On a website the other day, someone was discussing Nobel prize winner Richard Feynman’s speech. I guess he was very inspirational, because he described a lengthy story of all the wrong moves that he made and the walls he bumped up against in his scientific journey which eventually garnered him a coveted award. He said….”the sequence of events, really the sequence of ideas…by which I finally came out the other end with an unsolved problem for which I ultimately received a prize.”

He also is very supportive of what he called the pursuit of “a peculiar and unusual point of view; one that he may have to invent for himself.”

So how about those lessons being applied to healthcare journalism, especially the coverage of the nursing shortage. Don’t run with the pack because that’s what everyone else is doing. Stop writing these same ridiculous tired stories about how the nursing shortage is merely a combination of current nurses turning into old farts and schools not putting out enough fresh new meat.

Offer some interesting insight. You see a story where a nurse is awarded a hefty grant to “study the nursing shortage,” and bells should go off. The nursing shortage has been more closely studied than any other subject in the history of the human race. It has been studied for several decades and the reasons have not changed. Write something intelligent.

The media has in part been fueling this notion of the great nursing shortage and giving the idea that hospitals are really doing “everything” possible to alleviate it. That’s a crock. Visit some nursing bulletin boards, speak to some nurses and promise anonymity, and you’ll get an earful. Look up stats on nurses leaving nursing, or bedside care. Ask them why. Stay away from academians–remember, there’s a reason why they’re sitting safe and snug in their little ivory tower and not out on the front lines getting blood and piss all over their manicures.

Anyway, just some thoughts to start the new year.