Hospital Employee Health
RSSArticles
-
‘I Need My Brain!’: Horrors of Long COVID in HCWs
A systematic review of studies on healthcare workers who experienced long COVID in the United Kingdom revealed that many struggled to separate their clinical identity from that of a patient. Healthcare workers with various symptoms of long COVID endured over different lengths of time recognized the uncertainty of their symptoms of this poorly understood syndrome and feared they would be perceived as a burden.
-
An Old Pro Stays in the Fight Against Needlesticks
At age 78, with more than 50 years of clinical consultation and research on needlesticks, sharps injuries, and medical waste, Terry Grimmond, FASM, BAgrSc, GrDpAdEdTr, says he retired at the end of 2023 but is still winding his career down with a few final projects.
-
Is Measles Elimination Status at Risk? Antivaxers Attack MMR Vaccine
As the number of measles cases in the United States already has outstripped total cases for last year, employee health professionals should prepare for incoming cases that can wreak havoc in a hospital if undetected. Even if staff are fully immunized, all bets are off if an undiagnosed case of measles gets into a healthcare facility.
-
Healthcare Workers, CDC at Odds Over COVID Precautions
Inundated with criticism from healthcare workers, highly vulnerable patients, and those with long COVID, advisors to the CDC must make a Solomonic decision. At a time when the CDC is trying to simplify and normalize community precautions for SARS-CoV-2, initial efforts to do so in the hospital have backfired spectacularly.
-
Wellness Walking: As Few as 2,600 Steps Cuts Mortality
Considerable attention has been paid to daily step counts (SC) as a device to encourage walking and reduce the risk of cardiovascular events. However, minimal or optimal levels of SC have not been well characterized, and the influence of walking intensity, sex, and the SC device have not been fully elucidated.
-
Veteran Speaker and Consultant on the Struggles of Healthcare Workers
Kathy Espinoza, MBA, MS, CPE, CIE is a frequent speaker on work culture, including work-life balance, motivation and overcoming adversity, and the science of ergonomics in a variety of settings. Hospital Employee Health asked Espinoza to comment on the conditions healthcare workers are currently facing.
-
As Predicted, Measles Returns in Unvaccinated
As this report was filed, a measles outbreak was underway at a Florida elementary school, prompting a bizarre letter to parents and guardians by the state Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo, MD, PhD. Ladapo has a history of taking antivaccine positions.
-
HIV Needlestick: Low Risk, High Anxiety
Worst-case scenario: a healthcare worker experiences a needlestick and is exposed to the blood of an HIV-positive patient. All things considered, there is a less than 1% chance that the healthcare worker will acquire HIV from a known positive needlestick. Despite those odds, many healthcare workers do not feel particularly lucky right after a needlestick.
-
NIOSH Redoubles Emphasis on HCW Mental Health Crisis
The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health is making good on its promise to restore the battered medical workforce, which is threatening an exodus from the bedside after suffering years of moral injury, belligerent patients, and declining mental health.
-
Telling It Like It Is: Too Many HCWs Are Unhealthy
With more than 35 years of experience in employee health, wellness coaching, and lifestyle medicine, Leticia Nichols, NP-C, is not afraid to share a few inconvenient truths about poor diets and disease, which the healthcare system is primarily designed to treat rather than prevent.