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Strapped emergency services struggle to answer 911 calls

Feb 9, 2023
Health care staffing shortages and high turnover rates means patients end up waiting longer to get through emergency departments.
New Orleans EMS Lt. Noah Feldman helps his team members load a patient into an ambulance in November.
Shalina Chatlani/Gulf States Newsroom

Hospitals explore virtual nursing to cover staffing shortages and fight burnout

Jan 11, 2023
With nurses facing burnout like never before, some hospitals are exploring remote work options that could keep experienced RNs on the job longer.
Ardent Health is partnering with care.ai to implement virtual nursing technology in each of its 30 hospitals, though the companies say they plan to use local nurses rather than beaming in people from out of state.
Courtesy care.ai

For a rural hospital trying to reopen, hiring is a challenge

Oct 6, 2022
Many rural hospitals have closed during the pandemic, and their staffers found other work far away.
The Haywood County Community Hospital reopened in August after more than a year of renovations. The hospital closed in 2014.
Blake Farmer/WPLN News

More health care workers will be able to provide abortions under a new Maryland law

Jun 29, 2022
Maryland is one of 19 states expanding access to abortion by widening the circle of providers, including physician assistants and nurse practitioners.
In addition to allowing qualified health care workers to perform abortions, Maryland's new law also provides $3.5 million a year to train abortion providers.
Nic Coury/AFP via Getty Images

Guilty verdict for Tennessee nurse in case involving medical error has other nurses worried

Apr 26, 2022
RaDonda Vaught awaits sentencing for criminally negligent homicide. Her conviction is weighing heavily on a weary profession.
The pandemic has already taken a toll on those in the nursing sector. Now, the criminal conviction of RaDonda Vaught — who made a fatal medication error — is another source of anxiety and frustration for nurses.
Sergey Tinyakov/Getty Images

Pandemic price gouging complaints raise staff tensions with traveling nurses

Feb 15, 2022
Hospitals say that staffing agencies charge too much for providing traveling nurses. The nurses say they're the ones doing the heavy lifting.
Talk of pay caps and price gouging are concerning travel nurses, who say they’re the ones doing the hard work of caring for critically ill COVID patients.
Blake Farmer/WPLN News

Rural hospitals, short of staff, brace for omicron

Dec 28, 2021
Many health care workers have fled the pandemic's burdens in areas with low vaccination rates and fragile economies.
 A health care worker tends to a COVID-19 patient in Apple Valley, California. Rural hospitals are struggling to hire staff amid surging case numbers.
Ariana Drehsler/AFP via Getty Images

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School nurses are stretched thin during the pandemic

Dec 23, 2021
School nurses are attending to COVID-19 protocols on top of their regular duties of keeping students physically and emotionally healthy.
On top of their daily duties dealing with sick children, school nurses are taking care of COVID-19 protocols like testing and contact tracing.
kali9 via Getty Images

Why one former ICU nurse quit his job: "I was having panic attacks"

Nov 11, 2021
Exploring the pandemic's toll on health care workers.
A nurse tends to a COVID-19 patient in a Connecticut ICU in April 2020. Understaffing and pandemic stressors have prompted many nurses to consider leaving the field.
John Moore via Getty Images

Stress and burnout stoke churn in health care workforce

Nov 10, 2021
The U.S. has nearly 400,000 fewer workers in nursing and residential-care facilities than it did before the pandemic.
Nurses Klivia Brahja, left, and Kelley Cabrera work in the emergency room at Jacobi Medical Center in the Bronx, New York. Many veteran nurses, Cabrera said, have retired or "they’ve gone to something easier, because this is just unmanageable.”
Courtesy Klivia Brahja