(YumaSun.com) Griselda Brown started as a social worker in a nursing home in Yuma. She really enjoyed the interaction with patients, but she found that when a patient had something simple like a headache or gash on the arm, she couldn’t help them.
So Brown became a nurse, which allowed her to bridge the gap and directly care for patients. She has been a nurse for nine years and currently is a palliative care staff nurse in the intensive care unit at Yuma Regional Medical Center. [Read more...]
(Daily Herald) Kelly Jantz knows how to work magic on her patients. “I love being a nurse,” said Jantz, RN and float nurse in the medical-surgical unit at North Kansas City Hospital. “I love taking care of patients. It feels so good to make a difference in so many people.”
Every Wednesday, Jantz appears in a vintage nursing uniform wheeling her cart of nontraditional nursing sup-plies. Stuffed animals, clown noses, big combs, television comedy DVDs, old-time radio recordings, oversized sun-glasses, magic tricks and joke cards are some of the ever-changing props she uses in laugh therapy with staff members, pa-tients and their families. The program she dubbed PHIL, Positive Hopeful Individuals Laughing, has serious outcomes, Jantz said. [Read more...]
(MobiHealthNews.com) According to a recent survey conducted by Wolters Kluwer Health’s Lippincott Williams & Wilkins (LWW), 71 percent of nurses are already using smartphones for their job. The survey included responses from 3,900 nurses and nursing students. About 66 percent of those nursing students surveyed said they use their smartphones for nursing school.
Overall, 85 percent of the nurses and nursing students said they want a smartphone app version of LWW’s Nursing 2013 Drug Handbook. Some 87 percent of those surveyed said they would want a smartphone app version of the text as well as a print version. [Read more...]
(WHEC) A brand new piece of equipment was used for the first time ever at Highland Hospital Tuesday. It’s a tool for patients who undergo robotic surgeries. The device was also created by a nurse who works there.
It is called the Alimed Trendelenburg positioner. The positioner works as a sort of harness for patients to keep them in place. For many surgeries that require the use of robotic instruments, the patient must be tipped almost completely upside down. But tried and true methods of making sure patients don’t slip when they’re in that position has never been created until now. [Read more...]
(OPBnews) After a patient died last year at a Veterans Affairs hospital in Manhattan, federal inspectors discovered nurses in his unit had a startling gap in their skills: They didn’t understand how the monitors tracking vital signs worked.
None of the nurses interviewed could accurately explain what would happen if a patient became disconnected from a cardiac monitor — which allegedly occurred to the patient who died, according to an October 2011 report from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs’ inspector general.
The incident followed two deaths in the cardiac monitoring unit at a VA hospital in Denver that raised similar questions about nurse competency. [Read more...]
(AJC.com) Nurses aren’t angels, but they may be the closest thing we have in the workplace.
While doctors diagnose illnesses and prescribe medication, surgery or other treatment, it’s often nurses who explain medical procedures, help manage symptoms, respond to emergencies, listen to family concerns, allay patient fears, soothe worries and find ways to make difficult situations bearable. [Read more...]
(AJC.com) Take a look around the halls of today’s hospitals and other health care facilities and you’ll find fresh faces.
(SacBee.com) Nurses and future nurses are using smartphones at the bedside, and want immediate access to drug reference tools. A recent survey of nearly 4,000 nurses and nursing students found that more and more nurses are turning to mobile technology to help them provide efficient and effective care. Conducted by Lippincott Williams & Wilkins (LWW), publisher of the top-selling Nursing 2013 Drug Handbook, the survey found that 85 percent of nurses and students want a smartphone app version of the drug guide. LWW is part ofWolters Kluwer Health, a leading global provider of information, business intelligence and point-of-care solutions for the healthcare industry. [Read more...]
(MedPageToday) Very low birth weight infants born in hospitals awarded recognition for nursing excellence fared better than those born in hospitals without this rating, a cohort study found.
The mean 7-day mortality rate for infants in hospitals with nursing excellence ratings was 7% compared with 7.4% in other hospitals, for an adjusted odds ratio of 0.87 (95% CI 0.76 to 0.99, P=0.04), according to Eileen T. Lake, PhD, of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, and colleagues.
Rates also were lower for nosocomial infections (OR 0.86, 95% CI 0.75 to 0.99,P=0.04) and for severe intraventricular hemorrhage (OR 0.88, 95% CI 0.77 to 1,P=0.045), the researchers reported in the April 25 Journal of the American Medical Association. [Read more...]
(MedScape) Very low-birth-weight (VLBW) infants born in hospitals with the recognition of nursing excellence (RNE) designation have better outcomes for certain measures of morbidity and mortality, according to the findings of a cross-sectional cohort study.
Eileen T. Lake, PhD, RN, from the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, and colleagues published their findings in the April 25 issue of JAMA.
The authors noted the importance of nursing care in neonatal intensive care units (NICUs). “To intervene before the onset of life-threatening problems, nurses must make complex assessments, implement highly intensive therapies, and make immediate adjustments dependent on infant response,” the authors write. “Nurse handling of an infant and recognition and response to subtle cues that an infant is distressed may support infant hemodynamic stability and reduce the likelihood of intraventricular hemorrhage.”
The authors included 72,235 VLBW infants weighing 501 to 1500 g born in 1 of 558 Vermont Oxford Network hospital NICUs between January 1, 2007, and December 31, 2008. After adjustment for the higher risk profile of infants born in RNE hospitals, infants born in these hospitals had significantly lower risks for 7-day mortality (7.0% vs 7.4% for those born in RNE hospitals vs non-RNE hospitals, respectively; adjusted odds ratio [OR], 0.87; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.76 – 0.99; P = .04); infection (16.7% vs 18.3% respectively; adjusted OR, 0.86; 95% CI, 0.75 – 0.99; P = .04); and severe intraventricular hemorrhage (7.2% vs 7.4%, respectively; adjusted OR, 0.88; 95% CI, 0.78 – 1.00; P = .045).
The authors excluded outborn infants, infants with incomplete infant characteristics, and those with missing death data. The authors performed logistic regression using RNE status, patient risk adjusters, and NICU- and hospital-level covariates as the independent variables.
Compared with non-RNE hospitals, RNE hospitals included a higher percentage of not-for-profit institutions (87% vs 71%), had more registered nurse hours (hours per patient-day: 10.5 vs 9.3), were twice as likely to be teaching hospitals (55% vs 27%), and served a larger volume of VLBW infants (93 vs 74). When jointly considering the 5 outcomes of 7-day mortality, 28-day mortality, infection, severe intraventricular hemorrhage, and in-hospital mortality, the researchers found that infants born in RNE hospitals had a lower risk for a poor outcome than those born in non-RNE hospitals (adjusted OR, 0.88; 95% CI, 0.83 – 0.94; P < .001).
The limitations of the study included its cross-sectional design, the fact that the Vermont Oxford Network is not fully representative of US hospitals with NICUs, and the exclusion of outborn infants.
The authors indicated that their findings suggest an association between RNE designation and quality of care. “The better outcomes observed in VLBW infants in RNE hospitals may reflect higher-quality NICU and obstetric care,” the authors write. “Thus, RNE status may serve as a marker for an institution-wide commitment to optimizing outcomes.”
Systems of Quality Improvement Should Extend Beyond Hospitals
In a linked commentary, Wanda D. Barfield, MD, MPH, from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in Atlanta, Georgia, writes that despite its benefits, quality nursing and medical care in the NICU alone is not sufficient to improve neonatal survival. “Other systems that could be assessed for quality include the provision of maternal, preconception, and interconception care, as well the provision of risk-appropriate prenatal and intrapartum care; antenatal and neonatal transport systems; laboratory, radiology, and medical record systems; staffing; family support; and public health programs,” writes Dr. Barfield. “Systems for quality improvement ideally should extend beyond individual hospitals and networks of hospitals.”
The study was supported by a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Interdisciplinary Nursing Quality Research Initiative grant and the National Institute of Nursing Research, National Institutes of Health. Dr. Lake received an honorarium for remarks at the 2010 American Nurses Credentialing Center Research Symposium. A coauthor holds an equity interest in ArboMetric Inc, a company that sells efficiency measurement systems and consulting services to hospitals and insurers. Another coauthor is the chief executive and scientific officer of the Vermont Oxford Network. The remaining authors and commentator have disclosed no relevant financial relationships.
