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In 2003, an urgent concern about bioterrorism drove the health care community to mobilize and deliver smallpox vaccine to health care workers across the country. The Department of Health and Human Services called for vaccination of 500,000 health care workers nationwide. Yet vaccination efforts waned as reports arose about adverse cardiac events. Within six months, the program was all but over. About 40,000 health care workers had been vaccinated.
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The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has issued recommendations for infection control in health care facilities to prevent possible spread of avian influenza.
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As avian influenza cases continue to emerge in Vietnam, the call for pandemic preparedness is gaining urgency. Between mid-December and mid-March, there have been 24 human infections of influenza A (H5N1) in Vietnam 13 of them fatal. Public health experts caution the virus could mutate and become transmissible among people the key to a pandemic.
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If you want to raise the influenza vaccination rates of health care workers, make the vaccines free and convenient. Education helps, but a promotional campaign wont be enough.
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What were you told about this patient by the previous caregiver during reports? What are you doing for this patient? What are you going to tell the next caregiver about this patient?
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Its the moment of truth: After months of preparation, inservices, and mock patient tracers, you finally get the phone call: Surveyors from the Joint Commission have arrived at your hospital.
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Have you ever included a patients personal information in statistical studies on specific diagnoses for JCAHO core measures and shared this with staff via e-mail? Do you ever e-mail colleagues about a patients outcome if that patient was seen at another institution?
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As a part of their overall patient safety program, many health care organizations require that managers submit corrective action reports for every significant incident in their department.
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When you submit quality reports to hospital administrators, do you gloss over cost and financial issues or address them head-on? This could be a powerful tool to obtain additional resources for data analysis activities or corrective actions, says Judy Homa-Lowry, RN, MS, CPHQ, president of Homa-Lowry Healthcare Consulting based in Metamora, MI.