May 10th, 2011 by BarbaraFicarraRN in Health Tips
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Thanks to Laura Landro for shining light on unsafe injections in her WSJ blog, “Unsafe Injection Practices Persist Despite Education Efforts.”
Landro writes:
“A new push is underway to eliminate unsafe injection practices, which remain a persistent safety problem despite years of efforts to educate clinicians about the risks of re-using needles, syringes and drug vials.
In the U.S., failure to follow safe practices in delivering intravenous medications and injections has resulted in more than 30 outbreaks of infectious disease including hepatitis C, and the notification of more than 125,000 patients about potential exposure just in the last decade, according to health-care purchasing alliance Premier Inc.”
As a registered nurse this is unthinkable. Learning to administer injections safely is “patient care 101.” There is no excuse for any health care professional to unsafely inject patients.
Patients in the hospital, ambulatory surgical centers or outpatient settings, should expect that their nurses, doctors and other clinicians are administering injections safely. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Health in 30*
May 2nd, 2011 by John Mandrola, M.D. in Research
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Wait…
Before reading any further, I would like to issue a warning. If your ideas about healthcare delivery are of an older ilk; if you cling white-knuckled to past dogma, please stop reading now. What follows may cause your atria to fibrillate.
Last month I wrote that the best tool for treating atrial fibrillation (AF) was to give patients information—to teach them about their AF, its complications, role of lifestyle factors and the many treatment options. I didn’t say this was easy. In fact, thoroughly explaining AF takes nearly the same time it takes me to isolate the pulmonary veins–a lot longer than the 10 minutes allotted for a typical office visit. (Remember: of a 30 minute office visit, I have to review your chart, listen attentively to your story, examine you, and complete the e-record. That doesn’t leave much time for teaching.)
I was serious about the role of education in AF therapy, but I didn’t have any hard data to support such a bold claim. All I could offer was 15 years of experience on the front lines of treating AF—cardiology’s most expensive and prevalent disease.
But now I have found some real-world data to support the thesis that good teaching translates to better AF outcomes. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Dr John M*
April 21st, 2011 by RamonaBatesMD in Health Tips, True Stories
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My husband had a screening colonoscopy last Friday. His nurse in the recovery is the only one I had issues with. I, not my husband.
All went well, but let me tell you he is not an ePatient Dave. He did not read his instructions about when to quit eating and the prep. I did. I then reminded him along the way: “Only clear liquids today.” “You must take the Ducolax at 3 pm. Do you want me to text you a reminder?”
Sometimes the instructions we give patients are clear, but not always read.
The staff at the front desk were very kind and organized. Calls had been made the day before and I had insured the insurance information they had was correct. I did not tell anyone I was a doctor. I’m not sure if my husband did later or not.
…..
When I was called back by the nurse, she mispronounced my name calling me Rhonda (which I forgave easily). She did not introduce herself to me.
As we entered the recovery area, she did not take me to my husband and assure me he was okay. She took me to the desk and abruptly said, “You need to sign this.” Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Suture for a Living*
April 8th, 2011 by PhilBaumannRN in Opinion
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“The world will be better if you share more.” That’s what Mark Zuckerberg claims. And it’s part of a general philosophy of many fans of social media: that they help us to be more “social”, friendlier, cooperative, collaborative…in other words better.
But what – in truth – is the default mode of social media? On the surface, one would think “social”. That can’t be true though, for no technologies have social implanted in them – by definition, human-social belongs to humans.
So when I dip into my Twitter stream, for instance, I see huge volumes of people saying nice things, quoting positive aphorisms, replying to each other with accolades. If you didn’t know any better, you might conclude these are conversations between people who’ve know each other for decades. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Phil Baumann*
April 4th, 2011 by PhilBaumannRN in Opinion
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Kevin Kelly wants us to undertand what he calls the “technium” and outlines his life’s work in What Technology Wants. I’d like to riff on the way Kelly uses the word “want” with respect to Social Media, and ask: “What does social media want?”
Social Media wants…
- Your time
- Your attention
- Your friends
- Your brand
- Your business
- Your data
- Your privacy
- Your publicity
- Your location
- Your behaviors
- Your wants
- Your life
There’s nothing wrong with “want” in itself – maybe it’s OK that Social Media wants all these things – and more.
The more critical question, rather, is: What do you want?
As the power of technology increases the number of choices we can make, we will have to intensify our awareness of who we are and where we’re headed.
Whatever Social Media wants, what you want determines how much it gets.
@PhilBaumann
*This blog post was originally published at Phil Baumann*
