The following was released yesterday by the CDC:

It is critical to assure that medical offices and other outpatient facilities (e.g., outpatient/ambulatory clinics, outpatient surgery centers, urgent care centers, physical therapy/rehabilitation offices or clinics) that provide routine, episodic, and/or chronic healthcare services can manage an increased demand for services in the midst of a novel H1N1 influenza outbreak. Ensuring a sustainable community healthcare response will be important for a likely recurrence of novel H1N1 flu in the fall. See CDC’s H1N1 website for up-to-date information.

1. Develop a Business Continuity Plan – Novel H1N1 flu outbreaks will impact your organization, employees, suppliers of critical materiel, and your family. Identify your office/clinic’s essential functions and the individuals who perform them. Make sure you have trained enough people to properly work in these essential functions and allow for potential absenteeism. Develop a plan that will sustain your core business activities for several weeks. Make sure you have alternate plans for critical supplies in case there is disruption in your supply chains. For information about planning see: http://www.ready.gov/business/plan/index.html.

2. Inform employees about your plan for coping with additional surge […]

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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 has […]