Feature Channels: Patient Safety

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The U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science and the National Science Foundation have approved funding and start of construction for the SuperCDMS SNOLAB experiment, which will begin in the early 2020s to hunt for light dark matter particles. DOE’s Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory is playing a major role in building this new experiment, which is hosted at SNOLAB in Canada and managed by DOE’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory.

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What You Can Do, launched today by the UC Davis Violence Prevention Research Program, offers information and support for providers looking for ways to reduce firearm injury and death, particularly among patients at elevated risk.

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Oncology nurses at Johns Hopkins Hospital learn to treat chemotherapy medications, like their patients, with extreme care

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AACC, a global scientific and medical professional organization dedicated to better health through laboratory medicine, is pleased to announce the recipients of the 2018 AACC and AACC Academy Awards. These annual awards recognize laboratory medicine professionals worldwide for their exceptional research, scholarship, and service in the field, while also raising awareness that laboratory testing is essential to high quality patient care.

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The University of Chicago Medicine received the prestigious Magnet Recognition Program designation from the American Nurses Credentialing Center for excellence in nursing and patient care.

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Extensive data analyses show that supplemental oxygen, when given liberally to acutely ill adults, increases the risk of death without improving other health outcomes.

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Representatives of the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) and the Association of American Cancer Institutes (AACI) visited federal legislators Tuesday to express their gratitude for a bipartisan spending package for fiscal year 2018 that prioritized funding for NIH, NCI, and the FDA.

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Improving patient care by all providers of endodontic treatment is the goal of two practice statements approved by the American Association of Endodontists’ Board of Directors at its annual meeting in Denver this week.

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A national drug shortage crisis is potentially affecting the care received every day for thousands of patients undergoing anesthesia. In an informal ASA member survey, more than 98 percent of respondents noted that they now regularly experience drug shortages at their institutions and more than 95 percent of respondents said the shortages impact the way they treat their patients.

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Unnecessary emergency department visits and hospitalizations are debilitating for patients with cancer and far too common – and costly – for the United States health care system. To reverse the trend, researchers at the Abramson Cancer Center, the Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics, and the Wharton School, all at the University of Pennsylvania, have identified the five best practices to reduce unnecessary emergency department (ED) visits and hospitalizations.

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Today’s nurses have to keep track of so much more for patients than they did just 30 years ago. Millennials are used to having information at their fingertips, and nurses today have to manage an enormous amount of data simultaneously.

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To explore causes of hospital readmissions, researchers created a tool to identify and quantify a patient’s feelings of uncertainty during their initial emergency department visit.

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Hackensack Meridian Health Bayshore Medical Center in Holmdel, NJ, is proud to name Frank Citara, MBA, as chief operating officer. In his new role, Citara will be responsible for overseeing all campus operations, as well as programming, community relations and the medical center’s finances. Citara joined Bayshore Medical Center in 2015 as senior manager of operations, where he directed 16 operations departments and outpatient service areas to ensure patient, physician and team member satisfaction while driving the medical center’s financial performance and operational efficiencies.

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The American Association of Endodontists will honor five individuals with the organization's highest honors at the Association’s annual meeting in Denver, April 25-28.

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Cutting-edge developments in regenerative endodontics will be discussed during the 2018 annual meeting of the American Association of Endodontists. Several education sessions are devoted to sharing the most current research and findings, presented by leading experts in the field of regenerative endodontics.

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All providers must provide quality endodontic treatment that meets the standard of care. Unfortunately, some clinicians perform sub-par endodontics. An expert panel at the annual meeting of the American Association of Endodontists will discuss the standard of care and how to best respond to poor treatment.

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The American Association of Critical-Care Nurses hosts its annual National Teaching Institute & Critical Care Exposition (NTI), May 21-24 in Boston, with more than 8,000 attendees expected. NTI offers hundreds of sessions to improve clinical practice, patient outcomes and hospitals’ bottom line.

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UNC Health Care has achieved Stage 7 designation – the highest rank possible – for hospitals, outpatient practices, and advanced analytics from HIMSS Analytics, a global healthcare research advisory firm. The Stage 7 honors confirm UNC Health Care’s place as a national leader in health IT and analytics.

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Now marking its 10-year anniversary, the American College of Radiology (ACR) National Radiology Data Registry (NRDR®) is improving care today and moving radiology into the future.

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Anesthesiologists across the world are experiencing severe shortages of anesthetic medications that are key to providing safe and effective patient care. The result is work-arounds – finding other approaches that can result in the best possible outcomes. Physicians and other clinicians will discuss their personal experiences and challenges as well as methods they’ve found to manage this crisis during an informal, open-format discussion on Saturday, April 21st at 11:30 am in the O’Neill Room on the 4th Floor. Dr. Edward Mariano, chief of the Anesthesiology and Perioperative Care Service and associate chief of staff for inpatient surgical services at VA Palo Alto Health Care System, will moderate the discussion. Members of the press are invited to attend to learn more about the challenges and threats these shortages pose and strategies to manage until more supplies are produced and distributed. Read more here.

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Checkpoint inhibitors that block the protein PD-1 are used in melanoma patients after they’ve had surgery to remove their cancer, but not all patients benefit from the immunotherapy. Now a new study from the Abramson Cancer Center of the University of Pennsylvania found that shifting use of anti-PD-1 drugs to before surgery may provide clues about which patients will benefit and which may be at increased risk for recurrence.

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Despite deep rifts in health care opinions across party lines, a physician’s party affiliation appears to have no effect on clinical decisions in end-of-life care. Researchers found no cross-party differences among physicians in their choice of care protocols, including the intensity of life-sustaining treatments, among terminally ill patients.

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Clostridium difficile infection (CDI) is now the most common hospital-acquired infection, with significant effects on healthcare costs. Surgeons from George Washington University Hospital sought to identify rates of C. difficile infection in patients undergoing common types of colon operations. The authors utilized the American College of Surgeons NSQIP database for 2015 to retrospectively review all cases of elective ileostomy and colostomy reversals.

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New research shines a light on specific cell types that drive normal or diseased kidney function at the molecular level.

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Patient safety is the focus of newly published updates to consensus statements that address the use of antithrombotic drugs by individuals who may require regional anesthesia or interventions targeting acute or chronic pain.

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More than halfway across the universe, researchers have spotted the farthest individual star ever seen.

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The American College of Radiology (ACR) today released the latest edition of the ACR Appropriateness Criteria®, which includes 178 diagnostic imaging and interventional radiology topics with 912 clinical variants covering more than 1,110 clinical scenarios. The ACR Appropriateness Criteria is also celebrating its 25th anniversary this year.

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For every 100 occasions that scientists across the world announce a discovery that can have significant impact in patient care, less than 1 makes it into a product that is eventually useful for patients in our healthcare service. The £10million Queen’s University Belfast Centre of Excellence in Precision Medicine (PMC) aims to change this by making the translation of discovery into clinical care faster, more targeted and more efficient in predicting a cancer patients’ response to treatment.

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SUNY Downstate Medical Center (Downstate) launched a novel initiative to improve hand hygiene with the new state-of-the art BioVigil system to increase compliance by Downstate staff on proper hand hygiene to prevent the spread and transmission of infections.

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Working with cells that line the innermost layer of the blood vessels, Johns Hopkins investigators say they have made a leap forward in understanding the underlying biology behind pulmonary hypertension, a dangerous type of high blood pressure in lungs that ultimately leads to right heart failure and death.

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• Kidney failure patients undergoing hemodialysis are vulnerable to infectious threats, many of which may be life-threatening and spread to others in dialysis facilities • New articles provide important information on infections and their prevention in patients undergoing hemodialysis and transmission in dialysis facilities.

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AACN recognizes 144 units from 113 hospitals that earned the Beacon Award for Excellence between Jan. 1, 2017, and Dec. 31, 2017. Among the recipients are units at three hospitals that have earned Beacon Awards three consecutive times and the first recipients in Canada and Saudi Arabia.

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The American Association of Nurse Anesthetists (AANA) has expressed its strong opposition to the recent decision by health insurer Anthem, Inc., which directs ophthalmologists to assume responsibility for anesthesia administration and patient monitoring during routine cataract surgeries.

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About five percent of older adults on Medicare don't have a "personal physician," and this group scores lower on measures of healthcare quality, reports a study in the April issue of Medical Care, published by Wolters Kluwer.

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The American Macular Degeneration Foundation (AMDF) and The Angiogenesis Foundation are partnering in a series of national initiatives designed to help people with age-related macular degeneration (AMD) get better care and treatment.

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A new, large-scale study – led by researchers at the Smith Center for Outcomes Research in Cardiology at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) and published online today in Circulation: Cardiovascular Quality and Outcomes – examined the relationship between 30-day episode spending for inpatient and post-discharge care and patient mortality following a hospital admission for heart attack.

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During Patient Safety Awareness Week (March 11 – 17) ASA offers six tips for seniors to help limit confusion after surgery.

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Despite public health campaigns aimed at reducing unnecessary prescriptions for antibiotics, the drugs continue to be prescribed at startlingly high rates in outpatient settings such as clinics and physician offices, according to a new study at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. The researchers analyzed de-identified data from Express Scripts Holding Co., which manages drug benefits for employers, and found that 98 million outpatient antibiotic prescriptions were filled by 39 million people during a three-year period from 2013 to 2015. Moreover, the researchers found no decline in the overall antibiotic prescription rate during that time.

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In a clinical trial at Washington University School of Medicine, Vanderbilt University Medical Center and two medical centers in France, researchers found that a drug that revs up the immune system holds promise in treating sepsis.

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A low dose of the sedative dexmedetomidine given at night may prevent delirium in critically ill patients, according to new research published online in the American Thoracic Society’s American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine.

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Hilary Van Horn, whose stepdad is suffering from Lewy body dementia, challenges everyone to make an "Earth Angel" in an awareness and fundraising campaign for the Penn Memory Center.

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Virginia Mason Medical Center announced today that for the second straight year it has received the America’s 50 Best Hospitals Award from Healthgrades, the leading online consumer resource for comprehensive information about hospitals and physicians.

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Rutgers palliative care expert Judy Barberio gives patients and their families strategies on how to ease the transition to end-of-life care

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These days, many hospital patients get medicine or nutrition delivered straight into their bloodstream through a tiny device called a PICC. In just a decade, it’s become the go-to device for intravenous care. But a new study finds that one in every four times a PICC gets inserted, the patient didn’t need it long enough to justify the risks that it can also pose.

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After having their tonsils removed, patients often can't leave the hospital for six hours, even if they bounce back from surgery sooner. Hospital policy commonly mandates a six-hour recovery time. But research led by Habib Zalzal, a resident in the West Virginia University School of Medicine, suggests that not all tonsillectomy patients have to wait that long.

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Some young people with cerebral palsy and other conditions exceeded their own expectations during a ski trip to Windham Mountain. The Adaptive Sports Academy at New York City’s Hospital for Special Surgery sponsored the trip for young patients who see doctors or physical therapists at the hospital.

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Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Ames Laboratory have discovered a state of magnetism that may be the missing link to understanding the relationship between magnetism and unconventional superconductivity.

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Penn Medicine Announces its new Center for Connected Care to centralize the health system’s telemedicine activities.

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In an editorial that draws on results of previously published studies and experiences in their medical intensive care unit (ICU), a team of Johns Hopkins Medicine professionals say that bringing specially trained dogs into ICUs can safely and substantially ease patients’ physical and emotional suffering.

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Intermountain Healthcare is spearheading a voluntary program that allows family members of patients to participate in their care —a program that has reduced 30-day readmission rates, according to a new study published in the February issue of the medical journal CHEST.