SURGICAL/CRITICAL CARE
The role of a pediatric nurse scientist Perhaps an overlooked career path is the pediatric nurse scientist. Altares Sarik said, “Basically a nurse scientist is a nurse with advanced training and advanced education, usually a PhD, but sometimes they could also be a DNP, which is a Doctorate of Nursing Practice degree. The nurse scientist has a clinical background, they’ve been trained clinically as a nurse, they’ve likely practiced in the hospital setting or like myself, I was in the pediatric outpatient setting, and then they have the additional training and education that allows them to have a research kind of background and be able to address issues from that research perspective.” She added, “So, what makes that really unique is for a clinical pediatric nurse sci- entists like myself, I have the training that I could be a faculty in a school of nursing, but instead I’m embedded in the clinical setting. And so I get to teach the nurses I get to pro- vide support for scholarship in the academic or in the clinical setting so that things like doing evidence-based practice work, quality improvement, work, research, and then I help to provide at the system level support, like infrastructure, to be able to address
some of the problems we see on a day-to- day basis. We know that nurses are the ones at the bedside, they spend the majority of time with patients and families. So, they often see where we have gaps in care, or they see where we have opportunities to improve our care. The role of a clinical pediatric nurse scientist is often to partner with them to help them take those issues that they’re seeing or those challenges that they’re seeing and help them to address it from kind of a scientific or an academic perspective. And so, what that means is that instead of having to wait until maybe research is done in the academic setting, where it could take many years for a researcher to get some data and be able to analyze it and write it up and make changes, we can make changes in real time.”
Easing the burdens
Sarik commented, “If I have a nurse that comes to me and tells me we’ve noticed that we are having a really high incidence of, say, pressure, injuries in this unit and we’re thinking it’s because of X,Y, or Z issue, I can then partner with them to put together a protocol so we can study it and we can then quickly implement a change in practice. Then, we can evaluate the outcomes of that
One CEO shares her perspectives on female physician needs
Julia Jacobson, CEO of BLOXR Solutions, recently spoke with Healthcare Purchasing News about her company and the unique needs of female physicians. by Janette Wider
Can you give us some back- ground on your company? BLOXR Solutions manufactures x-ray attenu- ation aprons and hand cream to protect cli- nicians from scatter radiation exposure. We have a patented core material in our aprons that is non-toxic, about half the weight of true lead, and flexible so it is much more comfortable for clinicians than the historically popu- lar heavy lead (toxic) aprons. We are women-owned and have a genuine interest in protecting female clinicians. This is demonstrated in our unique designs for women—extra shielding for pregnant women, cap sleeves for breast protection, bra inserts to add protection in that sensitive area, etc.
Julia Jacobson
What trends have you seen regarding female physicians in the workforce? From attending the same industry tradeshows and conferences for 10 years, we can see there are more and more women becoming surgeons. We hope their needs are taken more seriously as they are no longer the minority in each field and are
moving into positions of leadership (the decision makers). Unfortunately, we are continually told that female employees are not provided with adequate radiation protection. Many choose to buy radiation protection gear on their own if the hospital does not provide them with gear that fits.
Can you give us some insight as to why female physicians may need different products than male physicians? In the world of radiation protection, female clinicians need different products for several reasons. Many female clinicians are given aprons that do not fit or are sized up to fit multiple people (they share gear), leaving sensitive areas exposed. This is especially common for breast tissue if the apron has a gaping armhole because it is too large. In December 2023, an article from the British Medical Journal states, “They point to observational evidence suggesting an increase in breast cancer risk among female U.S. orthopaedic surgeons compared with an age matched female population.” And a small Finnish study, noted in a Safety + Health, shows breast cancer at 1.7 times the expected rate in radiolo- gists, surgeons, and cardiologists compared with female physicians not working with radiation. According to an article from Diagnostic and Interventional Cardiology, female physicians
20 October 2023 • HEALTHCARE PURCHASING NEWS •
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also may be pregnant while working in a job that exposes them to radiation. It is commonly known that “a developing child is particularly vulnerable to radiation’s dose-dependent effects, which can include death or congenital abnormalities that appear at birth or later in life.”
Why aren’t employers more aware of occupational risks? I believe hospitals are aware of the risk of radia- tion exposure for their clinicians. Many cite bud- getary restraints as the reason why they cannot buy their female clinicians radiation protection that fits and fully protects them. There is no way to conclusively prove that someone got cancer as a result of their radiation exposure on the job—no one knows how one’s cancer came to be present. Your thyroid is highly susceptible to radiation—I have met maybe a dozen people now (from industry events) who have had their thyroid removed due to cancer. All were physicians who were exposed to radiation as part of their job and most said they “know they got it from work.” How many people do you know who have had their thyroid removed due to cancer? It seems a little too common among clinicians who work with radiation to say there is no correlation.
Read on:
https://hpnonline.com/53071867
change in practice. And so, in a very short period of time, we can improve the care we’re providing to patients and improve the outcomes that we’re seeing. It’s an area where you can kind of take that unique training and those unique skill sets of a nurse, partnered with research training so we can really address issues in a very, very efficient way that otherwise we wouldn’t be able to.” Altares Sarik noted some projects that
she’s been involved in recently that are helping nurses with an ever-increasing workload. She said, “One is looking at using virtual reality (VR) for needle procedures in the EEG. Sometimes the collaboration that happens between the nurse scientist and the nurses, or the team, leads to bringing in new devices or new products, or trialing new products. If they are thinking about a new device, like a new mesh we started using—a new protective barrier for nasal cannulas to help with decreasing pressure injuries—a nurse scientist is partnering with those teams to help bring in those potential innovations and help support them, imple- menting the use of them and then evaluating whether or not they’re a good solution for the unit at the hospital.”HPN
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