This is also why it’s relatively easy to get licensed in one state after having worked in another.

However, there are some regional variations—both in law and in the scope of responsibility—that warrant consideration. So, how big of a role will the place you work play in your nursing career? Let’s get into it.

Rural Hospital

How Much Does Your State Influence Nursing Licensing Requirements?

To start with, you should note that the vast majority of states will allow you to get your license relatively easily. Pay a fee. Get your license. As long as you have your BSN and have passed the NCLEX, that’s all they will ask of you.

This thanks to the Nurse Licensure Compact. It’s an (almost) nationwide agreement designed to make nurses’ lives easier. Instead of getting recertified anytime you move, you can pay a fee and be ready to roll.

Not every state is “compact.” Those that don’t acknowledge the agreement vary in their requirements. Rarely will they need anything radical from you. The primary difference will be that you will need to submit to a manual review process. The steps will be roughly the same on your end. They will just take longer to complete.

In many cases, the hospital that has hired you will act as a resource to help you navigate the process.

Do Your Responsibilities Change Based on Location?

That’s an interesting question. The answer is far from definitive. There are variations, of course, but they don’t follow a neat, easily defined path.

For example, one might assume that nurses working in suburban or urban hospitals are radically busier than those in rural settings.

This assumption isn’t always correct. While urban areas may serve a larger population, rural hospitals are often the sole healthcare resource for multiple communities.

An urban hospital might serve several neighborhoods within a five-mile radius, while a rural hospital might cover several counties across fifty miles or more. In that way, the day-to-day reality of rural and urban nurses can be surprisingly similar.

You might also assume the type of care provided differs dramatically between the two. To a limited extent, this at least is true. Urban hospitals might treat more incidents of violence.

That said, rural hospitals still see their share of car accidents, farming or factory injuries, and yes, even violence. Rural communities have also been hit just as hard by public health crises like the opioid epidemic.

This, is all to say that rural nurses don’t have things easier than their urban counterparts. In many cases, they are stuck trying to do the same work with fewer resources.

Shortages

Staffing shortages are felt across the country. Unfortunately, though, they tend to hit rural hospitals the hardest. The reason is pretty straightforward: the pool of local candidates is much smaller. A rural area might produce one or two new nurses a year. A city might graduate dozens or even hundreds.

To fill the gap, rural hospitals often try to recruit from outside the area—but that’s easier said than done. What incentive does one have to become an RN in central Missouri, for example?

If you work in one of these settings, expect to feel that shortage in your day-to-day experience.

Ironically, these shortages are often self-perpetuating. The stress of working in an overtaxed hospital is often enough to make even passionate nurses look for new work.

Diversity of Opportunity

It’s not always easy to predict where the best nursing opportunities will be. Every community has the same essential healthcare needs. The real difference lies in which places can afford to staff accordingly.

Nursing is an incredibly diverse profession. A single community might employ dozens of different types of nurses.

Nurse practitioners. Forensic nurses. Gerontology nurses. If you’re aiming for career flexibility or know that you want to specialize eventually, it’s smart to start out in a location that offers room to grow.

Advanced Practice Positions

One of the biggest lifestyle differences in nursing comes into play for advanced practice nurses. In some states, nurse practitioners are granted nearly full autonomy—they can open their own practices, diagnose patients, prescribe medication, and create comprehensive treatment plans without physician oversight. In others, they perform similar work but must do so under the supervision of a doctor. Naturally, that creates two very different professional experiences. If you’re considering this route, it’s a good idea to look into your state’s laws ahead of time.

Conclusion

The state you live in isn’t really the deciding factor. Sure, that’s where you’ll see some initial variation—mostly in licensing fees or minor procedural differences.

But the much more influential factor is the type of community you’re working in. Rural and urban hospitals operate differently and tend to appeal to different kinds of people. The good news? Every state has both. The trick is figuring out which environment best matches your personality and your goals.

Photo Credit

Photo is Wikimedia Creative Commons

Guest Author Bio
Sarah Daren

With a Bachelor’s in Health Science along with an MBA, Sarah Daren has a wealth of knowledge within both the health and business sectors. Her expertise in scaling and identifying ways tech can improve the lives of others has led Sarah to be a consultant for a number of startup businesses, most prominently in the wellness industry, wearable technology and health education. She implements her health knowledge into every aspect of her life with a focus on making America a healthier and safer place for future generations to come.

Of all the factors that have needed a drastic overhaul in healthcare, the issue of professional burnout easily hovers near the top of the list. A pervasive issue, and one that has gained increased attention, especially since the COVID-19 pandemic, many hospitals and administrators have worked hard to change this poor track record.

Telemedicine and virtual care have certainly made an impact in the industry from a client facing side, but has it helped to ease the rates of nursing burnout?

Understanding Nurse Burnout

Nurse burnout is a state of physical, emotional, and mental exhaustion caused by prolonged stress, often exacerbated by workplace demands, insufficient staffing, and emotional strain from patient care. Symptoms include decreased motivation, feelings of helplessness, and a decline in job performance. The increase in patient loads and the emotional labor associated with caring for critically ill patients has only intensified these issues, leading to higher turnover rates and a depleted workforce. While the rates of burnout are nowhere near as high as during the pandemic, they do still exist in such a demanding field.

Considering The Role of Telemedicine and Virtual Care

Telemedicine and virtual care refer to the delivery of healthcare services via digital platforms, enabling nurses and other healthcare providers to offer care remotely. Video consultations, remote monitoring, and mobile health applications have emerged as vital components of modern healthcare. These innovations that can streamline processes and improve access to care, and even leading to greater success in nursing school, have also shown to be particularly beneficial in addressing burnout among nurses. Here are some of the benefits:

Benefits of Telemedicine for Nurses

1. Flexibility in Work Arrangements: Telemedicine allows nurses to work from home or other locations, which can help them manage their work-life balance more effectively. This flexibility can be especially advantageous for nurses who juggle multiple responsibilities or those returning from maternity leave.
2. Reduced Physical Strain: With telehealth, nurses often have less physical demand on their bodies compared to traditional bedside care. They can engage with patients without the physical toll of constant movement, lifting, and the rigors associated with in-person care, which can lead to lower rates of fatigue.
3. Improved Workload Management: Telehealth solutions can optimize workflows, reduce understaffing and patient overload. By allowing nurses to monitor patients remotely, they can focus their attention on higher-acuity cases that require in-person intervention.
4. Enhanced Patient Engagement: Virtual care can improve patient compliance and engagement, as nurses can provide education and follow-up in a more accessible and timely manner. This can lead to better patient outcomes, which in turn can be a significant morale booster for nursing staff.
5. Supportive Resources: Many telehealth platforms incorporate support tools, such as patient education materials and coordinated care pathways, that can reduce the administrative burden on nurses. By streamlining communication and documentation, the technology can help nurses focus more on patient care rather than paperwork.

The Challenges That Remain

While telemedicine offers numerous benefits, it is not without its challenges. Not all patients have equal access to technology, potentially widening the gap in healthcare equity. Additionally, the rapid shift to virtual care may leave some nurses feeling unprepared or inadequately trained to use these new systems effectively. The need for ongoing education, at both the MSN and DNP course level, cannot be overlooked, as nurses must be both comfortable with the technology and confident in delivering care remotely.

Increased access to these technologies can positively impact on the nursing profession. However, ongoing efforts must be made to address the challenges of access and training to ensure that all nurses can benefit from these innovations. In order to fully glean the greatest returns and efficacies for both patient and caregiver, more steps should be taken to introduce and optimize processes systematically, technologically, and administratively.

Photo Credit

Image by Thomas G. from Pixabay

Guest Author Bio
Sarah Daren

With a Bachelor’s in Health Science along with an MBA, Sarah Daren has a wealth of knowledge within both the health and business sectors. Her expertise in scaling and identifying ways tech can improve the lives of others has led Sarah to be a consultant for a number of startup businesses, most prominently in the wellness industry, wearable technology and health education. She implements her health knowledge into every aspect of her life with a focus on making America a healthier and safer place for future generations to come.

Affordable Drugs

In a rare bipartisan sighting in modern U.S. politics, both the left and the right have made actual pushes to help lower drug prices for Americans. With an ever-growing bad image in the eye of the American people, a vaccine has the chance to help Big Pharma fix its reputation… if they do decide to make it affordable, of course, which many do expect. They already have, and certainly will get “theirs” from the government, but most experts believe the currently-theoretical vaccine will be widely available for little-to-no money.

What that will show, however, is that Big Pharma can afford to lower their prices, and as everyone from Bernie Sanders to Donald Trump takes aim at ways to lower prices on drugs (including allowing competition from foreign companies), pharmaceutical companies may finally receive enough widespread pressure to actually lower their costs for the good of a society struggling to rebuild.

Ready for the Next

A silver lining of a pandemic happening in the big data generation is the fact that we can pool data from all over the globe to determine the why’s and how’s that caused this particular pandemic to spread so rapidly and prove to be so difficult to keep at bay.

Using that information, we can prepare for future pandemics which, though scary to read, is something we need to do as a society. Many people died, but we can prevent it from happening again by putting action to the data collected so hospitals can react more quickly the next time something on such a large scale occurs.

Field Promotions

During particularly bloody wars, enlisted personnel were often promoted to officers on the battlefield for one reason or another. In the battle against COVID, many nurses and Physician Assistants had to perform duties normally beyond the scope of their work, and with a tip of the hat to successful rapid training programs, these individuals did very well performing these duties.

Many rural hospitals are underfunded, and these qualifications may lead to more “well-rounded” nurses who qualify on a number of different procedures formerly only done by doctors, saving on money, and allowing for more people at a given hospital to be knowledgeable on a given procedure.

Highlighting and Actively Working Against Racial Disparities

The coronavirus has affected minority communities exponentially worse than it has white ones. There are many reasons pointing to this, with population density and income being fair reasons to point at versus “intentional racism,” but, these issues exist because of years of systemic racism that has affected minority healthcare since minority healthcare became a thing. In Chicago, for instance, 2/3 of the deaths related to COVID have been black people, in a city where black people make up 1/3 of the population. The list of examples of racial disparities in healthcare is heartbreakingly long, but given the well-reported disproportions in COVID deaths, there is reason to hope that these issues will be actively worked against in the coming years.

Other Things

Other trends that most experts expect include more at-home care for elders, due to the fact that so many elderly people needed the care of their families during this, making a wave of new experts (most of whom realized it’s not so bad caring for the people who cared for you). Telemedicine has also increased exponentially, by necessity, but it, too, has worked quite well, and allows for more patient flexibility. That flexibility is in tune with most of these trends, in that it is something that improves the patient experience!

Photo Credit

Image by Michal Jarmoluk from Pixabay

Guest Author Bio
Sarah Daren

With a Bachelor’s in Health Science along with an MBA, Sarah Daren has a wealth of knowledge within both the health and business sectors. Her expertise in scaling and identifying ways tech can improve the lives of others has led Sarah to be a consultant for a number of startup businesses, most prominently in the wellness industry, wearable technology and health education. She implements her health knowledge into every aspect of her life with a focus on making America a healthier and safer place for future generations to come.

Human neutrophil ingesting MRSA (supebug)

There’s no shortage of scientists and pharmaceutical specialists passionate about discovering new treatment options, nor is there some massive obstacle to scientific discovery. Instead, new drugs and treatments often get stopped at the approval stage—in the United States, that usually means at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

So why is it so hard for new drugs to be approved?

Potential Dangers

First and foremost, we have to acknowledge that some medical products end up having side effects and unintended consequences for the people using them. This occurs even in FDA-approved medications, so it’s something we need to be extra cautious in attempting to prevent. For example, Valsartan (Diovan) was once a popular medication used to treat high blood pressure and congestive heart failure (CHF). Last year, the FDA recalled the medication after it was revealed to be linked to cancer.

It’s incredibly difficult to predict what types of dangers exist for a given medication or treatment, especially because it might take months to years of consistent use for these side effects to be evident. However, regulatory agencies want to reduce the chances of these side effects slipping through as much as possible, so they demand many long-term experiments before they approve any new medical products.

Regulatory Processes and “Red Tape”

The FDA is also frequently blamed for being overly bureaucratic, and having too many approval processes that delay the approval process, at minimal benefit to the end consumer. Without having full transparent access to the organization, it’s hard to say for sure. Some of these processes are clearly designed not to arbitrarily delay the approval process, but to ensure consumer safety. At the same time, it seems a given that some of these approval stages may be overly redundant or time-consuming.

FDA critics have suggested working on a compromise that would allow the FDA to retain some degree of regulatory control while also opening a backdoor to innovation, which pharmaceutical companies could use to develop and approve products faster.

Lack of Developmental Resources

Sometimes, the problem lies with a lack of resources for developing the drug beyond the initial stages of discovery. To support a drug or treatment, researchers need to evaluate the drug under many different conditions, and under strict scrutiny. The entire process is labor-intensive, time-consuming, and most importantly, expensive. If the people or organization responsible for developing the drug doesn’t have access to the resources they need, they won’t be able to pursue development any further.

If the drug at any point looks questionable, funding and effort could be cut immediately. This is especially true for treatments that arise for problems that don’t yet exist; for example, if a scientist discovers a potential cure for many types of unknown viruses, but it doesn’t apply to any pressing patient needs, it would be much harder to follow the normal course of development.

Difficulty With Experimentation

Following procedures for experimentation with a new drug or product can also be difficult. Traditionally, a product must go through a series of trials in labs, with animals, and finally with an increasing number of people. These experiments often take years, and can be extremely difficult to organize, even with experience in the field.

Fortunately, the FDA is taking action in this area with its “compassionate use” policy. Basically, if a patient is suffering from an immediately life-threatening condition or a serious disease, they may be given an exemption to try an investigational medical product.

Promising Starts

Finally, there are some drugs that simply don’t turn out the way their developers or discoverers hoped. While the initial discovery seems like a massive breakthrough, the follow-up research just doesn’t play that out; they may realize that the drug is prohibitively expensive to develop, or that there’s some logistical hurdle preventing it from getting made the way they need.

While it might be easy to blame the FDA for burdensome regulations or processes that slow down the path of innovation, the reality is much more complex. The FDA does make it hard to get new drugs approved, but there are also financial, logistical, and scientific barriers preventing new treatments from getting developed faster. Hopefully, as our knowledge grows, we’ll eventually find newer, faster paths to innovation.

Photo Credit

Photo is Wikimedia Public Domain

Guest Author Bio
Jamie Lansley

Jamie is a freelance writer who covers trends in business, technology, and health. She loves to go skiing, camping, and rock climbing with her family.

I have an unusually robust immune system for a seventy year old American woman, or so I infer from rarely falling prey to contagious diseases or developing lingering infections following injury. People describe me as “disgustingly healthy.” Likewise, I have no symptoms of something that would be characterized as an autoimmune disorder, although testing at a level that was not routine even thirty years ago might identify early stages, or a risk, of something like diabetes or rheumatoid arthritis and trigger aggressive treatment.

This is in contrast to most of my contemporaries. I was recently talking to a fellow member of the South Eugene High School class of 1966 who bemoaned the high cost of shingles vaccine. Like me and most baby boomers she had chicken pox as a child and at 71 is liable to an attack of shingles if her immune system becomes compromised. To forestall this, the medical community is now recommending that every oldster, whether or not there is any evidence that they are immunocompromised, be vaccinated to raise the antigen level vis-à-vis this particular pathogen which our systems harbor.

I doubt I need this vaccine, or would benefit from it, since I seem to have the immune system of a much younger person. Aside from advancing age, many of the factors known to undermine the immune system emanate from medical procedures, including cancer therapy, steroid drugs, and xenotransplantation. I found myself wondering whether the vaccine itself might undermine the immune response and actually make a person more vulnerable to shingles.

The prevalence of shingles, a disagreeable and sometimes debilitating but seldom dangerous condition, rose by 39% between 1992 and 2010. It has since leveled off, but it is too early to tell whether vaccination is effective on a population level. The rise has sometimes been attributed to adoption of a childhood vaccine against chicken pox, but the correlation is weak, and most people over 60 (the vulnerable population) had the actual disease as children. This is a relatively new vaccine. It is touted, based on experimental data and limited trial studies, as being 95% effective, but the in-use effectiveness in the general population is not known, and if experience is any guide, once use becomes general there will be great resistance to scrutinizing whether any net benefit derives from treating the general population with a drug or procedure developed for a much more restricted group.

The history of influenza vaccination may prove instructive here. When first marketed it was touted as being 95% effective. The effectiveness against the commonest H1N1 strain is now around 50% at the population level and declines in an individual with successive immunizations. When novel strains emerge, as occurred in 2009, the vaccinated population is vulnerable, and the often quoted assertion, that vaccinated individuals suffer less serious illness, is based only on patients who were hospitalized. Unvaccinated people like myself who stayed home and dosed themselves with over the counter medications don’t figure in the statistics.

It is frequently observed that people come down with flu-like illnesses shortly after receiving an immunization. People will say that they “got the flu from the flu shot”, which is not the case. However, while it is true that you cannot get actual flu from a killed virus vaccine, a lot of people do get sick, and there is a definite correlation between receiving the vaccine and falling ill with an unrelated respiratory or intestinal virus shortly afterward.

This brings us to the phenomenon of immunological paralysis. When a person is seriously ill and his or her immune system summons all its forces to combat the pathogen, there is a window of time during recovery when the immune system is less functional and the patient is vulnerable to secondary infections. The mechanisms behind immunological paralysis are known. It has been most extensively studied in hospital settings and life-threatening illnesses like pneumonia and sepsis, but it has also been observed outside hospitals and is one reason why knowledgeable physicians recommend staying home and staying relatively isolated after a serious illness even after one feels well enough to return to work or school.

Could vaccinations trigger immunological paralysis? Vaccinations fool the immune system into thinking you are suffering from a serious bacterial or viral illness, although your body does not become acutely ill. Getting sick soon after receiving a flu vaccination suggests this is possible. It would also explain why friends of mine who work in public schools and health care, who are required to have the whole gamut of available vaccines, complain of being frequently sick, whereas other friends who work in high public contact jobs that do not require vaccinations, like bus drivers and retail clerks, do not.

What concerns me here is not vaccination per se, which is a powerful tool against life-threatening diseases actually present in the environment; rather, it is the possibility that the frequency and variety of vaccinations given to people to whom the disease itself is not a threat (either because they are very unlikely to be exposed to it or because it is not dangerous to an otherwise healthy individual) may be undermining the immunological status of the population at large and ultimately having a net negative impact on health in general.

Further reading:

Technical review article on vaccines.

Photo Credit

Photo is from CDC and is public domain

Feature image – H1N1 Influenza Virus Particles – by NIAID on flickr – some rights reserved

My Medicare coverage, which I maintain partly because it satisfies the coercive aspects of Obamacare and partly because it does provide hospitalization coverage, is handled by Pacific Source, an umbrella HMO. I have not used it in the nearly five years I have been on Medicare, although I have experienced health problems in the interim for which the average American consults a doctor, and was repeatedly offered a “free” comprehensive health evaluation when I first enrolled. My current health, based on lack of symptoms and evaluations I can do myself, at home, is good.

Earlier this week I received a packet from Pacific Health containing a “Fit-Check” home kit for testing for colon cancer, or rather (if you read the fine print) for occult blood in a stool sample, which can be a sign of colon cancer but much more commonly is a sign of benign adenomas (polyps), which affect about 30% of adults over 65. I knew that I was dealing with a test which produced an inordinate number of false positives, which if nothing else would trigger pressure to undergo a colonoscopy, an invasive procedure of doubtful diagnostic utility. I was going to simply throw the kit away, but opted instead to go online and investigate some of the primary research literature with a view to determining just how prevalent the false positives were and what evidence there was that all of the testing, both of stool samples and colonoscopies, had been responsible for improvement in colon cancer outcomes in the United States since testing became widespread.

To make a long story short, the prevalence of false positives (finding evidence of cancer where no cancer existed) in the occult blood tests was very high and affected large numbers of people, while even with increasing test sensitivity false negatives (failure to detect cancer when it was present, thus giving people a false sense of security and depriving them of the benefits, if any, of early treatment} were also a problem. Although rates of new diagnosis of colon cancer and death rates from colon cancer have declined steadily and significantly in the last twenty years, more or less in tandem, the data simply do not support concluding that all this testing has been an important factor in the decline, although that is the conclusion that reaches the ears of the public and the desk of the average MD.

The first study I found: “Test Characteristics of Fecal Immunochemical Tests (FIT) Compared with Optical Colonoscopy Revised” JMS-14-003.R2 was a study involving somewhat over 1,000 healthy, not exceptionally high risk older Americans who were tested using several brands of fecal occult blood kits of the current type, and shortly afterwards had colonoscopies. The effectiveness of the newer tests, versus an older test whose sensitivity and effectiveness had proven less than satisfactory in clinical practice, was the issue being investigated. Of the 30% of this population who had benign polyps, half tested positive and half negative. Neither of the two individuals whose cancer was discovered in a colonoscopy tested positive. Although the data basically demonstrated, rigorously, that these tests given on a population level would not result in more accurate identification of early stages of colon cancer, and also did not demonstrate any difference with respect to the earlier tests which had proven unsatisfactory in clinical practice, nonetheless the authors of the article recommended adopting this testing regime for populations for which routine colonoscopies were not practical. That conclusion or something similar must have reached the desks of my HMO and persuaded at least some people that a mass mailing of home test kits to their subscribers was a good idea, not just for the bottom line of the HMO, but for the health of their clients.

Also buried in this article were two quotes, which, taken together, allude to studies showing that neither colonoscopies nor fecal blood tests are particularly effective at reducing colorectal cancer mortality – another finding that does not seem to have reached the scrutiny of my HMO, or, if it has, they have ignored it. “These [European] guidelines reported limited evidence for the efficacy of colonoscopy in reducing CRC incidence and mortality”.7 and “A decision analysis performed for the United States Preventive Services Task Force found no difference in life-years gained by CRC screening using colonoscopy every 10 years vs. annual testing with a sensitive FOBT or a FIT in individuals aged 50 to 75.”15

The second source, the website of the US Center for Disease Control, shows trends for diagnosis and mortality for colorectal cancer between 1999 and 2015. According to this site, death rates from colorectal cancer declined from 20 per 100,000 in 1999 to 15 in 2015, or roughly 25%. It does not say if these rates are age adjusted but elsewhere on the page it gives aging population as a cause for the increase in total deaths in the US from CRC in the same period.

During the same period, rates of newly diagnosed cases went from 58 to 41, a 34% drop. Combining these two figures, the rate of cases which proved lethal was 34% in 1999 and 36% in 2015. This suggests that early detection programs are not having a positive effect on eventual outcome although they may increase survival time following diagnosis (which would be expected even if treatments were ineffective.) The pattern points to some other factor besides screening and subsequent aggressive treatment being responsible for the decline in incidence. For comparison, stomach cancer mortality, for which there is as yet no screening program, declined markedly in the US between the mid-1950’s and 1999; it is one of two cancers (lung cancer being the other) which have declined significantly in the US in my lifetime. The cause is almost certainly environmental and eliminating nitrites, certain fungi, and asbestos from food production is a plausible explanation.

One way to market a product or service purported to address a particular problem is to identify an existing trend in decline of that particular problem before it has reached the general public radar, time the release of one’s product or service to coincide with the decline, and claim credit through the common and difficult to recognize fallacy of confusing correlation with causation. This may be occurring here.

Photo Credit

Photo courtesy of Martha Sherwood

1. You will be a minimum of 30 to 35 years of age when you actually start working and earning since it takes at least 10-15 years after high school before you finish your education.

2. You will be a minimum of $150,000 to $250,000 in debt when you finish.

3. You will put in very long hours both in training and when you start working. A forty hour work week will seem like a dream vacation.

4. If you make a mistake people die…

5. You have to stick your fingers in very unpleasant places. Pus and dead bodies smell awful.

6. Suicide and divorce rates are way higher in medical students and physicians.

7. If female, your fertility will be declining by the time you finish training. If you have a family while in training (presuming you have the opportunity to find a partner) you will barely have enough time to get to the bathroom between work duties and looking after young children.

8. Do not expect to spend much time with your family. You will miss many important family events due to working and being on call.

9. Don’t expect to be on-call at the golf course, like docs in the movies. You will be tearing your hair out (if you have any left) in the ER, OR, or office.

10. Physicians are paid by an insurance plan run by individual provinces and territories. The cost of your staff, rent, utilities, and accountancy fees all come out of this, so expect about one-third of what you are paid to go for overhead.

11. You have no control over the amount you can bill. Fees allowed by government insurance programs have been static for years, or, are even going down. You can only increase income by working longer hours.

12. A plumber would laugh at you if you offered to pay him what a family doctor gets for a house call these days (seriously).

13. You have none of the benefits of an employee. Life, disability, and malpractice insurance, retirement savings, maternity leave, sick leave… are all on your own dime. Vacations cost you money, because you won’t earn while away, but you will continue paying overhead expenses.

14. Because your earning years are spread over a shorter period of time, you will pay much higher income tax for the same income as someone who starts working ten years earlier.

15. The government will treat you like an employee, controlling what you are paid, where you can practice, and even if you can practice.

16. Governments often renege on contracts they sign with physicians.

17. Physicians can bring any provincial government to its knees by all taking the same week off. They will never do so for ethical reasons. When doctors get fed up, they leave; and they did so (in droves) from Nova Scotia in the 1990’s when the provincial government broke their contract.

18. Professional incorporation used to make up somewhat for lack of employment benefits for doctors. This is now being labeled as a “loophole”, and physicians are labelled “tax cheats” by the politicians who legislated it in the first place. Most doctors would gladly trade their corporations for a government pension.

19. There are huge numbers of lab reports, consultants’ letters etc., to be read and dealt with by doctors, as well as time-consuming administrative duties. This is unpaid labour.

20. You will be expected to spend a minimum of 50 hours a year going to school to keep up to date with medical advances. You do not get time off to do this, nor do you get paid.

21. There are no benefits to seniority in medicine. All you get is wrinkles. Many doctors cannot afford to retire, because they do not have access to generous inflation indexed pensions like the ones politicians vote for themselves.

22. The cost of providing good medical care to a rapidly aging population is expensive. The federal government legislated free health care for everyone years ago but left most of the responsibility of paying for it to the provinces. The provinces can no longer afford to fund the system.

23. Politicians rarely seek or listen to the advice of physicians on important healthcare issues. Many provincial health boards have NO doctors on their staff. They do a lousy job of running the health care system.

24. An aging population will ensure that the Canadian healthcare system as we know it is going to collapse within the next five to ten years unless drastic measures are taken. These measures will likely not be taken.

25. Politicians will blame physicians when the system collapses.

26. Telling people that they are going to die is a common and difficult task for family doctors.  Telling people that their small children are going to die is heartbreaking.

Bottom line: You will probably never starve to death as a family physician. You will, however, have a less than optimal quality of life, earn far less money than most people think, and be a target for politicians who don’t want to take the blame for the mess they’ve made of our healthcare system.

There are lots of other careers for a bright young person to pursue. Look at the alternatives.

Photo Credits

Photo courtesy of Pixabay — Public Domain.

Passionflower is commonly used as a sleep aid and anxiety reliever. For people with excessive nervous-mind chatter, Passionflower turns the noise off and allows relaxation to come forth. It’s also good for people who are prone to emotional burnout and the associated physical symptoms.

I have found that even just spending time looking at the flowers is calming and soothing. They seem to radiate joy, and their structure is endlessly fascinating. I hope you get a chance to meet the beautiful Passionflower some day!

Photo Credits

Photo by Nathan Thompson – all rights reserved

Eradication of Deadly Diseases 
 
We have medical researchers to thank for the eradication of deadly and, at one time, rampant disease. Smallpox was once a common and devastating disease, killing up to 35% of the people who contracted it and leaving survivors with serious side effects like blindness. With the introduction of the smallpox vaccine, smallpox was eradicated in the United States in the 1970s and is no longer considered a concern. Similarly, polio was a widespread disease prior to 1955 when the vaccine became available to the public. The two types of polio vaccines, IPV and OPV, are now routinely given to children at ages two months, four months, and six to 18 months to prevent the disease. Since the discovery and implementation of these important vaccines, the American public is now much less susceptible to diseases that were once devastating.
 
Reduce the Chance of Serious Illness 
 
Although you might not think of influenza, or the flu, as a serious illness, it is for many people. Medical research has provided insight into how this disease works, and flu vaccines are available each year. Since research has shown that the strain of flu changes periodically, scientists are able to develop new, effective flu vaccines.
 
Improve Quality of Life 
 
Countless new medications have been developed in order to improve quality of life for patients. For everything from diabetes to macular degeneration, there are drugs available to improve someone’s quality of life and ease or control symptoms. Of course, these medications wouldn’t be available without the use of medical research and extensive testing in both animals and humans. In order for new medications to become available, funding of medical research must continue.
 
Find New Breakthroughs 
 
Although medical research has made great strides, there are still numerous diseases that have a poor outcome, like cancer and ALS. With continued funding of medical research, it’s possible that cures might be developed in the future to cure these life-threatening diseases.

Increase Life Expectancy 
 
Babies born in 1900 were only expected to live until age 50. With the introduction of vaccines and the discovery of new treatment methods, the life expectancy is now over 80 years old in many countries. As medical research continues, it’s expected that life spans will increase even more.
 
Decrease Infant Mortality Rate 
 
In the past, the infant mortality rate was high and a large number of babies did not survive until their first year. In developed countries, the infant mortality rate is now extremely low due to the implementation of vaccines shortly after birth and into their first few years. Babies have a fragile immune system, which makes them susceptible to contracting diseases. Most American babies receive the chicken pox vaccine, influenza vaccine, polio vaccine, measles, mumps and rubella vaccines to reduce their risk of developing these preventable diseases.
 
Contribute to Medical Research 
 
If you feel passionate about contributing to medical research, there are several ways to fulfill this goal. Bruce Eaton, President and CEO at Velocity Sciences, Inc. in Colorado is conducting exciting new research, and the establishment takes pride in their ability to research and create affordable products to improve quality of life. Donating to medical funding is often the simplest way to contribute to the development of new treatments and vaccines, as you can donate as much and as often as you like.

Participate in Medical Studies 
 
If you’re not able to contribute financially, you can choose to be a participant in a medical study. This hands-on way of furthering important research is usually convenient for those who live nearby to a study, and you might even be able to receive compensation for your time. This is also a great way to receive low-cost treatment for illnesses or conditions that have been chronic and bothersome. For example, if you need to have your wisdom teeth extracted but you don’t have the funds to pay an oral surgeon, look up wisdom teeth studies in your area to see if you might qualify. You might not receive strong pain medication if you’re selected, but you will receive treatment and help doctors gain further insight.
 
Conclusion
 
Unfortunately, many people don’t fully realize the impact of medical research. As a result, this important venture is often underfunded, and it takes longer than necessary to find new treatments or cures. If you have a cause that you’re interested in contributing to, do a quick search to find a reputable foundation to donate to, or participate in a study yourself to assist doctors find effective treatment methods.

Photo Credits

All photos are pixabay public domain

Guest Author Bio
Leona Jones

Leona helps pass along her knowledge of lifestyle to others. After graduating from the University with a degree in philosophy she worked as a lecturer before jumping into the world of fashion, lifestyle. She is a freelance writer and an editor. She substitute teaches at the local elementary school and is continually surprised by how much she loves it.

…or rather, I am deuteranomalous. Not as bad as a deuteranope, but still chromatically challenged. Most of the deuteranomalous population is male, because the defective gene is carried on the X chromosome, of which we guys only get one copy. Women get two X’s, and having one copy of the normal gene means normal colours. Still, about one female in a hundred doesn’t appreciate colours. Canada has one of the highest rates of abnormal colour vision, with every tenth male being unable to appreciate colours to the fullest, most often in the red-green end of the spectrum.

Take me for example. Experience has taught me to purchase clothing with only colours I can see, or to get a normal colour-visioned friend to pick out matches. Still, in the past I have been known to venture out in green pants and a red shirt, causing unsuspecting motorists to stop, thinking they had come to a traffic light…

I had grown to accept this as a minor inconvenience, though in my career as a physician, being unable to appreciate colours to the fullest could sometimes complicate my diagnosis of rashes and inflammatory conditions.

You can understand why I was intrigued when I read about the Enchroma glasses, which promised to help remedy my colour issues. They are not cheap. My spectacles set me back $461 US. But I never miss an opportunity to experience the world in a new light, so I treated myself to the Apollo style, aviator frame Enchromas. There are less expensive models with the Gamma currently featured on sale for $329 US… a bit more affordable but still not cheap.

When my Enchromas arrived, I resisted the urge to rip the box open and try them right away. Instead I arranged to meet my girlfriend the next day in the Public Gardens in Halifax, Nova Scotia. One of the finest Victorian gardens in North America, in August they sport beds and thickets of fluorescent flowers ranging the spectrum of the rainbow—a perfect testing ground for the Enchroma system.

I wasn’t sure what to expect. My thoughts ranged from total disappointment to a blinding blur of colours I had only vaguely suspected existed.

Since my problems range in the pink and purple shades, I stationed myself next to an appropriately-coloured bed of flowers, and ripped open the cardboard box that the specs had arrived in. I donned the glasses with trepidation.

Enchromas come with three types of shading. There is a style that is only usable outdoors for sunglasses, those usable both indoors and outdoors, and a third, which is most suited for indoor use. The indoor-outdoor style seemed to suit my needs.

I had seen videos of people crying with emotion when they put on their Enchromas. I did not. My jaw, however, did drop. I can say that the effect was powerful, but more subtle for me. At first everything seemed very vivid. I can see all the colours of the spectrum, but my deuteranomaly left me unable to appreciate subtle shades and nuances. Crayon red and green shades were visible to me. But what I discovered, as a I ambled through the gardens, was that pinks, oranges, and purples took on a luminescent quality I had never before appreciated. Passersby must have thought me stoned, or a bit strange, as I ogled roses, dahlias, lilies, phlox, hydrangeas, even thistles, oohing and aahing. The shades of green in the trees and grass were amazing and totally unexpected.

After a couple of hours of chromatic bliss, I made my way back to the car and drove home. Wow! I stopped and stared at the green and red of the traffic light. Sure, we colour blind can tell the red and the green apart at intersections both by position and the shred of colour we can perceive… but these tones were amazing.

While for me, the benefits of the indoor-outdoor version of Enchroma were mainly aesthetic, I wondered if the indoor style of Enchroma would have practical applications in my medical practice. I might order a pair of those, too, and give them a try. Stay tuned for my next article.

NOTE: These lenses do not work for every type of colour blindness. Please read the information on the Enchroma site carefully, and take their colour vision test first to assure they are right for your type of colour deficiency.

FOR MORE INFORMATION…
Enchroma’s website
Enchroma’s vision test

Photo credits

All photos courtesy of George Burden and Stella van der Lugt – All rights reserved.