The city of New York is at it again…they were the first to ban trans fat and lead the fight for restaurant labeling of calories on menus. Now they have an ad campaign that is grossing some people out. Read more »
This post, Pouring on the Pounds: NYC’s New Anti-Obesity Campaign, was originally published on Healthine.com by Brian Westphal.
I felt like an antique this weekend thanks to some medical students on my unit. Why do students seem to get younger every year, and please don’t place the blame on my chronological age. I refuse to believe that I’m getting older. I forget how we got onto the subject, but somehow I told a group of medical interns that I graduated from a three-year diploma nursing program.
One of the interns innocently asked me, “What’s that?” I felt so old when he asked me that question that I expected a museum curator to come out of the woodwork and cordon me off with a velvet rope. I answered his question. They were fascinated that they were actually talking to an “old time nurse.” They had more questions:
Question: “How did you keep you nurses cap on?” Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Nurse Ratched's Place*
DrRich’s conviction that covert rationing is the engine that drives many (if not most) of the bizarre behaviors we see in the American healthcare system leads him to take positions on certain contentious issues that do not endear him to either his progressive or his conservative friends.
One of these issues is malpractice liability reform.
DrRich wrote about this some time ago (here and here), and as a result managed to alienate more than a few of his readers, especially the ones who are doctors. So if he were smart, DrRich would leave it alone. (After all, a lot of readers have long since forgotten precisely why they do not like DrRich, and merely harbor toward him a vague sense of unease and distrust. This, DrRich finds, he can live with.)
But a couple of things prompt DrRich to take up this topic once again. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at The Covert Rationing Blog*
Over at the WSJ Health Blog, some academic docs, such as hospitalist Dr. Wachter are suggesting just that.
Punishments such as revoking privileges for a chunk of time tend to be used for administrative infractions that cost the hospital money – things like failing to sign the discharge summaries that insurance companies require to pay the hospital bill. By contrast, hospital administrators may just shrug their shoulders when it comes to doctors who fail or refuse to follow rules like a “time out” before surgery to avoid operating on the wrong body part.
Docs and nurses who fail to follow rules about hand hygiene or patient handoffs should lose their privileges for a week, Pronovost and Wachter suggest. They recommend loss of privileges for two weeks for surgeons who who fail to perform a “time-out” before surgery or don’t mark the surgical site to prevent wrong-site surgery.
This couldn’t have come at a better time. At Happy’s hospital there is a massive witch hunt to crack down on not signing off verbal orders within 48 hours. This has nothing to do with patient safety. It has everything to do with meeting the requirements of CMS so the hospital does not lose their funding. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at A Happy Hospitalist*
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