December 22nd, 2011 by RyanDuBosar in Health Tips, Research
Tags: circadian biology, diagnostic errors, Fatigue, Long Hours, nap, Nursing, Patient Safety, Physical Activity, Research, Residency Training, Rest, Risk, Schedules, Sentinel Event Alert, Shift length, Sleep, Staffing, The Joint Commission, Tips, Tired
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Health care facilities should take five steps to ensure staff aren’t becoming sleep fatigued, according to a Sentinel Event Alert from The Joint Commission.
Shift length and work schedules impact job performance, and in health care, that means patient safety, the alert stated. A study of 393 nurses over more than 5,300 shifts showed that nurses who work shifts of 12.5 hours or longer are three times more likely to make an error in patient care.
Furthermore, residents who work traditional schedules with recurrent 24-hour shifts:
–make 36 percent more serious preventable adverse events than individuals who work fewer than 16 consecutive hours,
–make five times as many serious diagnostic errors,
–have twice as many Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at ACP Hospitalist*
December 21st, 2011 by RamonaBatesMD in Research
Tags: abdominal panniculectomy, Abscess, cosmetic abdominoplasty, dehiscence, Immunosuppression, Kidney Transplant, Plastic & Reconstructive Surgery Journal, Plastic Surgery, Wound
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There is an interesting article in the current edition of the Plastic & Reconstructive Surgery Journal (December 2011). The focus of the article is a small subset of renal patients who need kidney transplants but whose abdominal panniculus excludes them due. A significant panniculus creates an infrapannicular area prone to increased moisture, skin maceration, and elevated bacterial counts, predisposing the patient to postoperative wound infections, necrosis, and dehiscence. Not good for anyone, but really not for someone on immunosuppression.
The article discusses the use of abdominal panniculectomy in these patients in preparation for the transplant. Nine patients, 3 men and 6 women, with a mean age of 54.5 years and a mean BMI 28.3 are the focus of the article. The focus is not Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Suture for a Living*
December 19th, 2011 by Trudy Lieberman in Opinion, Research
Tags: ACA, Annual Wellness visit, Cost, Coverage, Entitled, Medicare, Medicare Advantage, Medigap, Payment, Physical Exam, Preventive Health Care, Seniors, social security, Vaccines
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Who doesn’t think preventive health care is important? Probably nobody if you ask this question abstractly. But when it comes to getting it–well that’s a different matter. Medicare stats show that too few people are getting preventive services even when they are free. It’s darn difficult, it seems, to get people to take good care of themselves.
By mid-November, of the four million or so new beneficiaries who signed up for Medicare this year, only 3.6 percent had had their “Welcome to Medicare” exam. Only 1.7 million of the more than 40 million seniors, most of whom were already on Medicare, had had their “Annual Wellness Visit.” A poor showing indeed given all the hoopla and hype surrounding the preventive benefits that health reform was supposed to bring to seniors.
To review: All new Medicare beneficiaries are entitled to a free physical exam within the first twelve months that their medical, or Part B, coverage becomes effective. It’s a one-time benefit, and Medicare says that seniors are told about the benefit when they sign up. A Medicare spokesperson added that Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Prepared Patient Forum: What It Takes Blog*
December 19th, 2011 by RyanDuBosar in Research
Tags: Advance Directive, Code Status, DNR, Do Not Resuscitate, End Of Life, Full Code, Hospice care, Living Wills, Misunderstanding, Palliative Care, Research, Study, The Journal of Emergency Medicine, TRIAD
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Struggling with the meaning of life is one thing. Struggling with the meaning of end-of-life directives shouldn’t be.
Physicians misidentify living wills as do-not-resuscitate (DNR) designations and DNR orders as end-of-life care directives, concluded a study. Adding code status designations to a standard advanced directive can ensure that patients receive or do not receive the care they want.
The study, “TRIAD III: Nationwide Assessment of Living Wills and Do Not Resuscitate Orders,” appeared in the Dec. 5 issue of The Journal of Emergency Medicine.
Researchers Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at ACP Hospitalist*
December 19th, 2011 by Medgadget in Announcements, Research
Tags: algorithms, Alignment, Evolutionary, Game, Genetic Diseases, Genetics, Genomics, Heuristics, Mobile Devices, Mutation, Origins, Patterns, Phylo, Research, Sequences, Solutions, Video Game
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Over the past year our genetic understanding of diseases such as Alzheimer’s, diabetes and cancer has been accelerated by thousands of video gamers thanks to an online flash game called Phylo. Phylo is a video game created by Dr. Jérôme Waldispuhl of the McGill Centre for BioInformatics and collaborator Mathieu Blanchette. The game itself is a framework for solving the common problem of multiple sequence alignments in comparative genomics and leverages the visual problem solving skills of online gamers.
The Phylo website explains the background to game: Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Medgadget*
