Editor's Note A nurse’s ability to provide optimal patient care is influenced by a variety of factors, not just nurse to patient ratios, this study finds. In this study of 136 neonatal intensive care nurses caring for 418 infants during 332 12-hour shifts, subjective workload was the one variable that…
Editor's Note The Food & Drug Administration (FDA) recently launched a new app to help streamline electronic health record (EHR) data collection for researchers, The November 7 EHR Intelligence reports. Using the MyStudies app, researchers can access patient-generated health data, EHR patient data, and claims and billing information for use in…
Editor's Note Every year, Perioperative Nurse Week focuses attention on the work of more than 160,000 nurses who advocate for surgical patients. During the week, perioperative nurses are honored by colleagues and communities to highlight the ways in which nurses are working to improve patient safety−before, during, and after surgery−in…
Editor's Note At 7:30 am, Thursday November 8, With the Camp Fire raging through Paradise, California, staff at Adventist Health Feather River Hospital in Paradise were ordered to evacuate patients and flee themselves, the November 11 nbcnews.com reports. After helping load patients into every vehicle they could find, surgical nurses…
Editor's Note Transitioning from administrative data to chart-based surveillance review to measure hospital-acquired pressure ulcers (HAPUs) and accounting for HAPU severity could improve the validity of measures for assessing the clinical and financial impact of value-based purchasing interventions, this study finds. Assessing HAPU incidence, severity, and trends using administrative data…
Editor's Note The Joint Commission on November 7 announced a new requirement of participation in a national joint replacement registry for its advanced Total Hip and Total Knee Replacement (THKR) certification, effective July 1, 2019. The Disease Specific Care Performance Measurement (DSPM) standard DSPM.4, element of performance (EP) 2 will…
Editor's Note In this study from the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing, researchers developed, validated, and tested an algorithm called, “Discharge Referral Expert System for Care Transitions (DIRECT),” which helped clinicians identify patients most in need of post-acute care (PAC) and lowered readmission rates. The researchers conducted a 4-month…
Editor's Note Healthcare accreditation organization DNV GL Healthcare on November 7 launched the first sterile processing program certification in the US. The program recognizes excellence in an organization’s sterile processing department within the scope of infection prevention and control, surgical services, endoscopic services, and related departments. An important part of…
Editor's Note Excessive opioid prescribing was associated with higher postoperative opioid consumption in this study. In this analysis of 2,392 surgical patients, the quantity of opioids prescribed was significantly higher than opioid consumption, with patients reporting using only 27% of the opioids prescribed to them. Prescription size had the strongest…
Editor's Note The Massachusetts ballot Question 1 that would have set strict limits on the number of hospital patients a nurse could care for at one time went down in defeat on November 6, the November 7 Boston Globe reports. Hospitals spent nearly $25 million to defeat the measure, more…
