Hospital Employee Health
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An ED-Friendly Screening Tool to Identify Potentially Violent Patients
Considering violence is a continuing concern in the emergency setting, there is high interest in new mechanisms that can identify potentially violent patients at the front end of their care encounters. This way, safeguards or preventive measures can be activated to keep providers and other patients safe. However, any such tool needs to be brief and easily integrated into the workflow of a busy ED.
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Workers Suffering in Central Sterile Supply
Many healthcare workers in central sterile supply are experiencing pain and ergonomic injuries, particularly as the emphasis on meticulous reprocessing of duodenoscopes has increased due to patient infections and deaths, researchers reported.
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‘Servant Leadership’ Retains Healthcare Staff
The authors of a recent report on the future of nursing concluded with this cogent point: “Simply put, efforts to train more nurses are futile if those nurses leave the workplace.”
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Surgeon General Calls for Support of HCWs
Battered by a two-year pandemic during which they often had to work under unsafe conditions without adequate personal protective equipment, healthcare workers are on the brink of a “burnout and mental health crisis” that will only worsen if sweeping actions are not taken, warned U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, MD, MBA. -
Dozens of Healthcare Workers Infected in Bone Graft TB Outbreak
A national Mycobacterium tuberculosis outbreak caused TB seroconversion in 73 healthcare workers exposed to patients who underwent spinal bone grafts with a contaminated allograph product. No workers developed active infection, and all were successfully treated for this strain of TB, which was not drug resistant. -
OSHA Urged to Protect HCWs from Airborne COVID-19
The healthcare community is pushing back against OSHA adopting a more flexible final COVID-19 rule that could change with public health guidelines. The agency is finalizing its Emergency Temporary Standard to protect healthcare workers from COVID-19. -
Federal Healthcare Violence Law in Congress: If Not Now, When?
The longstanding problem of patients and visitors attacking and verbally abusing healthcare workers has been worsened by the chaos and cultural divisiveness of the COVID-19 pandemic. If federal lawmakers cannot find a way to better protect healthcare workers now, will they ever? -
Mayo Clinic Reduces Propofol Waste to Zero
A propofol disposal initiative at Mayo Clinic reduced the number of full propofol bottles in an ICU waste bin to zero, successfully addressing drug diversion at the facility. Initially, 44.1% of propofol bottles in waste bins were full before the intervention. The effort was replicated in other units where propofol use is common — and diversion is tempting. -
Drug Diversion: A Risk to Patients, Health Workers, and the Institution
Drug diversion is an ongoing problem for healthcare organizations. In identifying diverters, leaders are protecting patients and mitigating their institution’s substantial liability risk. -
Nurse Conviction for Medical Error Roils Patient Safety, Nursing Groups
Patients became less safe on March 25, when former registered nurse RaDonda Vaught was convicted of negligent homicide and sentenced to prison for giving a patient a fatal dose of the wrong medication, medical and nursing groups emphasized.