by Mother Nurse Love | Feb 25, 2021 | Featured Content
Is your child ready for a little more independence? Though you may want to personally protect them forever, allowing them to stretch their wings is good for them. There are benefits for Mom, too, including more time for yourself. With a few tips on how to keep kids safe on the walk to school, you’ll be able to enjoy that time with peace of mind.
Choose the Best Route
This is an opportunity to show your child their place on a map. Look at different route possibilities and discuss why they’ll be taking less busy residential streets and avoiding dangerous intersections. Walk the area with your child and look for sidewalks and bike paths, adequate safety signage, visible crosswalks, and other kids walking. Don’t rule something out an indirect route because it takes a little longer. One of the main benefits of walking to school is incorporating more exercise into kids’ daily routines.
Dress Them in Bright Clothes
Make sure drivers can see your kids with items of clothing that are impossible to miss—the brighter the better. If you let them pick out their ensembles, brace yourself for looks you might otherwise flinch at. If they wear a uniform, add neon hats, scarves, and jackets for their walk.
Teach Them the Basics
Go slowly, making sure your children understand safety rules both in theory and in practice. Make sure they:
- Walk facing traffic.
- Look left, right, and left again before walking across the street.
- Always cross at a crosswalk.
- Make eye contact with drivers at the intersection while crossing.
- Avoid ducking between cars.
- Keep from wearing earphones while walking.
Enlist Some Adult Help
No, it’s not cheating to take turns chaperoning a neighborhood group of kids, especially if it will ease the transition to walking alone. You can involve the school district by taking advantage of pro-walking organizations that offer school grants, resources, training, and solutions. You’ll even find federal funding available for infrastructure improvements if you implement the Safe Routes to School program.
Learning how to keep kids safe on the walk to school is a big step forward for both you and your child. They’ll learn that new privileges come with responsibility. And you’ll be reminded that you can’t do everything for them. If you’re used to driving them to school, take advantage of the extra time to do something yourself—not work. It’s taken a lot of effort to get your children to this point, so reward yourself and enjoy the moment.
by Mother Nurse Love | Feb 23, 2021 | Featured Content
Nurses are one of the most foundational staff members in a medical operation. They administer baseline care and establish meaningful connections with patients. However, this increased level of interaction leads to a higher risk of a malpractice suit. Whether you are a nurse or any other kind of medical professional, legal problems can mean the end of your career. If you want to escape these perilous problems, follow these best practices for avoiding a malpractice lawsuit.
Establish Trust
Most patients seek medical help when they need professional diagnosis and treatment. They don’t want someone who blows them off or distances themselves. Instead of treating patients as facts on a sheet, get to know the person as they sit before you. Establish trust by offering a level of personal connection and make sure they feel heard. Without these foundational aspects, you cannot hope to secure the confidence you so deeply need. A trusting patient is more likely to believe that any medical mistake or negligence resulted from ignorance or something innocent rather than turn around and attack you for malpractice.
Communicate Openly and Honestly
Communication is critical, especially when it concerns another person’s body. You want to provide the best care in a timely and precise manner. However, people will always have questions about their condition and want to know more. Sometimes, you don’t have the time to explain every single detail about their problems or treatment; however, the more you communicate, the better. Open and honest conversation allows patients to understand their situation and feel like you’re doing all you can. Instead of vaguely hinting at your next steps, tell the patient exactly what you will do next and how they can expect you to follow up.
Precise Documentation
In any legal process, you must recreate the past with evidence. Meticulous recordkeeping is challenging to maintain in a medical setting, and it requires a team of detail-oriented individuals. However, it is possible to fill out patient information, differential diagnosis processes, and treatment plans for every person. Take the time to document every interaction and strategy now, so you needn’t worry about it later—especially in a legal setting. It would also help if you learned as much as you can about malpractice law, including the essential insurance terms and jargon. This way, you prepared yourself for every eventuality.
When you utilize these best practices for avoiding a malpractice lawsuit, you can rest assured that your career is safe. The way you conduct yourself matters, and when patients see that you care, you can make a bigger impact with less legal risk.
by Mother Nurse Love | Feb 12, 2021 | Featured Content
Cardiopulmonary resuscitation is quite a mouthful! But it’s one of the most important and easy-to-use lifesaving skills around. Though medical scientists only developed and verified the method in the past century, CPR is a cornerstone medical intervention. Here’s why CPR is an effective technique.
Physical Pressure
CPR is the go-to procedure for unresponsive victims of everything from drowning to cardiac arrest. When people use CPR for heart issues, the process relies on the rhythmic mimicry you create. The heart needs a forceful reminder to start beating again, and the physical pressure you exert while administering chest compressions is this prompt. The pressure you put on the rib cage and heart is the key to revival.
Air Movement
The lungs operate similarly to the heart at a mechanical level—they both rely on a repetitive movement to aggregate and release air or blood in the body. If someone’s lungs become waterlogged, the organ cannot expel the liquid on its own. That’s why rescue breaths are so essential to CPR; they displace the unwanted water out of the mouth so air can flow once again. It may seem counterintuitive that your exhaled carbon dioxide will help someone breathe in oxygen, but the key is the air pressure. The force you create in the mouth-to-mouth vacuum moves water from the lungs and toward the mouth. This opening, in turn, leaves space for the person to activate their diaphragm, inhale, and cough out the liquid.
CPR in Daily Life
Medical professionals utilize CPR as one of the first lines of defense in treatment. If CPR can address problems with the heart or lungs, nurses will administer this care before other forms of care. However, CPR is famous for its teachability and widespread dissemination. Many people in the general population know how to give cardiopulmonary resuscitation to a person in trouble. If you took a CPR class many years ago, don’t overestimate your abilities and be sure to avoid the common CPR mistakes so you don’t inadvertently harm someone you’re trying to save. Take a refresher course so you know what to do if your child or friend becomes unresponsive.
Understanding why CPR is an effective technique enables nurses and non-medical professionals alike to perform more intuitive and accurate cardiopulmonary resuscitation. The reasoning behind the method is sound and has decades of proof behind it. Consider learning CPR so you can save a life the next time someone is in danger.
by Mother Nurse Love | Feb 5, 2021 | Featured Content
Sick and tired of fighting your kid to drink enough water? If your kid is active and on-the-go always, this might be a real struggle. For whatever reason—either they don’t like it, don’t make time to do it, or just get distracted—that needs to change. For a couple of tips and tricks on how to increase water consumption for children, continue reading the article below. It is our hope one of these tricks will help you make drinking water one of the favorite parts of your child’s day!
Purchase Them a Special Cup
Buying your kid their very own special drinking cup might be the only change that you need to make to increase your child’s water consumption. It is a simple and easy tip, but it can do the trick. If your child looks forward to using their favorite cup, they will also be looking forward to drinking what is in it. Make sure that you strictly keep water in this cup, straying away to other beverages will only deplete the purse of the special water cup.
Make It Tasty
There are numerous ways to make your water taste better. Whether you freeze your ice cube tray with fruit and add it to the water to make it delicious and cold, or you simply just add in a few flavor drops—it really can make all the difference. Trying out a few different options might help you narrow down what tasty option works the best for your kid.
Set up an Award System
Setting up an award system and showing recognition for working toward a goal is a great way to get your child to drink more water, and this teaches them an excellent life skill. Not only will this show them that when they work hard and take steps to achieve something that they will (sometimes) get recognized, but it will also increase their water intake. Just make sure to do this in moderation, considering you don’t want them to only drink water whenever you give them a sticker or a piece of candy.
While there are several other ways for how to increase water consumption for children, these three really will make a difference. Make it fun and get creative! Who knows, you might even try out some of these delicious and unique water consumption tricks for yourself.
by Mother Nurse Love | Feb 2, 2021 | Featured Content
Many different hormones control the human body. These hormones can dictate how we act and look based on if we have too much of one or too little of another. There are a few important hormones in the body you should know about that commonly cause problems, and knowing what those symptoms look like will help you identify them faster.
Cortisol
A hormone in the body that regulates stress, cortisol is secreted from the adrenal gland. It increases a person’s heart rate, blood pressure, and respiration. Too much cortisol in the system will negate its usual stress management benefits and turn them into health problems. A person’s blood pressure will increase, which can induce anxiety and cause ulcers to develop. Other symptoms of high cortisol include insomnia, acne, and fast weight gain.
Problems with high cortisol in the system can have a few causes, including issues in the pituitary gland, adrenal gland tumors, and estrogen in the bloodstream.
Estrogen
Known as the female sex hormone, estrogen is also present in male bodies. Estrogen is chiefly responsible for the development of female reproductive organs and menstruation. However, if there’s too much estrogen in the bloodstream, that can lead to rapid mood swings, depression, and fatigue; too little results in acne, hair loss, and a thinning of the skin.
Some known causes of reduced estrogen levels are excessive exercise, eating disorders, and Turner Syndrome. However, around the age of 40, women may naturally experience reduced levels of estrogen due to the onset of menopause.
Testosterone
The dominant male sex hormone, which can also be found in women, testosterone develops the male reproductive organs. It also motivates the growth of muscle mass, bone density, and body hair. A lack of testosterone in the system can lead to thinner muscle mass and a frail bone structure. Further symptoms include fatigue, a lowered sex drive, and increased body fat, and it may even lead to infertility.
A few common problems that result in a decrease in testosterone are alcohol abuse, obesity, and injuries that interfere with blood flow to the testes. Lowered levels of testosterone can also occur through aging; the body will simply stop producing as much over time.
Serotonin
One of the most important hormones in the body you should know, serotonin is a common cause of issues with depression. Serotonin regulates anxiety levels, mood, and sleep. A decrease in serotonin can result in a decrease in mental health, leading to depression and anxiety. It can also affect sleep, as serotonin is the main cause of falling asleep and waking up in the morning.
The causes of low serotonin levels in the body aren’t entirely known. It’s believed that some people may just produce less of it or have less serotonin receptors to absorb the hormone.
by Mother Nurse Love | Jan 20, 2021 | Featured Content
Your body is an amazing thing. For example, it can tell you in a multitude of ways that you aren’t giving it enough water, outside of you just being thirsty. What exactly do we mean by this? Well, here are some simple signs that you need to drink more water. If you are experiencing any of these, please make sure to go fill up your glass!
Bad Breath
If you are dehydrated, no matter how much you brush your teeth, there is a chance you will have bad breath. This is because saliva keeps your mouth fresh by rinsing away odor-causing bacteria, so when you have dry mouth from not drinking enough water, it lets debris build up. The debris buildup will directly lead to bad breath. Nobody, and we mean nobody, wants to have bad breath—so keep hydrated!
Dry Skin
Bad breath is not the only sign of dehydration—so is dry skin! If your water intake isn’t what it should be, it can directly result in a layer of your skin not receiving the moisture that it needs. And don’t be fooled; even if your skin is oily, that does not mean that it is not dehydrated. Dehydrated skin is prone to breakouts and oil because it is trying to fix the lack of moisture issue that is occurring. Don’t just ignore stretch pores, fine lines, and flakiness of the skin. Instead, drink more water.
Migraines
Nobody wants a migraine. Suffering from a migraine is awful and most of the time it can simply be fixed by drinking enough water. When you become dehydrated, your blood pressure drops. When your blood pressure drops, it reduces the vascular tone in your brain—which directly correlates to headaches. If you could simply eliminate migraines from your life by drinking enough water, why wouldn’t you?
None of these signs you need to drink more water are fun. They are irritating and frustrating. Don’t let this be the case. Hydrate, hydrate, hydrate!
