MERS: Where Are We Now and What Do Nurses Need to Know?

WHO map of MERS cases by country WHO map of MERS cases by country. Click to enlarge.

By Betsy Todd, MPH, RN, CIC, AJN clinical editor

Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) first emerged in Saudi Arabia in September 2012. Until last month, most MERS cases have occurred in that country. But on May 20, South Korea reported its first laboratory-confirmed case of MERS, in a 68-year-old man who had recently returned from a business trip to the Middle East.

The diagnosis was made only after the man had visited four health care facilities since his return home. This resulted in nosocomial transmission to other patients, health care workers, and visitors. To date, the Republic of Korea’s Ministry of Health has identified 108 cases of MERS in South Korea. Nine patients (all with serious preexisting health conditions) have died.

The WHO notes that all of these cases are epidemiologically linked to the index case. That is, there is no evidence that a new “reservoir” of MERS virus has suddenly surfaced in South Korea—all cases thus far stem from the Korean traveler who acquired his infection while visiting the Arabian Peninsula.

This is the largest outbreak of MERS so far outside of the Middle East, and therefore a reason for some concern. However, person-to-person transmission of MERS is not new, and there has as yet been no […]

2016-11-21T13:02:22-05:00June 15th, 2015|infectious diseases, Nursing, nursing perspective|0 Comments
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Family Caregivers Increasing in Age, Numbers: How Can Nurses Help?

By Shawn Kennedy, MA, RN, AJN editor-in-chief

AJNFamilyCaregiverSupplementLast week, a new report from the National Alliance for Caregiving and AARP detailed the landscape of family caregiving in the United States. The majority (60%) of caregivers remain female (40% are men, a percentage that continues to rise). They average 49 years of age. In most cases, they are caring for a relative (typically, a 69-year-old female). On average, the caregiver spends 24 hours each week helping with daily activities and has been doing so for four years; one-third of caregivers still maintain a full-time job.

An estimated 34.2 million adults provided unpaid care to an adult 50 years or older in the previous 12 months; nearly one in 10 caregivers is 75 years or older—a typical example given in the report was a 79-year-old female caring for a 77-year-old spouse with Alzheimer’s disease, aging issues, or heart disease. Half of caregivers were thrust into caregiving and felt that they had no choice about taking on the responsibility of a loved one’s care; 22% of caregivers feel that their own health has suffered.

To raise awareness of their needs, in recent years AARP has championed the plight of family caregivers, collaborating with government and consumer organizations, and health care professionals. AJN, too, has worked with AARP on several projects to provide nurses with information to support family […]

2016-11-21T13:02:26-05:00June 10th, 2015|Nursing, nursing perspective, Patients, Public health|0 Comments
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A Program of Mindfulness Practice for Nurses at a Boston Cancer Center

By Jacob Molyneux, senior editor

The Thea and James Stoneman Healing Garden at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute is a source of tranquility and relaxation for nurses, patients, and families. Photo by Sam Ogden, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. The Thea and James Stoneman Healing Garden at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute is a source of tranquility and relaxation for nurses, patients, and families. Photo by Sam Ogden, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.

Maybe you already practice some version of meditation or mindfulness in your daily life. If not, you may at least have read or watched a news story recently about mindfulness and its various uses with or by everyone from elementary school students to professional athletes to drug addicts in recovery to CEOs looking to improve their focus, as well as many of the rest of us.

Or maybe you saw the final episode of the television series Mad Men a few weeks ago, with the advertising man Don Draper sitting cross-legged at a California coastal retreat, deep in meditation.

Some critics of a […]

2016-11-21T13:02:26-05:00June 8th, 2015|career, Nursing, nursing perspective, personal health practices|0 Comments
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A Nurse Epidemiologist’s Notes on Issues Raised by a Recent Death from Lassa Fever

By Betsy Todd, MPH, RN, CIC, AJN clinical editor

Lassa fever is most often diagnosed by using enzyme-linked immunosorbent serologic assays (ELISA), which detect IgM and IgG antibodies as well as Lassa antigen. Reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) can be used in the early stage of disease. The virus itself may be cultured in 7 to 10 days, but this procedure should only be done in a high containment laboratory with good laboratory practices. Immunohistochemistry, performed on formalin-fixed tissue specimens, can be used to make a post-mortem diagnosis.

Some aspects of last month’s case of Lassa fever in New Jersey seemed to parallel the story of Thomas Duncan, who died last October in Dallas after contracting Ebola virus disease in Liberia.

A man arrived in the U.S. from Western Africa. He was screened for Ebola at the airport and instructed to monitor his temperature […]

2016-11-21T13:02:27-05:00June 5th, 2015|infectious diseases, Nursing, nursing perspective|0 Comments
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Recalling the Why of Health Care Reform

By Jacob Molyneux, AJN senior editor ACA ruling imageIn a brief analysis of the gradual rollout and effects so far of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) at the start of this year (“The ACA Continues to Run the Gauntlet”), I reviewed a few of the issues the law was intended to address when it was passed in 2010:

* the highest per capita expenditures of any health care system in the world

* consistently worse outcomes on measures such as infant mortality rate than most other developed nations

* increasing numbers of uninsured Americans each year, to over 50 million in 2009, the year before passage of the ACA

* unsustainable annual increases in health insurance premiums and drugs costs, leading to astonishing rates of medical bankruptcy

* a Medicare reimbursement process that rewarded the volume of care provided rather than the effectiveness of that care

These worsening issues had become impossible to ignore. No one believes the ACA is a perfect law; there were too many cooks in the kitchen for that. But it’s at least a good faith attempt to address real problems, to get a framework on the table that can potentially be improved upon. […]

2016-11-21T13:02:55-05:00March 4th, 2015|health care policy, Nursing, Patients|0 Comments
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