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When the nurse went to work with a persistent cough, she undoubtedly thought she just had a lingering cold, or perhaps a seasonal allergy. But she actually suffered from pertussis, and inadvertently spread a serious illness to at least 11 infants in the newborn nursery of a Texas hospital.
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The Swiss tourist with pneumonia who came to the emergency department in a Tucson, AZ, hospital didn't seem like an unusual case. And yet her story would unfold into a cautionary tale for hospitals about why they should be on guard for cases of measles - and why they need accessible records on the immune status of employees.
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Working nights and rotating shifts can wreak havoc with your sleep schedule. Shift work has been linked to a wide range of hazards, from cardiovascular disease and cancer to fatigue that leads to errors. But researchers have an upbeat message about shift work: You can reduce those ill effects.
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Increasing workloads and pressure and an emphasis on productivity is negatively affecting the safety climate at hospitals, nurses reported in a 2008 online survey of nurses by the Silver Spring, MD-based American Nurses Association (ANA).
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Faced with an aging work force of nurses, hospitals are beginning to remake the work environment to keep nurses at the bedside. When the AARP released its list of the nation's 50 "Best Employers of People over 50" earlier this year, half of them were hospitals or other health care employers.
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Employers have discovered a way to lower their health plan costs: Have healthier employees. Increasingly, employers are creating strong incentives for healthy behavior or penalizing employees with risky behavior, such as smoking. But employees aren't thrilled about the new approach, according to a survey by Hewitt Associates, a human resources consulting firm based in Lincolnshire, IL.
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Almost one-third of workers with arthritis and 7% of all workers face significant work-related limitations, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
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At the Endoscopy Clinic of Southern Nevada in Las Vegas, it was not uncommon for a nurse anesthetist to remove the needle from a syringe and reuse the syringe even on another patient, public health investigators report.
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Two Epidemiologic Intelligence Service officers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention visited the Endoscopy Clinic of Southern Nevada in Las Vegas to investigate cases of hepatitis C and noted lapses in injection safety. Practices differed among the nurse anesthetists. This is an excerpt of their report:
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When health care workers take a break from caring for patients with heart disease, diabetes, or other diseases influenced by diet, what food choices do they have? A vending machine with potato chips and chocolate bars? A cafeteria with fried chicken and French fries?
