Employee Management
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New Approaches for Ethically Challenging ED Cases
For emergency providers, time is precious. If a full-blown consult is not possible, ethicists can help discern the most critical aspect of a concern these clinicians may express. Quick, in-person responses; phone consults; and telemedicine consults all are possible approaches.
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Physicians Reported Moral Distress About Surrogate Decision-Makers
Parties clash regarding comfort levels and how aggressive treatment should be. The lack of advance directives for so many patients exacerbates the problem. Nurses and other colleagues can join the conversations to assist or outright substitute for physicians who are unwilling or unable to engage deeply.
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Right of Access Initiative Yields Major Settlements with OCR
Much confusion remains about when healthcare entities can and cannot release information under HIPAA. There are some lessons to be learned from recent enforcement actions.
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Keep Onsite and Remote Patient Access Staff Connected
Although nothing can replace face-to-face interactions, leaders are trying to maintain strong employee connections through virtual interactions, both professional and social.
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Angry Encounters Can Adversely Affect Clinical Decision-Making
A patient screams and spits at the emergency physician and nurse who are trying to determine if a life-threatening emergency exists. Another patient is extremely grateful, cooperative, and respectful. Assuming both patients presented with the exact same clinical situation, would ED providers treat them any differently? The authors of two recent studies examined this interesting question.
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IHI Issues Action Plan on Patient Safety
The Institute for Healthcare Improvement’s National Steering Committee for Patient Safety recently released its national action plan, aimed at helping healthcare organizations reduce preventable medical harm.
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Investigators Raise Alarm About Prevalence, Impact of Secondary Traumatic Stress in Emergency Nursing
The fast-paced, unpredictable environment of emergency nursing can lead to trouble. Safety is an ongoing concern, considering the increasing incidence of workplace violence and the continuous flow of patients with infectious diseases. But there is another kind of stress emergency nurses may be reluctant to discuss: that which results from exposure to others’ trauma.
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Health System Sends Some COVID-19 Patients Home to Monitor Remotely
At the University of Miami (FL) Health System, certain COVID-19 patients who meet appropriate criteria can be discharged home with a device that facilitates remote monitoring by a care team operating out of the health system’s division of internal medicine.
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Better Patient Education Can Lead to Lower Medical Costs
Investigators studied five years of clinical and economic outcomes data for 1,800 patients insured through their employers. They found that when the employees participated in a web-based health literacy program, hospitalizations dropped by 32%, emergency department visits were down 14%, and overall costs declined 11%.
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College Case Managers Help Students Cope During Pandemic
College case managers work to help students navigate crises, traumas, and other problems that can affect their educational lives. But some have found the COVID-19 pandemic is a crisis that affects more students for longer than any previous emergencies they have helped students manage.