Nurse Talk

Our friend RN and Humorist Karyn Buxman talks about the Association for Applied and Therapeutic Humor’s 28th Annual Conference coming up April 12-15th in San Diego CA. Humor and laughter professionals from around the world are invited to learn the latest applications and benefits of therapeutic humor presented by field experts. CEU and CME credits will be available for the conference session as we...

This week on Nurse Talk Radio we had the pleasure of interviewing Dr. Rana Awdish about her book In Shock: How Nearly Dying Made Me a Better Intensive Care Doctor. In Shock, is Dr. Awdish's searing account of her extraordinary journey from doctor to patient, during which she sees for the first time the dysfunction of her profession’s disconnection from patients and the flaws in her own past practi...

Join us for this special edition podcast with Director of Public Policy for National Nurses United, Michael Lighty. In Michael’s article he notes, the labor movement exists to stop money from being the metric of value and power. Healthcare is exhibit A for money as the metric (see Elizabeth Rosenthal’s book, “American Sickness”). Unions derive power from members, engaged in fights to win a better...

With every passing day, it becomes clearer who's reaping the benefit of the huge tax cut handed over to American corporations by the Republican-dominated Congress in December. The big drug company Pfizer seems intent on being a pace-setter in cranking out the benefits of the tax cut to stakeholders who need them the least. In an announcement in late January, Pfizer said it was shutting down its re...

An estimated 3,500 infants die each year from deaths related to sleep. Together, these are called sudden unexpected infant deaths, which includes both sudden infant death syndrome and deaths from suffocation, asphyxiation, strangulation and other preventable deaths. RN and author of Secrets of a Baby Nurse, Marsha Podd talks about co-sleeping, bed sharing and room sharing and gives good advice to...

It's a great day for 19,000 RN's and NP's but an even better day for their Kaiser patients. Join us for this Nurse Talk Radio special edition podcast with RN and Co-President of National Nurses United, Deborah Burger.

We all knew this was coming and true to form Paul Ryan is busy preparing for Medicare, Social Security, and Medicaid cuts this year. But as our Healthcare in America Senior Correspondent, Donna Smith says, the cuts may be subtle until after the mid-terms in November. Subtle but impactful including raising the age of retirement from 65 to 70, adjustments to Medicaid qualifications and other measure...

What is it like to lose your mind, to see slices of one’s identity slowly drifting away like blow balls? Veteran journalist Greg O’Brien likens the journey in this expanded edition of ON PLUTO: INSIDE THE MIND OF ALZHEIMERS—with 12 new chapters—to a flyby of the dwarf planet Pluto, as seen through the lens of NASA’s intrepid spacecraft New Horizons. ON PLUTO, an international award winner when ini...

Listen to our Nurse Talk Special Feature Mini Podcasts on our website or during the Thom Hartmann Program. This week RN Maureen Dugan talks about pivotal union case Janus v AFSCME. The case was heard recently by the Supreme Court and could have devastating affects on Unions across the country, not the least of which is the largest RN Union in the country, National Nurses United.

This week U.S. Supreme Court justice Neil Gorsuch, President Trump’s appointee, is expected to be the deciding vote in the pivotal union case Janus v AFSCME. But during oral arguments in the case on Feb. 26, Gorsuch gave no sign which side he’ll take. He asked no questions, made little eye contact with attorneys, and often rested his chin in his hands. California Nurses Association RN, Maureen Dug...

Our Healthcare In America Correspondent, Donna Smith gives her perspective on the Three Tenors aka the CEO’s from JP Morgan Chase, Amazon, and Berkshire-Hathaway announcing they are forming a new healthcare company signaling the symbolic end of the ACA-reform era. What do we know, what do they know and what if anything does this do to the National Single Payer movement?

BIG Pharma paid $14.3 million to think tanks, disease advocacy groups and universities in 2015 alone. The money bought both assistance and silence. Fast forward three years and Congress just voted to make the first former drug industry executive the head of the Department of Health and Human Services. What’s going on? Nurse Talk Radio visits with Journalist, Randy Barrett about the lobbying, games...

Dotty Nygard is an ER nurse, former City Council Member, Patient Advocate, Mother and Grandmother and she is running for Congress to say enough is enough. She pledges: No more playing politics with our healthcare, our natural resources, our children’s education or our right to earn a living wage and support our families. If (when) Dotty is elected she will represent California’s Central Valley. To...

RN Rose Anne Wilson joins Nurse Talk Radio to talk about the protracted battle to keep Affinity Medical Center in Massillon, Ohio open. With a national trend toward rural, urban and small community hospital closures—RN’s in Massillon, Ohio find themselves in a battle with Quorum Health Care. Quorum is a spin-off of Franklin Tenn. Based Community Health Systems. The company began a divestiture spre...

California has an opportunity to make healthcare a human right and guarantee it to everyone in the Golden State. As Democrats in the State House continue to hold the Healthy California Act (S.B. 562) hostage, nurses and millions of others continue their push to move this bill forward. California Nurses Association/National Nurses United, Legislative Advocate Stephanie Roberson updates us on the st...

It's time to dispel the hoax of "entitlement reform" and no one does it better than President of Social Security Works, Nancy Altman. On the heels of Senate Republicans jamming through a historically unpopular tax bill that enriches their wealthy donors at the American people’s expense, the tax giveaway to the wealthy triggered a $400 billion in automatic cuts to Medicare in the next decade. Howev...

This week we share one of the most critical Nurse Talk Radio interviews of 2017---The State Of The Union with RN and Co-President of National Nurses United, Deborah Burger. At a time when the Republican Party is set on the destruction of organized labor in this country National Nurses United (the largest Union of Registered Nurses with over 150,000 members) is gaining members and momentum both nat...

In 2007 our Senior Healthcare Correspondent and Executive Director of Progressive Democrats of America Donna Smith, appeared in Michael Moore’s groundbreaking documentary about the American Healthcare System “SICKO”. Nine years later and we ask Donna how or if we’ve made any progress on Healthcare In this country.

Cohousing is gaining ground in the U.S. What is it and could it be a tool to curb isolation and the high cost of housing? Nurse Talk visits with Cohousing Coach Raines Cohen to find out just what it is and isn't. "A big myth about cohousing is that it's a commune", says Raines. Not true he says, its a form of intentional community in which neighbors commit to being a part of the community for ever...

RN and Chief Steward Of Maine State Nurses Association, Maureen Hayward, joins us for this Nurse Talk Special Edition podcast. We're talking about recent Legislation that was introduced to the Maine State Legislative Committee to hold hospitals accountable for elimination of major care facilities. Maureen says, "these cuts to services and closures by hospitals are not only bad for our patients but...

Having failed to repeal the expansion of Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, the Trump Administration wants to open the door for states to dismantle this essential safety net program by allowing them new ways to deny care. Director of Public Policy for National Nurses United, and Sanders Institute Fellow, Michael Lighty visits with Nurse Talk for this Special Edition Podcast.

As a former public relations executive for healthcare giants Humana and Cigna, Wendell Potter knows all too well how and why journalism can be influenced by money. In 2006 he resigned from his job and became a whistle-blower testifying in Congress about the manipulative practices of his former industry. Since then, Wendell has been on a mission to bring truth and integrity back to journalism. His...

Thousands of lives changed in an instant when Northern California was hit by one of the worst suburban wildfires in the states history. With so many people displaced children of elder adults are finding themselves filling the role of "instant caregivers". Kira Reginato is an Elder Care Consultant and author of Tips For Helping Your Aging Parents, without losing your mind! She shares advice with th...

Listen to Christine Grant, RN from Washington DC. Christine was one of 50 nurses who went to Puerto Rico with the support of RNRN(Registered Nurses Response Network) and was part of a Congressional meeting where nurses submitted a report on conditions in Puerto Rico and called for immediate Congressional action.

Last year California became the fifth state to allow people with terminal illnesses to request pills from their doctors to end their lives. In the first six months the law was in effect, 111 terminally ill patients ended their lives that way, state officials said. Medical Aid In Dying, which has been practiced in six states for a combined 40 years and within those states not a single case of abuse...