Saving the children and more news for nurses from fall 2013

Nursing is Kid’s Stuff

Is it ever too early to start thinking about becoming a nurse? Of course not, especially when the job is described in imaginative children’s stories. Some books for the kids in your life:

• The My Hero, My Dad The Nurse series by Maggie Thurmond Dorsey, RN, a former University of South Carolina professor of nursing. The original and its follow-ups (My Hero, My Dad The Nurse Knocked Out Cancer and My Hero, My Dad The Nurse Played Football) are delightful.

• For the youngest budding nurse, there’s Nurse Nancy, by Kathryn Jackson and Corinne Malvern, the story of a young girl who mends her big brother.

• Older kids will like Nurse, Soldier, Spy: The Story of Sarah Edmonds, a Civil War Hero, by Marissa Moss and John Hendrix, the little-known tale of a girl who disguised herself as a man to battle the Confederacy.

• And for just plain fun, check out The School Nurse From the Black Lagoon by Mike Thaler and Jared Lee.

13 Number of hours in a nurse’s shift where patients begin to feel dissatisfaction, according to a study by University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing researchers. As the hours go up, so does the patients’ displeasure. And the unhappiness goes both ways: Nurses working shifts of 10 hours or longer were up to two and a half times more likely to experience burnout.