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Catching up with Karyn

Lead with Levity: An Interview with Dr. Bob Dent, DNP, MBA, RN, NEA-BC, CENP, FACHE

Dr. Bob Dent is the Dean of Health Services for Midland College, as well as the VP of Patient Care and Chief Nursing Officer for Midland Memorial Hospital, which is located in Midland, Texas. He’s one of those impressive individuals who has more characters in the abbreviations of his professional accomplishments than most of us have in our actual name!

But his accomplishments aren’t just a result of his education, or his certifications. Dr. Dent’s caring, compassion, and charisma exude through his easy-going style and sense of humor. I’ve had the privilege of watching Dr. Dent during a visit to Midland Memorial and seen first-hand his mastery of leading with levity: setting the tone for fun while at the same time setting high expectations of his staff.

The result? They’ve achieved ANCC's Pathway to Excellence—twice! They are enthusiastic about their path on the ANCC Magnet Journey. Patient satisfaction scores are high and continue to climb, and...

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Free 3 Month Subscription to Nurse FYI Magazine

Attention all nurses!

To celebrate their one year anniversary, Nurse FYI is giving away free 3 month subscriptions. Available as an iPhone app, Nurse FYI provides an insider's view of nursing life. It's a great read - and if you get a chance, check out the September issue, where I finally got my chance to be a Cover Girl!

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Happy Nurses Week!

Happy Nurses Week!

This week of celebration and recognition is for everyone who's ever been puked on, cursed out and proposed to - all by the same patient!

This week of celebration and recognition is for everyone who's ever had to reassure a heavily-tattooed, multiply pierced individual that they really wouldn't die from the pain of getting a tetanus shot!

This week of celebration and recognition is for everyone who knows that the proper answer to 'When will the doctor be here?' is not "Your guess is as good as mine!"

This week of celebration and recognition is for everyone who responds to the next shift being 20 minutes late by giving report in Pig Latin!

This week of celebration and recognition is for everyone who has physically restrained a colleague from saying the Q word!

What we do as nurses is amazing and amusing. This week, make a point of laughing - with your colleagues or by yourself - as often as you can. You'll be happier, you'll be healthier, and you'll be a better...

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Sinclair School of Nursing Awards Karyn Certificate of Merit

I know I sound like Sally Field when I say, "You like me! You really like me!" but I've got to tell you, that's absolutely how I felt when I got the news that my alma mater - the Sinclair School of Nursing, my beloved Mizzou - has decided to honor me with a Certificate of Merit. Thrilled doesn't even begin to express my emotional state - it's awesome, inspiring, and humbling all at once.

Nursing school changed my life. You walk into those classes thinking you know a little something about health care - and then your eyes are opened to all the amazing, amusing, and yes, awe-inspiring things that nurses do every single day.  The lessons I learned while working on my Master's at Mizzou have served me well, through every day of my nursing career and beyond.

The research I was able to do in those early days, my first tentative explorations into the connection between health and humor, were successful and bore fruit due to the encouragement and support I received at that time....

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Humor Resources for Nurses: Cartoons For Caption Contests

Looking for a fun way to boost morale in your health care facility? Caption contests are a great idea. Simply print out one (or more!) of the cartoons below and have your team members come up with their own funny captions. You'll be astonished what the talented (or twisted!) minds of your nursing staff can come up with.

As an incentive, you can offer Prizes of Incredible Value: I've found baked goods and Starbucks work very well indeed. Don't forget to share the best ones on social media: you can tweet them to me @funnynurse!

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A Special Resource on Nurse Leadership

Nurses are known for their compassion, clinical expertise, and ability to work a 12 hour shift without ever once needing to eat or use the bathroom. Okay, that last bit was a joke, but now I'm being deadly serious. Leadership is one of the most essential nursing skills you can develop. That's why I'm grateful to Ellice Cooper for creating and sharing this super informative infographic, The Ultimate Guide to Becoming a Nurse Leader.

The Ultimate Guide to Becoming a Nurse Leader features 10 chapters, jam packed with useful, insightful information and valuable resources you can use to assist you on your journey toward a leadership role. It's free, so I encourage you to check it out and share it with your friends and colleagues who may also be interested in nurse leadership.

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Nurses Week 2014: Moving Forward with Joy

You got a minute? Let's talk nursing. And I want to talk about nursing as it exists right now - not the almost-magical image of the profession you may have had before you started nursing school; certainly not the world of nursing that the public only knows from Scrubs - don't you wish it was that fun? - but the actual day-to-day conditions we're functioning in as we try to help people get and stay healthy.

It's not easy out there. The hours are long. There are fewer and fewer of us being asked to do more and more with less and less. Sometimes our patients don't appreciate us. Sometimes our colleagues don't appreciate us. And when we come home with our scrubs covered in stains of dubious origin and shop-talk stories that would make a dockworker lose his lunch, sometimes our own families don't appreciate us.

What keeps us hanging in there?

Some people say that answering that question is best accomplished with some serious therapy, but I don't think that's the case. I believe that...

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Why The World Needs Nurses

Thanks to Molly Miller for this terrific contribution. Please share!

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Using Humor To Be A Better Nurse: Welcome to the Hall of Fame

"The minute this LOL walked into our ER, I knew she was going to be trouble. She arrived with 6 relatives, each of whom was being continually, loudly reminded of their responsibilities. One had to hold the purse, another was to call everyone - she listed them by name - and let them know the LOL was in the ICU and about to die any moment, another one had to run out to the car to make sure the lights were out, the fourth was supposed to make the doctor see her at the triage desk because she didn't have the strength to go any further, the fifth had to take the purse because the first one wasn't holding it right, and the sixth was responsible for everything else."

"I don't think Queen Elizabeth has this many attendants. I knew right then we had a candidate for our Hall of Fame."

Reframing: Seeing the World Through the Lens of Humor

Some patients are more difficult than others. That's no secret - just ask any nurse! Humor provides a way to keep calm, cool and collected while managing...

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Keeping Healthcare Healthy

We spend a lot of time in healthcare focused on patient outcomes, and that's how it should be. After all, we all got into this gig to help people cope with illness, injury, or incredibly bad luck. If we're not helping our patients out, we're doing it wrong.

But sometimes the focus on patient outcomes overshadows other important stories. Today I want to give a shout out to Outpatient Surgery, who shared a story detailing the fact that healthcare is anything but healthy for the people who work in it. If you're a physician, a nurse, a therapist, an aide, or otherwise involved in the front line delivery of healthcare, your chances of being injured or becoming ill on the job are more than 4 times higher than if you worked in manufacturing.

Isn't that an incredible statistic? I couldn't believe it when I first heard it. Then I remembered all of the slips, trips, falls, scrapes and yes, assaults from patients and disgruntled visitors, that I experienced or witnessed during my nursing...

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