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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New delivery models, not talk, are key to health-care reform

Date:

Aug 1 2012

Meetings with more than three or four people around the table, and nobody firmly in charge, tend not to accomplish a whole lot.

So even before they got sidetracked by a dispute between two provinces over a pipeline that’s unlikely to get built any time soon, it required a leap of faith to expect 13 premiers to walk into a room in Halifax last week and emerge with a serious plan to tackle the country’s biggest and most confounding public-policy challenge.

Simple hospital innovation saves time, money

Date:

Jul 26 2012

Premiers looking for money- and time-saving innovations for their health-care systems are turning to Saskatchewan Health's model of finding efficiencies in unlikely places.

Toyota, the Japanese auto giant, pioneered the concept of lean management in manufacturing, where employees look for efficiencies both big and small that don't compromise the product but save the company time and money.

In Regina, hospitals are applying the idea to everything from stocking medicines to hospital design, CBC's Cameron MacIntosh reports.

Sinks suspected in Toronto hospital outbreak

Date:

Jul 25 2012

An investigation aimed at pinpointing the source of a lingering bacterial outbreak in a Toronto hospital turned up an unlikely suspect: the sinks did it.

State-of-the-art handwashing sinks installed in the intensive care unit and some patient rooms in Toronto's Mount Sinai Hospital actually became the reservoir of a pesky drug-resistant bug that infected or colonized 66 patients from the fall of 2006 to the spring of 2011.

Researchers from the hospital have reported the finding of their investigation in the August issue of the journal Emerging Infectious Diseases.

Recovering heart pump patients find support on Facebook

Date:

Jul 26 2012

Simple ideas can have profound effects.

St. Paul’s Hospital nurse Jennifer Kealy was looking for a better way to support patients with implanted heart pumps. But many patients come from outside Vancouver, and had great difficulty attending monthly support-group meetings at St. Paul’s.

“It didn’t make sense to make patients come back to the hospital for support — we wanted them to be in their homes,” Kealy says.

Video-conferencing was also problematic.

“It was hard to find times that everybody was available,” Kealy says.

Nurses, PAs use health IT more than physicians

Date:

Jul 26 2012

Ancillary providers, such as nurses and physician assistants, not only use EHRs and other digital technology significantly in their work, but they do so more than physicians, according to a new study by Manhattan Research.

The annual study of 1,019 advanced practice registered nurses, registered nurses and physician assistants found that they relied on EHRs, smartphones and other technology extensively in performing their duties.

New Colorectal Cancer Survivorship Program the First of its Kind in Ontario

Date:

May 8 2012

TORONTO, May 8, 2012 /CNW/ - Today, the Honourable Deb Matthews, Minister of Health and Long-Term Care, MPP Michael Coteau, the North York Family Health Team, and North York General Hospital celebrated the launch of the Colorectal Cancer Survivorship Program (CCSP).

The CCSP is a new model of cancer survivorship care that transfers the monitoring of patients, who have finished active treatment, to primary care from oncologists and surgeons. This innovative program, developed by the North York Family Health Team (NYFHT) and North York General Hospital (NYGH), will centralize follow-up care for patients and alleviate wait times for newly diagnosed patients needing to see a cancer specialist.

Nurses' unsung role: helping educate doctors

Date:

Jul 24 2012

MONTREAL - A recent report by the British National Confidential Enquiry Into Patient Outcomes and Death contained a disturbing finding: that more than 38 per cent of cardiac arrests in British hospitals could have been avoided if junior doctors had accurately assessed the situation and communicated with senior doctors earlier. In reading the report I was struck by its exclusive focus on the junior physician/senior physician relationship and its lack of mention of the role of nurses. Let me explain

Premiers might ask a nurse about health reform

Date:

Jul 14 2012

Our health-care system is based on an on-demand model of physicians and hospitals providing acute and episodic care. While this system works well for the vast majority of citizens, it is a poor match for many of those with chronic diseases.

As a nurse and an academic, my particular interest is examining how health and social services can work together to improve people's lives -- and contain costs. In my view, problems arise when circumstances in the world change and conventional wisdom does not; the increasing prevalence of chronic illnesses among the Canadian population is a circumstance to which our health system has not yet adapted.

Brought to book - Academic journals face a radical shake-up

Date:

Jul 21 2012

IF THERE is any endeavour whose fruits should be freely available, that endeavour is surely publicly financed science. Morally, taxpayers who wish to should be able to read about it without further expense. And science advances through cross-fertilisation between projects. Barriers to that exchange slow it down.

There is a widespread feeling that the journal publishers who have mediated this exchange for the past century or more are becoming an impediment to it. One of the latest converts is the British government. On July 16th it announced that, from 2013, the results of taxpayer-financed research would be available, free and online, for anyone to read and redistribute.

C. difficile rates dropped after Ontario hospitals released infection rates to the public

Date:

Jul 17 2012

Rates of C. difficile dropped by more than one quarter in Ontario after the province made it mandatory for hospitals to publicly report cases of the deadly hospital-acquired infection, according to a new study on the patient safety problem.

Researchers say the drop in rates suggest that public reporting helped to focus hospitals’ attention on C. difficile, prompting them to find ways to prevent and reduce the spread of the infectious organism

Prior to September 2008 there were between 5,000 and 6,000 cases annually of C. difficile in Ontario.