Torress-Cook's strategy includes meticulous hand-washing by the staff, head-to-toe cleaning of the patients (including under their nails and oral care), daily cleaning of hospital rooms, giving antibiotics only when cultures prove they are necessary, and feeding yogurt to patients to replenish bacteria in the gut. In the last year, AJN has featured articles on several of these, including hand-washing, oral care, and appropriate antimicrobial use. Based on your own experience, what other relatively simple procedures might significantly improve outcomes in the workplace?

In Massachusetts, legislators are making it a crime to assault nurses:

The Joint Committee on Judiciary has scheduled a hearing on Tuesday, July 14, 2009, beginning at 12 noon for testimony on a bill sponsored by State Rep. Michael J. Rodrigues (D-Westport) and Sen. Michael Moore (D-Worcester) that will make it a crime, punishable by up to two years in prison, to assault a registered nurse while s/he is providing health care.

On the other side of the coin, Diana Mason wrote here yesterday about continuing delays in holding criminal nurses accountable in the state of California. Yesterday evening, Governor Schwarzenegger finally took action to remedy the problem:

Late Monday, Calif. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger replaced nearly everyone on the state’s Board of Registered Nursing, “citing the unacceptable length of time it takes to discipline nurses accused of egregious misconduct.” The move came a day after a ProPublica and Los Angeles Times investigation into the board’s activity was published.

July 16. This update just in: “The longtime executive officer of the embattled California Board of Registered Nursing resigned Tuesday, ensuring almost entirely new leadership for the agency as it strives to revamp its oversight of hundreds of thousands of caregivers.”

The American Academy of Nursing (AAN) has released a statement saying that it “applauds President Obama’s nomination of Francis S. Collins, MD, MPH, for Director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH).”

But now it appears there’s a controversy  brewing around Collins, a scientist who just happened to direct the Human Genome Project—how far it might progress is hard to say, but witness the distinctly unscholarly tone of an article at a Web site called Scholarly Kitchen. The author draws upon frank statements Collins has made about his religious beliefs as an evangelical Christian in order to impugn, through innuendo and inference—aided by some typically brilliant rhetorical sleight of hand from no less a celebrity scientist than Steven Pinker—Collins’s very claim to objectivity. How dangerous is Collins, you might ask? Here’s a quote from Collins used to suggest he’s not to be trusted:

Science is not particularly effective — in fact, it’s rather ineffective — in making commentary about the supernatural world. Both worlds, for me, are quite real and quite important.

Hmm. Pretty scary stuff. As I read, I hoped to learn exactly how Collins had undermined scientific objectivity (for example, by acting on behalf of the Bush administration in redacting vast portions of studies unfavorable to a political agenda), but saw not the slightest bit of concrete evidence that Collins […]

“The Obama administration warned Americans on Thursday to be ready for an aggressive return of the swine flu virus in the fall, announcing plans to begin vaccinations in October and offering states and hospitals money to help them prepare.”

(Here’s the NY Times article quoted above. And here’s the flu preparedness summit held today by major players in the U.S. government, with archived video footage. Also: guidance for nurses, provided to AJN by the CDC in late April. We’ll be checking in with them soon for an update.)