Archive for June, 2008

Nurses

WHAT DO VERT SKATER Jason Ellis, the Metal Mulisha, and the frantic agit-pop sound of the band Nurses have in common? No, not the making of a new VH-1 reality show. It’s their collective place of residence, Temecula, CA. Located along the southwestern border of the Inland Empire, Temecula is sandwiched between Tony Hawk’s Fallbrook and the industry-heavy cities Oceanside and Vista. It boasts enough open land for, say, private vert ramps or BMX courses, but how does an eclectic band like Nurses come to fit into the Temecula equation?
The answer is simple: couch surfing. Nurses left on tour and abandoned their respective homesteads. When they returned to their adopted home in the San Diego area (originally from Idaho Falls, ID), they borrowed floor space from friends in Temecula, and eventually settled in. “We’re really isolated from any sort of scene, which encourages us to do whatever we want,” the band says. “There really aren’t any people interested in the same things as us–wizardry, writing bad checks–so we’ve become pretty reclusive.” The fact that Nurses’ music arises from such an unusual, borderline desert area isn’t for want of; it was more of a “let’s make the best of this unusual situation that we can.” In turn, Nurses ignored Temecula, kept to themselves, and set about crafting music in the only way they knew how.

The foursome ultimately moved into a two-bedroom house, sharing clothes and one car between them. They borrowed gear and spent all their money on recording and touring. The prospect of which would be a bit of a daunting commitment for anyone, and Nurses are the first to own up to it. “The hardest part is being so completely submerged in something,” they say. “Everything we do somehow revolves around our band, so sometimes it’s a bit overwhelming. It feels like getting really close to a huge painting and only being able to see a couple inches right in front of your face; you lose perspective on the bigger picture.”

But the bigger picture creeped into scope. Song writing in the band’s home took shape, starting off with either a guitar or piano, and an idea. “We start off with a really bare but structured song. We do a lot of work from that point to make the song as interesting as possible. Everyone offers their perspective, and we collectively reach whatever potential we think the song has.” Nurses’ potentials are endless, and to that effect the band does whatever’s necessary to round out complete renditions of their recorded works. “It’s important for us to play everything from the record live. We couldn’t imagine presenting incomplete versions.”

After three years and a handful of potential-filled tours, the band recorded 12 songs in San Diego with producer Jason Cupp (the Elected, Valley Arena, Finch), the results of which can be heard on Nurses’ introductory full-length, Hangin’ Nothin’ but Our Hands Down. Musically, Nurses urgent brand of stop-go agit-pop summons a broad based spectrum of “Hey, they were greats.” List-wise, disparate comparisons fall somewhere between a more frantic mix of Q and Not U and Kid-A era Radiohead, while retaining the dancier moments of bands like Enon and El Guapo.

Then there are the vocals. You know those moments in life when you think to yourself, “There’s no way in hell this could ever work.” But you try it anyway, and your perception completely changes. That explains Nurses’ lyrical delivery. At times it’s reminiscent of the off-kilter but authoritative voice of Spoon’s Britt Daniels. Then it’s juxtaposed and smashed against the Freddie Mercury-ized pronouncements of Queen.

Yeah, there’s a hell of a lot of space between those two references, and yeah, there’s no way in hell it should work, but Nurses does it. And Temecula is far off the beaten path for indie bands towing the line between innovation and alienation, but Nurses does it. And yeah, the band didn’t meant to unknowingly practice the art of perception smashing, but Nurses indeed does it.

COPYRIGHT 2007 High Speed Productions, Inc
COPYRIGHT 2008 Gale, Cengage Learning

Nursing Recruitment Agencies: Take The Hard Work Out Of Finding Work

by: Carl Formby

It seems it’s a universal problem. You want to get a new job because you’re desperate to get away from the old one—whether it’s because you want better pay, better conditions or just a change of scene. The trouble is that your present job keeps you so busy you don’t have time to look for a new one.

This is true in all types of career, but especially so in the field of nursing. With the dedication that many nurses carry out their jobs, especially when the work involves night work and weekend work, using those few precious hours of time off to go trawling through the recruitment newspapers and magazines seems like just too much work.

There is an answer, though, to this seemingly insolvable catch-22 situation. It’s one that is used by many of those looking for a change to their professional career, and it is now making more and more of a mark in the field of nursing—the use of a recruitment agency.

Here’s why:

A nursing recruitment agency usually has a wide range of jobs from which a prospective nursing candidate can choose. This means that there is far more chance that the nurse will be able to find exactly the right type of job to suit his or her skill set

Recruitment agencies can analyze the nurses skill set to make sure that the nurse is not applying for a job for which she is under-qualified—or even over-qualified for that matter. This means that the nurse has much more chance of being successful with the job application and finding a position which dovetails nicely with her skill set. It also means the new position is much more likely to give the nurse a chance of advancing her career. Read more…

Nursing Jobs On The Rise

by: Robyn Knapp

It has been predicted that the baby boomer generation will be the most effected by the changes health care system with regard to nursing care. The current health care system is in a state of flux. With insurance companies constantly raising rates and premiums, and the hospital stays becoming less frequent, the end result is that health care must extend to the home. The impact of this new era of home care will have various effects on the population that is served. Although it is true that home care has been in existence for almost as many years as the profession of nursing itself, the amount of clients that home care now serves is quite a bit larger than the past as well as more medically demanding. What this situation implies for the nursing profession is a larger responsibility in ensuring that clients who are discharged within one to two days receive the necessary teaching and follow up nursing care to ensure progressive healing and a maximum return to wellness.

In order to help ensure the goal for the client after discharge, the hospital nurse must be acutely aware of what the clients teaching needs will be from the time of admission.

For instance, those clients that have chronic respiratory disorders will need to be taught how to assess themselves for the danger signs and symptoms of circulatory overload. The patient needs to be taught that a weight gain more than one to two pounds per day may indicate circulatory overload and lead to respiratory distress. While this teaching plan may seem simplistic, the fact remains that many of these respiratory compromised clients are released from the hospital prior to their blood work and medical condition stabilizing.

The problems arise when the client is not functioning at a cognitive level to utilize the teaching from the nurse. Even more crucial is the need for family to be involved and their desire and willingness to participate in home care. When all falls through, which happens more frequently than not, the client is the one who suffers the consequences. As it happens, family cannot always coordinate with the nurse’s schedule, follow through teaching may not be completed by the nurse on that particular shift. Sometimes by no ones fault, the system fails the patient just from lack of time. The solutions to this dilemma cannot be elucidated in one or two sentences. As the old saying goes, “it takes a village to raise a child”, “similarly it takes a village to promote the wellness of an individual”. With this said, one can infer the difficulties in promoting the physical and emotional wellness of a client recently discharged from the hospital. Read more…