In the News
In the News highlights current media articles related to BC and Canada nursing practice topics. The page also includes new research study findings in health services in the media.
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►Links to news pages in other agencies:
- BC Health Authorities' Media Centres:
- BC Nurses' Union Media Room
- Canadian Nurses Association Media Room
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More health workers to get drug-prescribing powers
More health-care providers may soon have the authority to prescribe narcotics, a move one nurse practitioner says could help piece together fragmented health care for Canadians.
Proposed changes to the Controlled Substances Act would allow midwives, nurse practitioners and foot specialists in some provinces to prescribe medications classified as controlled substances as soon as this fall.
Legislation in some provinces and territories already allows the different groups to write prescriptions for controlled substances, such as morphine.
Read more...Canada.com
Why Nurses Need More Authority
Think it takes a long time to get an appointment with a primary care provider now? Brace yourself: it will likely only get worse. We're facing a severe shortage of primary care physicians in the nation. The Association of American Medical Colleges predicts a shortfall of 29,800 primary care physicians by 2015, and 65,800 by 2025, mainly because of the anticipated increase in demand for services from the Affordable Care Act (ACA), deterrents to entering the field, such as relatively lower incomes, and growth in the general population and specifically growth in the elderly population. Should the ACA pass muster with the Supreme Court next month, an additional 30 to 33 million previously uninsured Americans will be covered -- and even if ACA is not implemented in full, and in the end merely expands Medicaid, it will add 17 million to the insured ranks by 2020.
One of the best ways to alleviate this shortage is to expand the scope of practice for advanced practice registered nurses (APRNs), well-trained registered nurses with specialized qualifications who can make diagnoses, order tests and referrals, and write prescriptions. APRNs could provide a variety of services that primary care physicians now provide.
Read more...The Atlantic
Deathbed promises launched master’s research
Lorrianne Topf had already spent 19 years as a nurse when a profound experience about a broken promise convinced her she needed to go back to school.
Working as an oncology nurse in her hometown of Vernon, she encountered an elderly married couple in a hospital room. The husband was very close to death. His wife was in tears, desperate because she was unable to keep her promise of allowing him to die at home.
“I realized there was something wrong with the expectations that people put upon themselves,” said Topf. “Couples promise that they will take care of each other until death, but they are unable to keep that promise.”
“This couple really didn’t know what supports are available. That conversation had not occurred. And that put me on the path of researching how are we supporting people who really want to stay at home to die.”
Topf enrolled in the Master’s of Nursing program at UBC’s Okanagan campus. Her thesis is called When a desired home death does not occur: Family caregiver experiences. It was considered ground-breaking research, and received funding support from the Canadian Association of Nurses in Oncology, the Canadian Nurse Foundation and Psychosocial Oncology Research Training.
Read more...UBC Reports
Questions remain about Redford’s family care clinic plan
EDMONTON - Premier Alison Redford’s election promise to build 140 family care clinics across Alberta has raised questions about the future of health care delivery in the province, experts say.
Doctors, health policy professors and opposition parties are now waiting for Redford to explain how the new clinics will integrate with existing medical care, how she will measure success, and how she will protect public health care.
“It’s not a cookie-cutter approach,” Alberta Health spokesman Andy Weiler said. “They (family care clinics) are going to be different in each community.”
Weiler said major decisions won’t be made until Redford appoints a new cabinet and a health minister. The government will then decide where the clinics will go, how the pay structures will work and how the clinics will be funded.
Read more...Edmonton Journal
UK to make academic research available free on the net
The government said that Wikipedia's co-founder Jimmy Wales had agreed to advise it on how to ensure the move would promote "collaboration and engagement".
The decision will have major implications for the publishing industry.
Firms currently charge access to peer-reviewed papers covered in journals.
Science Minister David Willetts outlined details of the plan in an article in the Guardian newspaper ahead of a speech to the Publishers Association.
He noted that the state currently spent about £5bn a year funding university studies.
Read more...BBC News
Open, free access to academic research? This will be a seismic shift
My department spends about £5bn each year funding academic research – and it is because we believe in the fundamental importance of this research that we have protected the science budget for the whole of this parliament.
We fund this research because it furthers human knowledge and drives intellectual, social and economic progress. In line with our commitment to open information, tomorrow I will be announcing at the Publishers Association annual meeting that we will make publicly funded research accessible free of charge to readers. Giving people the right to roam freely over publicly funded research will usher in a new era of academic discovery and collaboration, and will put the UK at the forefront of open research.
Read more...The Guardian
IV Catheter Risks to Nurses Frequent, Unreported
Over the past decade, needlestick safety has become de rigueur, but according to a new study, nurses are often exposed to blood in their mucus membranes in another way: by inserting a peripheral IV catheter. In addition, most nurses aren't reporting such incidents when they occur.
Read more...Health Leaders Media
From Intuition to Evidence: Interdisciplinary Inquiry into Nursing's Role in Improving Patient Care
In April, the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) published a study examining whether hospitals that had been recognized for nursing excellence had better outcomes for very low birthweight (VLBW) infants. While the study found that VLBW infants have better outcomes in hospitals that have received Recognition for Nursing Excellence (RNE) from the American Nurses Credentialing Center, it’s the fact that it was conducted by an interdisciplinary team comprised of nurses, economists, and a pediatrician that makes the study stand out. It is one of 40 studies funded by the Interdisciplinary Nursing Quality Research Initiative (INQRI), a program of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF).
On April 26 and 27, INQRI held a national conference in Washington, D.C. to review its work over the last seven years and to celebrate the contributions made by the interdisciplinary research teams INQRI has funded. At the conference, members of those teams and others who have worked with the program discussed how far interdisciplinary research has come since INQRI began and the benefits of this approach for health care research, for health professionals, and for patients.
Nurses represent the single largest group of health professionals who deliver hospital care. They also are the health professionals who provide the most direct, hands-on care to patients. But before INQRI began, little was known about nurses’ contributions to saving lives and keeping patients safer and healthier.
Read more... Robert Wood Johnson Foundation
Heartbeat series will take you inside our inner-city hospital
Today we launch Heartbeat, a series that will take you behind the scenes at St. Paul’s Hospital for an unprecedented look at what happens inside.
Three teams of reporters and photographers recently spent 24 hours there to get a sense of a day in the life of a downtown hospital. Their compelling reports run all this week.
Between now and November we’ll focus for a week each month on places such as the emergency ward, the heart centre and the intensive care unit. We hope to give you a front-row seat to the life-and-death decisions made there daily.
We aim to take you places most of you never see. We’ll follow patients preparing for and getting transplants, and others who are managing HIV/AIDs.We’ll introduce you to some of the brilliant world-class researchers doing groundbreaking work.
Read more: The Province
Hospitals turn to Internet to fight emergency room wait times
Patients who log on to the website for Calgary’s hospitals are offered a surprising choice these days: wait times for four emergency departments across the city, posted automatically, 24/7 in “real time.”
A hospital in the Southern Ontario city of Kitchener has just become the first in that province to launch its own, enhanced version of the same idea, amid predictions the consumer-oriented service will soon spread throughout the health-care system. A smartphone app for the Kitchener facility is coming soon.
Administrators argue the online information should help patients better decide where to seek out medical aid, spur staff to improve service — and one day even fuel competition between hospitals under new, demand-based funding models.
“Having our wait times out there, warts and all, is certainly a motivator,” said Don Shilton, president of St. Mary’s General Hospital in Kitchener. “What we’re trying to do is to inform consumers. … Our view is information is power.”
Read more...The National Post
