What Nurses Need to Know About Cybersecurity and Patient Health

Ransomware attacks are well recognized as causing an increasing number of disruptions to health care services as well as steep economic losses, but their impact on patient health outcomes has been less easy to determine.

A suspected ransomware death.

A report published recently in the Wall Street Journal details the potentially fatal effects of cyberattacks. “A Hospital Hit by Hackers, a Baby in Distress: The Case of the First Alleged Ransomware Death” (subscription may be required) describes a lawsuit contending that a child born at an Alabama hospital in 2019 during an eight-day cyberattack subsequently died because the building’s disabled computer systems prevented staff from properly caring for the infant.

A Becker Hospital Review post last week further highlights the reported links between cyberattacks and patient outcomes. It describes the above lawsuit, as well as findings from studies by the Ponemon Institute and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, that suggest a link between such attacks and increased mortality rates.

Caption: Medical devices and applications connect to the Internet of Medical Things in a variety of ways, including via USB connectors, Wi-Fi, sensors, LTE wireless data connection, and other wireless technology such as Bluetooth. Reprinted with permission from Al-Turjman F, et al. Intelligence in the Internet […]

2021-10-11T10:51:32-04:00October 11th, 2021|Nursing|0 Comments
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Decreasing ED-Acquired Pressure Injuries

Perfect candidates for developing pressure injuries.

The photos of EDs crowded with patients waiting for admission at the height of the COVID-19 surges brought back many memories of clinical days in Bellevue’s ED. But even on our worst evenings, it was never like what I saw in those photos in the news media. And in some places, the ED hallways still have lines of stretchers with patients waiting to be sent to units.

In busy hospitals, patients can wait hours, sometimes a full day, on stretchers in the ED, waiting to be sent to a patient care unit. And we know that if they are being admitted for inpatient care, they usually have complex medical needs—many of these patients may be unable to ask for help, be incontinent, or unable to move themselves. These patients are perfect candidates for developing pressure injuries (PIs).

PIs can develop in a matter of hours.

As an article in the February issue of AJN notes, pressure injuries can develop in a relatively short time (the authors cite studies that found hospital-acquired PIs can “occur in as little as two hours of unrelieved pressure”).

The article, “Pressure Injury Prevention in Patients with Prolonged ED Stays Prior to Admission,” details how a nurse-led evidence-based practice (EBP) team sought to decrease hospital-acquired pressure ulcers […]

2021-02-16T14:23:23-05:00February 16th, 2021|Nursing|0 Comments
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Will your ‘RN’ Name Tag Protect You from Violence?

When I stepped into the entryway, I was met by a group of men, crouched on the floor over a game of craps and shouting excitedly. One of them stood up when he saw me come through the door . . . He dropped the dice, pulled a gun from his waist, and pointed it at my face.

Workplace violence prevention training has become the latest mandatory education module in many hospitals. But what about nurses who work in non-hospital settings? In this month’s Viewpoint, “Workplace Violence Outside the Hospital Setting,” NP and visiting nurse Joanne Schmidt describes the terrifying situation she walked into one day at the start of her morning home visits.

In many community settings, no cameras or security staff.

Schmidt points out that nurses who work in home care, mobile medical vans, school clinics, and other community-based settings may be considerably less safe every single day than those of us who work in relatively protected hospital environments. At least in acute care there are cameras and security staff! […]

2020-02-20T10:55:11-05:00February 20th, 2020|Nursing, nursing stories|1 Comment
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We Can Do More to Prevent Patient Self-Harm in the Hospital

“Phone cords, plasticware, and pens – all items found on a typical hospital unit and all seemingly benign.  Yet unchecked, each can be used by a patient to cause self-harm.”

As our health care system jettisons more and more psychiatric inpatient beds, it seems that the old “medical psych” units are becoming a thing of the past. These were the units where a person with significant mental health problems stayed after surgery, or after a medical event. The fact that these patients had at least two serious health challenges—one mental, the other physical—was routinely acknowledged, and medical psych units were staffed with nurses expert in both types of care.

Self-harm on nonpsychiatric units: a closer look at who and how.

Today, patients with serious mental illness are routinely “housed” on medical or surgical inpatient units. Some of these patients have a history of self-harm, and nonpsychiatric hospital units are not designed to keep them safe.

In “Preventing Self-Harm in the Nonpsychiatric Health Care Setting” in this month’s AJN (free until December 10), Kim Liberatore from the Pennsylvania Patient Safety Authority shares some of her organization’s data on patient self-harm events in nonpsychiatric settings. […]

2019-11-22T09:47:57-05:00November 22nd, 2019|mental illness, Nursing|1 Comment
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Protocol to Reduce Hospital-Acquired Pneumonia Improves Outcomes, Lowers Costs

Costs. Length of stay. Patient mortality. We know that the care we provide is central to good outcomes of every kind. But how often do we get to clearly demonstrate this for hospital administration? In “A Nurse-Driven Oral Care Protocol to Reduce Hospital-Acquired Pneumonia” (free until March 1) in this month’s issue, authors Chastity Warren and colleagues describe a QI project that showcased how a simple nursing intervention decreased morbidity, mortality, and costs at their hospital.

A standardized oral care protocol.

Aware of the connection between poor oral care and hospital-acquired pneumonia, a group of nurses at their large Midwest hospital set out to devise a standardized oral care protocol for all adult patients. Patients were categorized as either ventilated, at-risk (for example, someone with a trach or with swallowing difficulties), or short-term care. The care kit and the frequency of oral care were different for each group.

Once the intervention was in place, the nurses tracked not only the incidence of hospital-acquired pneumonia in both ventilated and non-ventilated patients, but also (by creatively “triangulating” several sources of data) the adherence of staff on each unit to the protocols.

Protocol adherence.

Regarding protocol adherence—always a challenge with new protocols when multiple units and staff are involved—the authors noted that there’s still work to be […]

2019-02-06T09:10:07-05:00February 6th, 2019|Nursing, nursing research|0 Comments
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Views expressed on the blog are solely those of the authors or persons quoted. They do not necessarily reflect AJN’s views or those of Wolters Kluwer Health/Lippincott Williams and Wilkins.
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