Farewell. The Flying Pig Has Left The Building.

Steve Hynd, August 16, 2012

After four years on the Typepad site, eight years total blogging, Newshoggers is closing it's doors today. We've been coasting the last year or so, with many of us moving on to bigger projects (Hey, Eric!) or simply running out of blogging enthusiasm, and it's time to give the old flying pig a rest.

We've done okay over those eight years, although never being quite PC enough to gain wider acceptance from the partisan "party right or wrong" crowds. We like to think we moved political conversations a little, on the ever-present wish to rush to war with Iran, on the need for a real Left that isn't licking corporatist Dem boots every cycle, on America's foreign misadventures in Afghanistan and Iraq. We like to think we made a small difference while writing under that flying pig banner. We did pretty good for a bunch with no ties to big-party apparatuses or think tanks.

Those eight years of blogging will still exist. Because we're ending this typepad account, we've been archiving the typepad blog here. And the original blogger archive is still here. There will still be new content from the old 'hoggers crew too. Ron writes for The Moderate Voice, I post at The Agonist and Eric Martin's lucid foreign policy thoughts can be read at Democracy Arsenal.

I'd like to thank all our regular commenters, readers and the other bloggers who regularly linked to our posts over the years to agree or disagree. You all made writing for 'hoggers an amazingly fun and stimulating experience.

Thank you very much.

Note: This is an archive copy of Newshoggers. Most of the pictures are gone but the words are all here. There may be some occasional new content, John may do some posts and Ron will cross post some of his contributions to The Moderate Voice so check back.


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Sunday, February 26, 2012

HCR -- Amanda Trujillo, Another Hospice Story

By John Ballard


Why physicians should care about Amanda Trujillo


This short post has a very long comments thread regarding the challenges nurses face informing patients when what they share may conflict with what the doctor has in mind. 
All readers, not only medical professionals, will benefit from this narrative. It is especially significant that the nurse herself participates in the comments discussion.  



Amanda-trujillo1[1]For the past month, the case of Amanda Trujillo has resonated deeply among nurses, triggering an avalanche of postings on Facebook, Twitter and in the nursing blogosphere. Trujillo is the Arizona nurse who was fired in April 2011 after providing education and making a hospice care consult request for an end-stage liver disease patient. This patient was slotted for pre-transplant evaluation and had poor understanding of the disease process and treatment options. Trujillo filled in the gaps for this patient. Trujillo then requested, at the patient�s own wish, a hospice team consult, documented her actions appropriately, and left a note (it was night shift) for the primary physician.


These actions � the education and the hospice team consult � drew the wrath of both the primary physician, who demanded her dismissal and her license, and also her nursing director, who told Trujillo she had �messed up all the doctors� hard work and planning for the surgery.� The patient-requested hospice care consult was cancelled. Trujillo�s employer subsequently fired her, and reported her to the Arizona State Board of Nursing for exceeding nursing scope of practice, though in fact, nurses previously had ordered a hospice care consult without consequence. In short, many nurses believe Trujillo was fired for educating and advocating for her patient.


These are the bare bones of the story. Further details can be found on WhiteCoat�s Call Room and on Nurse Up for Amanda Trujillo.  [Brace yourself before looking here. It's very impressive.]  The debate among nurses � sometimes heated � has common themes around the limits of nursing practice, the meaning of nursing advocacy, and how nurses in trouble are left high and dry by the professional organizations that purport to represent them. Well and good. But why should physicians care?



Don't skip this one altogether.
It's okay to skim along til you get the gist of the arguments (there are hundreds), but do not neglect thinking about the issue. 


This discussion has as much to do with you and I as patients as with the professionals to whom we look for our medical needs.  We owe it to ourselves and them to be informed. 



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