Pink Slips and Patient Safety
I believe none of us go in to work and think to ourselves, “I’m not going to wash my hands today.” We don’t plan to harm patients, but our inaction may very well do so.
There’s a Place for Speed in Online Publishing–But Peer Review Is More Important Than Ever
By Shawn Kennedy, MA, RN, AJN interim editor-in-chief
I read with interest, and also a little concern, a post on a newish blog called Nurse Story.com, which argued for faster Web-based publishing without peer review or much editing.
Yes, the open access model of scientific publishing, with full transparency for all aspects of the review and revision process, is worth watching. Yes, more and more publishing companies are going the online only or online mostly route (and while it’s PC to say it’s in pursuit of being green, I’d bet the primary reason is because it’s cheaper). And yes, it’s much faster to publish on the Internet. You can throw up an article or blog post and change content online by the minute. But is fast and quick all we need? Technology is changing nursing practice, but is it changing our knowledge base so quickly that we shouldn’t take time to weigh and sift the good from the bad? […]
Notes from the Healthweb and Nursosphere
This week Not Nurse Ratched has an amusing, meandering, and thoughtful post about the uses of Facebook by patients in the hospital. There’s a short excerpt below, but read the whole thing here.
They update Facebook constantly. CONSTANTLY. They have us take photos of injuries they can’t reach so they can post the photos to Facebook. I am not making this up. “I want a photo of my hideously dislocated ankle/knee/shoulder but I can’t move, so would you mind using my phone to take a picture for me?” And they keep updating and updating. I have actually said, “I’m about to give you a medicine that is going to render you unconscious immediately, so you should set your phone down.”
How could we have a weekly Web roundup that doesn’t at least mention health insurance reform? The spotlight has been slowly turning toward the insurers themselves, a crucial part of the equation (along with cost control and many other factors). This week Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius met with the top executives of insurance companies to demand an explanation for the steep increases in rates seen in the last year.
If you’re looking for yet another reason why processed food isn’t good for you (besides the frequent presence of high fructose corn syrup and massive doses of salt, and the inaccurate packaging claims that the foods are “healthy” and “lean”), this week the NY Times reported news […]
Is This Teamwork? Learning to Supervise Isn’t Easy
By Sheena Jones, who attends Dutchess Community College and lives in Beacon, NY
So I’m a young nurse, one of the youngest in my facility. I used to be a nurse’s aide; now I’m an LPN in training to be an RN. It’s very difficult when the aides are either the same age as me or old enough to be my grandmother.
What do you tell a 19-year-old aide who just got mandated for a second shift on a Saturday evening and who is texting all shift but getting her work done? Do you tell her to put it away, knowing that you would be doing the same thing if you were still a young aide and had already gone the extra mile to check that all the patients were safe and happy?
What do you tell the 57-year-old aide who is always the last one struggling to finish her assignment because she can’t keep up? She can’t get her two baths done plus get the other eight residents washed and in bed by 10 pm, even though everyone else is done by 8:30 pm. Do you tell her to hurry up and finish? Do you send the frustrated younger aide to finish her assignment, and call it ‘teamwork’? Who wants to do extra work?
This is the situation I face every couple of weekends. I’ve tried changing the aide assignments to make the older aide’s workload easier, but she just can’t seem to work fast enough no matter what I do. I have a frustrated younger aide who […]
‘Ask Me Three Questions’: Engaging Patients to Promote Safety
By Peggy McDaniel, BSN, RN
Next week, March 7–13, is Patient Safety Awareness Week. The National Patient Safety Foundation (NPSF) has sponsored Patient Safety Awareness Week since 2002 to help promote awareness of patient safety issues among hospital staff, patients, and communities. This year’s campaign focuses on engaging patients in theior own care, and it draws upon the NPSF template “Ask Me Three,” which encourages patients to ask these questions:
- What is my main problem?
- What do I need to do?
- Why is it important for me to do this?