In the News

In the News highlights current media articles related to nursing practice topics. The page also includes new research study findings in health services in the media.

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NHS patient records to revolutionise medical research in Britain

Date:

Aug 28 2012

A revolution in medical research in Britain is to give academics and the life sciences industry unparalleled access to the cradle-to-grave health records of about 52 million people in England.

Studies of NHS records first revealed the dangers of thalidomide; established an association between power lines and childhood leukaemia; showed autism had nothing to do with the MMR vaccine; and more recently highlighted England's poor cancer survival rates, a problem that lay mostly in late diagnosis. The result was a government campaign to raise awareness of early symptoms, such as a cough that lasts more than three weeks, with the aim of saving 5,000 more lives by 2015.

Now ministers have overseen the creation of new systems to encourage a surge in studies that draw on public health records. From September GP practices will be encouraged to take part in the scheme, through the Clinical Practice Research Datalink (CPRD).

Recent Research About Nursing

Date:

Aug 29 2012

New studies conclude that collaborations between hospital nurses and pharmacists can help avert medication errors, and link nurse 'burnout' to hospital-acquired infections.

A new study from researchers at Johns Hopkins University finds that nurse-pharmacist teams trained to find and resolve discrepancies between the drugs patients take at home and those they are given in the hospital could significantly reduce adverse drug interactions and the likelihood that patients will fail to take prescribed medicine. The study was funded by the Interdisciplinary Nursing Quality Research Initiative (INQRI) of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF).

Leonard Feldman, MD, Linda Costa, PhD, RN, and colleagues examined 563 cases at a large urban hospital in which doctors and nurses both took a medication history from each patient. Nurses reviewed electronic medical records in instances where patients could not recall their medications or the frequency with which they took them. If necessary, nurses also called the patient's family, primary care physician and pharmacists for more information. They compared the resulting lists with admission medication orders to identify discrepancies. The nurses then consulted with a pharmacist, as needed, and informed physicians about any apparently unintentional discrepancies. They followed a similar protocol when patients were discharged.

A New Dawn in Nurse Education

Date:

Aug 29 2012

Innovations in nurse education are sprouting up all over the country, nurse experts say

What can American nurses learn from Japanese car manufacturers?

A lot, according to Mary Ellen Smith Glasgow, PhD, RN, ACNS-BC, a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) Executive Nurse Fellow (2009-2012) and the new dean of the school of nursing at Duquesne University.

Last year, while serving as associate dean for nursing, undergraduate health professions and continuing education at Drexel University, she incorporated the tenets of the Japanese car manufacturing system—which emphasizes concepts such as quality and safety and waste reduction—into Drexel University’s nursing school curriculum. She was the first nursing school faculty member in the country to do so, and she plans to integrate the system into the nursing school curricula at Duquesne, too.

Glasgow is one of countless nurse educators and administrators across the country who are rethinking teaching methods to better prepare students to ensure that all Americans have access to high-quality care in a reformed health care system.

The Clatter of the Hospital Room

Date:

Aug 2 2012

Clasping her chest and struggling to breathe, the small, birdlike woman had landed once again in the hospital for complications of kidney failure. It was her third visit in the last year and now, with fluid building up around her heart, she had come back in, but only after her family had pleaded with her for a day to do so.

“Oh, it’s not because I don’t want to feel better,” she fumed as she lay gasping on her hospital bed. “It’s because I can’t get better here, with all those alarms and people waking me up to give me pills and take my blood pressure and get my blood.” She stopped for a moment to catch her breath, then started crying. “I feel like I get sicker in the hospital because I can’t get any sleep!”

Bed blocking a problem of equity, not just efficiency

Date:

Aug 8 2012

One of the big challenges facing modern health care systems is how to reduce delayed discharge from acute hospitals by patients for whom acute care is not longer medically necessary – better known as the problem of bed blockers. Bed blocking occurs when a patient is ready for discharge, but has to stay in hospital until a space becomes available in a facility providing a more appropriate level of care (most often a nursing home). Bed blocking generates problems throughout the health care system, from longer wait times in emergency departments to poorer health outcomes for patients from accelerated functional decline, social isolation, and loss of independence.

A recent study from Ontario offers a very interesting perspective on bed blocking, one which could help us address the problem more effectively. Researchers at the University of Waterloo and the Hamilton and Niagara Haldimand Brant Community Care Access Centre profiled patients whose discharges were delayed. They found that while patients with delayed discharge who were waiting for nursing home admission accounted for only 9% of patients with delayed discharge, these patients accounted for over 40% of delayed discharge bed days. In other words, patients waiting for nursing home admission are a fairly small portion of bed blockers, but block beds for much longer than average.

Toronto home-care program keeps patients out of hospital

Date:

Aug 6 2012

At 88, Daniel Donilson is confined to a hospital bed with a long list of ailments that includes congestive heart failure, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, dementia and a Parkinson’s-like palsy.

He is cared for by a group of health professionals that includes a family doctor, nurse practitioner, physician assistant and occupational therapist.

But Daniel is not in a hospital. He is in the living room of his East York apartment where he and his wife, Margaret, have lived for 42 years.

While other Ontario seniors in his position might find themselves in hospitals or long-term-care homes, Daniel can stay in his home, where he wants to be, because of a new program spearheaded by the Toronto-Central Community Care Access Centre, which co-ordinates local community health services.

Editorial: medical insurance needs rethink

Date:

Aug 6 2012

A recent guest editorial (We tinker with the Canada Health Act at our peril, July 24) relies on ill-founded arguments in suggesting that the nearly 30-year-old Canada Health Act should remain unchanged.

Perhaps the most troublesome and outdated aspect of the act is the fiscal punishment it allows the federal government to mete out if patients contribute to the cost of their own medical care. In order to comply with the Canada Health Act, the B.C. Medical Services Plan (MSP) prohibits such payments for some (not all) medical care. MSP does so because otherwise the federal government can claw back its fiscal transfers to B.C. under the Canada Health Act, to punish the province if patients pay directly (instead of indirectly, through their taxes) even a small part of the cost of their own care.

Nurse comes full circle in unit that cares for premature babies

Date:

Aug 9 2012

On Christmas Day, when Moore’s parents came to visit infant Sara — born six weeks premature on Dec. 12 — they found the nurses had put her in a Christmas stocking.

“I still use that same stocking every Christmas to this day,” Moore said.

It was that kind of nursing — which she also witnessed during her mother’s four-year struggle with advanced colon cancer before she died in October 2009 — that convinced Moore to become a nurse.

Premiers’ health report a good start but important opportunities missed

Date:

Aug 2 2012

OTTAWA, ON, Aug 2, 2012/ Troy Media/ – The health care report released last week following the Premier’s meeting in Halifax, which focused on moving from innovation to broader health system action, represents a critical step in a more collaborative and engaged approach.

The recommendations contained in the report From Innovation to Action, regarding the three inter-related areas of health human resource management initiatives, team-based models of care and clinical practice guidelines, also highlighted how we must take better advantage of our knowledge infrastructure to better address these key issues. The recommendations also called for a platform for ensuring the ongoing identification and dissemination of information on innovative models in order to help promote the adoption of leading practices.

Telemedicine nurses use technology for better health care

Date:

Aug 2 2012

As every parent knows, kids have come to embrace technology far more than their parents.

Skyping, texting and messaging are all second nature to the younger generation.

It's with this trust and comfort with technology that the Central East LHIN has taken a technological step to making sure Northumberland residents, especially younger ones, have access to health specialists from across Canada.

The LHIN, which covers an area from Northumberland to Scarborough, is responsible for integrating our health-care system to ensure better health and better value for our tax dollars.