Hepatitis A, B, and C: The Latest on Screening, Epidemiology, Prevention, Treatments

One of several posters created by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to raise awareness that millions of Americans of all ages, races, and ethnicities have hepatitis C—and many don’t know it. Posters are available to order or download for printing at www.cdc.gov/knowmorehepatitis/media/posters.htm. Poster © Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. One of several CDC posters intended to raise awareness that millions of Americans of all ages, races, and ethnicities have hepatitis C—and many don’t know it. Posters are available to order or download for printing at www.cdc.gov/knowmorehepatitis/media/posters.htm. Poster © Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

It’s crucial that nurses in all health care settings stay informed about the changing landscape of viral hepatitis in the United States. Hepatitis affects the lives of millions, too many of whom are unaware that they have been infected.

Right now, there’s good news and bad news about hepatitis in the U.S. While the incidences of hepatitis A and B in the United States have declined significantly in the past 15 years, the incidence of hepatitis C virus […]

2016-11-21T13:02:17-05:00July 16th, 2015|Nursing|1 Comment
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Shared Decision Making and PSA Screening

PSA article screenshot“Should men get PSA tests to screen for prostate cancer?”

The Wall Street Journal posed the question in an informal, online poll last September. An accompanying article featured a debate between Richard Ablin, who’d discovered the prostate-specific antigen (PSA) in 1970, and an oncologist, Oliver Sartor. Ablin argued that the PSA test should be used only to screen men with a family history or active symptoms. For all other men, he said, a coin toss would be as effective. Sartor countered that the test finds cancers that can be treated early, acknowledging that for most men surveillance instead of active treatment is appropriate. Ablin retorted, “If we really could determine which cancers need treatment and which don’t, we wouldn’t be having this debate.”

The passage above is from this month’s AJN Reports by Joy Jacobson, “Navigating the PSA Screening Dilemma.”

The article gives a great overview of one of the big screening debates of the moment. Many of these debates are driven by changes in guidelines along with a dawning awareness in the medical community that certain tests we’ve assumed to be wholly beneficial, wholly necessary for most patients, may in fact be more harmful than not for many patients, leading to unnecessary treatment, anxiety, and waste of valuable resources.

The article also incorporates a discussion of the role being envisioned for “shared decision making” in helping patients make informed choices that are right for them. Let us know […]

2016-11-21T13:08:30-05:00January 23rd, 2013|Nursing|0 Comments
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Domestic Violence Screening: Why the Rush to Dismiss It?

Karen Roush, MS, RN, FNP-C, AJN clinical managing editor

All rights reserved. Photos by author.

A recent study reported in JAMA, “The Effect of Screening for Partner Violence on Women’s Quality of Life” (abstract only), is being touted in overly simplistic headlines across the Web (the word “debunks” has been getting a lot of use) as further evidence that domestic violence screening doesn’t improve outcomes for women.

Don’t believe it.

The problem doesn’t lie with the researchers or with JAMA; they accurately reported just what they found. The problem lies with how it is being interpreted by others as further proof of the overall ineffectiveness of screening for intimate partner violence (IPV).

What the study actually found was that there was no difference in health outcomes between women who received computerized screening and a resource list and women who just received the resource list or women who received neither.

This is how it worked:

Women in primary care settings who agreed to participate and who were randomized to the screening group were seated in front of a computer and responded to the three questions in the partner violence screening (for example, “have you ever been hit, kicked, punched or otherwise hurt by someone within the past year?”) on […]

2016-11-21T13:09:26-05:00August 24th, 2012|Nursing|1 Comment
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Domestic Violence Screening Matters

By Karen Roush, MS, RN, FNP-C, clinical managing editor

I am a nurse. I am a doctoral candidate and a writer. I am a domestic violence survivor. I lived for years with fear and uncertainty—will this be a good day, a day of laughter and affection? Or a brutal day of fists and humiliation? Like many women experiencing domestic violence, I hid it from my family and friends. In fact, I even hid it from myself. I couldn’t see myself as a battered woman, wouldn’t accept that I was that kind of person. But domestic violence doesn’t happen to a certain kind of woman—it happens to anyone, rich or poor, college educated or high school dropout, urban and rural, of every ethnicity. We—you and I—all are the faces of domestic violence.

Just ask. October is National Domestic Violence Awareness Month. How many of your patients have you asked about domestic violence this month? Or any month? Twenty? Ten? None? Screening matters. One of every four women you see has experienced domestic violence. Research tells us that women will talk about it when asked by a provider that they feel cares and can be trusted. They will leave an abusive situation when they feel supported and resources are available to them. […]

2016-11-21T13:11:46-05:00October 12th, 2011|Nursing|6 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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