What could Abe have been thinking? In 1863, when the Civil War was at its bloodiest, and while Johnny Yank and Billy Reb were slashing eachother into a pulpy mess, honest Abe had something up his sleeve. Apparently, his mind was elsewhere.

And in a rather peculiar wartime act, on March 3, 1863, Abraham Lincoln authorized the first national organization devoted to promoting science and technology–the National Academy of Sciences. Maybe he was thinking that we needed to develop some high tech weapons to squash those rebels, like cluster bombs and fighter jets? Or a missile defense system?

I kinda doubt it, although I can’t say for sure what was swirling through honest Abe’s mind. My guess is that this was an act of supreme optimism at a very bad time, and he was thinking ahead to the future, to a nation that he hoped would someday be joined together again.

And so, the NAS was mandated in its Act of Incorporation in 1863, to “investigate, examine, experiment, and report upon any subject of science or art” whenever called upon to do so by any department of the government.The first president of the group was Alexander Dallas Bache who, as an original member, was instrumental in recommending a governmental organization to promote science.

I haven’t verified this information, so I don’t know if it’s true or not, but if your grandma or toddler or anyone that you like is in the hospital….read on. Right now.

These comments were posted on nursing bulletin boards, from people very distressed over a brilliant idea of how to solve the nursing shortage. Of course, a hospital will tell you that it’s a “temporary” measure, but if it saves them a few pennies, then it will become permanent. Anything that’s cheap is good.

On person wrote that there is a proposal to bring in “medication aides,” at his facility. According to what he’s researched, these are people brought in off the street and trained to give patients medications. Some of these training sessions are only 20 to 40 hours.

Now would you like this aide passing your meds, if you were in the hospital? Last week she was doing tricks on Broadway, this week, she’s passing out pills. I guess it will get the homeless off the street and put them to work, but still.

Now of course, it is the RN who will be responsible for what this “medication aide” does. That is an impossible task. The RN is busy with her own work, and if there’s an aide to pass the meds, you better believe that a lot more patients are going to be loaded on the nurse. The RN can’t watch the aide every second, and will have no idea what the aide is doing.

I would refuse to be responsible for that person, and I surely wouldn’t want to be a patient on the receiving end.

Another person wrote that there is soon going to be a bill introduced to the North Carolina assembly regarding Medication Aides, who will receive a whopping 24 hours of training before they hit the frontlines. The long term care facilities are pushing this issue BIG TIME!! Gee, I wonder why. It sounds like a dream come true.

Again, these are little tidbits that I read about this morning, instead of working on two articles that have deadlines creeping up. But if this is true, healthcare is really sinking to new depths. And what nurse is her right mind is going to want to take responsibility for someone else’s medication errors?