduce their risk. The researchers concluded “Educational strategies must advocate for and target high-risk women.”
Read this post to learn the risks and warning signs of stroke these women missed.
ADVANCE for Nurse Practitioners Spotlights Carla Mills, ARNP in Audio Interview
Here’s a link to an audio interview I did recently with Jennifer Ford, associate editor with the magazine ADVANCE for Nurse Practitioners. ADVANCE is a source for peer-reviewed and professional information for today’s nurse practitioners.
The interview runs about 15 minutes and there is a slide show with some pictures. So if you’d like to hear me talk about how I came to be here and what I am trying to do, click this link and listen.
Living Longer on the Sunny Side of the Street
Optimists have lower death rates and are less likely to be hypertensive, diabetic or be smokers than pessimists. Wow! So maybe attitude IS everything!
An interesting study titled Psychological Traits and Total Mortality in the Women’s Health Initiative was presented in March 2009 at the American Psychosomatic Society’s 67th annual meeting by Dr. Hilary Tindle, assistant professor of medicine at the University of Pittsburgh. Dr. Tindle and her colleagues found optimistic postmenopausal women fared better over time than pessimists.
Read this post and learn more.
Consumers are the Ultimate Stakeholder in Health Care Reform
This week President Obama invited “stakeholders” in the health care system to the White House to seek their input about the best ways to reform health care. Representatives from hospitals, the insurance industry, medical device and pharmaceutical companies, labor and physicians came to discuss ways to lower health care costs across the board. Neither consumers nor nurse practitioners were among the invited stakeholders.
Also this month the Deloitte Center for Health Solutions (a subsidiary of the international consulting company Deloitte and Touche) published their analysis of a survey they did of 4,001 American adult health care consumers. The survey (administered either in English or Spanish) sought information about the behaviors and attitudes of consumers regarding health care.
Read this post to learn what we as consumers - the ultimate stakeholders in health care reform - say we want.
Your Lifestyle Choices: Are You Preventing Disease – or Inviting It?
Maverick Health and my book, A Nurse Practitioner’s Guide to Smart Health Choices, are all about using your lifestyle behaviors to prevent or control chronic diseases. I’ve been at this for over a decade now and every day I read studies and hear news-bites that only validate what I write about on this blog and talk about in my book.
But until you know what I know and, more importantly, act on what you know all this information is useless. Read this post about a study in Europe that looked at how well people controlled their risk factors after they’d already had a heart attack or serious cardiac event. Hint: reviewers that read the study found its results “ominous”.
Synch to Your Body’s Own Clock and to Mother Earth for Better Health
In March 2009, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences published research done at the Division of Sleep Medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. Researchers studied 10 subjects – 5 men and 5 women – to see what happened to their cardiovascular and metabolic systems if their behavioral and circadian rhythms were disrupted.
If you want to know what effect being out of synch with your body’s own clock and the rhythms of the Earth has on your health, read this post.
