US Senate Brings Healthcare Bill to Floor for Debate

The US Senate tonight by a vote of 60 to 40 (along party lines) passed a procedural vote to permit its healthcare bill to be brought to the floor for debate, which should preoccupy the Senate until the Christmas recess.

USDA: Growing Hunger in America

According to a recent US Department of Agriculture report, noted in today’s Washington Post in “More Americans Going Hungry” by Amy Goldstein, households dealing with food shortages shot up to 49 million (nearly15%), the largest number since the government began keeping data. Households with children account for 21%.

NY Times: Making Health Care Better

Featured in today’s New York Times Sunday Magazine, the article “Making Health Care Better,” by David Leonhardt. It discusses evidence-base care through collaborations among physicians, nurses and other healthcare practitioners.
Concerning the history of health care, the article notes:
But there is one important way in which medicine never quite adopted the scientific method. The explosion of medical [...]

RN Among Ft. Hood Slain

Nurses and nurse educators have lost one of their own in the shootings on a US Army base.
Russell Seager, an enlisted Army nurse practitioner, VA hospital nurse, and nurse educator, was among those soldiers slain this past week at the Ft. Hood Army Base in Texas.
A brief notice can be found on the Washington Post [...]

Chronicle: Medical-School Applications Barely Rise Even as Doctor Shortage Looms

Reported today in the Chronicle of Higher Education:
Despite the opening of four new medical schools and the expansion of at least a dozen others, applications to American medical schools inched up just 0.1 percent this year, according to data released today by the Association of American Medical Colleges.
Medical schools reached a little deeper into their [...]

NY Times: Making It Better

The Sunday New York Times (October 18, 2009) includes a feature article, “Making It Better,” about the complex world and work of school nurses, focusing on Nasim Akhtar (born and educated in Pakistan). The article concludes:
Nurse Akhtar says she is unfazed [by the complex demands on her in a public school]. Sitting in her living [...]