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USA: A silent crisis in men’s health gets worse

A silent crisis in men’s health is shortening the life spans of fathers, husbands, brothers and sons.

For years, the conventional wisdom has been that a lack of sex-specific health research mainly hurts women and gender minorities. While those concerns are real, a closer look at longevity data tells a more complicated story.

Across the life span — from infancy to the teen years, midlife and old age — the risk of death at every age is higher for boys and men than for girls and women:

  • Men are at a greater risk of dying from covid-19 than women, a gap that cannot be explained by rates of infection or preexisting conditions. 
  • More men die of diabetes than women. 
  • The cancer mortality rate is higher among men — 189.5 per 100,000 — compared with 135.7 per 100,000 for women. 
  • Men die by suicide nearly four times more often than women, based on 2020 data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 

“Some people think health care is a zero sum gain and one dollar to men’s health is taking something away from women,” said Ronald Henry, president and co-founder of the Men’s Health Network, an advocacy group. “That’s wrong. We are fully supportive of women’s health efforts and improving quality of life for women.”

"But by viewing men as the privileged default, health experts are ignoring important sex differences that could illuminate health issues across gender and minority groups."

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Source: The Washington Post, 17 April 2023

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USA: A national safety board made transportation safer and could do the same for healthcare, advocates say

People concerned about the safety of patients often compare health care to aviation. Why, they ask, can’t hospitals learn from medical errors the way airlines learn from plane crashes?

That’s the rationale behind calls to create a 'National Patient Safety Board,' an independent federal agency that would be loosely modelled after the US National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), which is credited with increasing the safety of skies, railways, and highways by investigating why accidents occur and recommending steps to avoid future mishaps.

But as worker shortages strain the US healthcare system, heightening concerns about unsafe care, one proposal to create such a board has some patient safety advocates fearing that it wouldn’t provide the transparency and accountability they believe is necessary to drive improvement. One major reason: the power of the hospital industry.

The board would need permission from health care organisations to probe safety events and could not identify any healthcare provider or setting in its reports. That differs from the NTSB, which can subpoena both witnesses and evidence, and publish detailed accident reports that list locations and companies.

A related measure under review by a presidential advisory council would create such a board by executive order. Its details have not been made public.

Learning about safety concerns at specific facilities remains difficult. While transportation crashes are public spectacles that make news, creating demand for public accountability, medical errors often remain confidential, sometimes even ordered into silence by court settlements. Meaningful and timely information for consumers can be challenging to find. However, patient advocates said, unsafe providers should not be shielded from reputational consequences.

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Source: CNN, 30 May 2023

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USA: 83 best hospitals for patient experience, safety

Healthgrades recognised 864 US hospitals with its 2023 Patient Safety Excellence Awards and Outstanding Patient Experience Award. Only 83 of those hospitals received both awards. 

The dual recipients spanned 28 states. Texas had the most dual recipients with 12 honorees — including three Baylor Scott and White Health hospitals. 

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Source; Becker's Hospital Review, 14 March 2023

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USA: 48% of physicians are happy at work, survey finds

Physicians' happiness fell amid the pandemic and is not rebounding easily, according to Medscape's 2023 Physician Lifestyle and Happiness Report.

The report is based on survey responses from 9,175 U.S.-based physicians in 29 specialties polled last year between 28 June and 3 October.

The report found:

1. 59% of physicians said they were "somewhat" or "very happy," down from 84% before the pandemic. These figures mirror percentages seen in Medscape's same report conducted last year. 

2. The percentage of physicians who are happy at work, specifically, fell from 75% before the pandemic to 48% today.

3. Four in 10 physicians said they regularly look after their own health and wellness, up from 33% who said the same in Medscape's 2022 report. 

4. 53% said they would take a pay decrease in return for better work-life balance. 

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Source: Becker's Hospital Review, 20 January 2023

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USA: 10 urgent patient safety challenges in 2024

While employment for new clinicians was positive in the last year with 96% of new nurses finding work, the issue is transitioning those clinicians from education into bedside and hospital practice, which is the most pressing safety challenge of 2024, according to the ECRI's annual report on patient safety.

"[T]here is growing concern about the difficulty of transitioning new clinicians from education to practice — in the face of several factors exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic," an overview of the report states. "Without sufficient preparation, support, and training, new clinicians can experience loss of confidence, burnout, and reduced mindfulness around culture of safety. The combination of these factors may lead to preventable harm."

The ECRI publishes independent medical device evaluations, annually aggregates scientific literature and patient safety events, concerns reported to or investigated by the organization, and other data sources to create its top 10 report.

Each topic that landed in this year's top 10 "represents a failure in at least one of these areas; in fact, many overlap and their roots are found in multiple areas," the report notes. 

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Source: Becker Hospital Review, 11 March 2024

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USA: ‘Burnt out and tired’: nurses at leading California hospitals prepare to strike

Five thousand nurses at Stanford and Lucile Packard children’s hospital in Stanford, California, are preparing to strike in demand of wage increases, mental health and wellness support, better healthcare benefits, and a focus on hiring and retaining nurse staff.

The union has set a strike date for 25 April.

Stanford hospital at Stanford University in California has been consistently ranked among the top hospitals in the US by US News, but nurses say high turnover rates, understaffing, and inadequate proposed wage increases and benefits have contributed to high burnout rates. In a survey of union members, 45% of nurses reporting said they intend to leave their job within the next five years.

Kathy Stormberg, a nurse in the radiology department at Stanford hospital for 19 years and vice-president of the Committee for Recognition of Nursing Achievement (Crona), blamed the strike on the hospitals’ continued reliance on contractors and its policy of pushing nurses to work overtime amid staff shortages, unfilled vacancies, and difficulties retaining enough nursing staff.

“That is not sustainable,” said Stormberg. “Nurses have an overwhelming sense of guilt to work overtime when they are getting texts requesting nurses to come in every four hours on their days off.”

In January 2022, a nurse on a contract at Stanford hospital walked out of their shift and killed themself, highlighting the need for better mental health and wellness support services and for improvements to the poor working conditions that nurses have faced through the Covid-19 pandemic.

“The working conditions that we have now are just no longer sustainable,” said Leah McFadden, a nurse in Stanford’s surgical trauma unit since October 2019. “Over the last two years, we’re starting to run on empty, we aren’t having a chance to decompress, or even just get away from the hospital as much as we should.”

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Source: The Guardian, 13 April 2022

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USA hospitals' latest PR concern: The Netflix documentary

After the $261 million verdict against Johns Hopkins All Children's Hospital, health system public relations departments have a new concern: unwillingly becoming the subject of a streaming service documentary.

Released on Netflix in June, "Take Care of Maya" tells the story of Maya Kowalski, whose family brought her to the St. Petersburg, Fla., hospital's emergency department in 2016 with chronic pain. After physicians suspected child abuse, the then-10-year-old was kept there apart from her loved ones for nearly three months, during which time her mother killed herself.

Millions of viewers watched the documentary, which detailed the family's then-unsuccessful attempt to sue the hospital. In November, a Florida jury awarded the Kowalskis the nine-figure sum for damages on counts including medical negligence and false imprisonment.

"The level of global exposure and awareness of this case helped drive the interest, engagement and discussions in the community," Karen Freberg, PhD, professor of strategic communication at University of Louisville (Ky.), told Becker's. "This is a situation where hospitals across the board must evaluate their crisis communication plans from this experience and see how they would address this situation if it happened to them."

She said any reputation-fixing lessons for this case, then, will come not from hospitals that have lost big lawsuits, but from companies that have been the subject of unflattering documentaries.

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Source: Becker's Hospital Review, 7 December 2023

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US: 10 top patient safety issues for 2021

The Becker's Clinical Leadership & Infection Control editorial team chose the top 10 patient safety issues for healthcare leaders to prioritise in 2021, presented below in no particular order, based on news, study findings and trends reported in the past year.

  1. COVID-19
  2. Healthcare staffing shortages
  3. Missed and delayed diagnoses
  4. Drug and medicine supply shortages
  5. Low vaccination coverage and disease resurgance
  6. Clinical burnout
  7. Health equity
  8. Healthcare-associated infections
  9. Surgical mistakes
  10. Standardising safety efforts.

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Source: Becker's Healthcare, 30 December 2020

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US Supreme Court may overturn abortion law, leak suggests

The US Supreme Court could be about to overturn the nationwide legal right to abortion, according to an unprecedented leaked draft of a court document.

In a 98-page draft opinion, Justice Samuel Alito writes that the 1973 Roe v Wade decision legalising abortion across the US is "egregiously wrong".

If the top US court strikes down the ruling, "trigger laws" could instantly make abortion illegal in 22 US states.

The justices are not expected to issue a ruling until early July.

It sparked immediate outcry from Democrats, and protests - by both pro and anti-abortion supporters - outside the Supreme Court on Monday night.

Speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer - both Democrats - issued a joint statement saying that if the report was accurate, the "Supreme Court is poised to inflict the greatest restriction of rights in the past 50 years".

News outlet Politico published the leaked document in full, quoting Justice Alito as saying: "Roe was egregiously wrong from the start. Its reasoning was exceptionally weak, and the decision has had damaging consequences.

"And far from bringing about a national settlement of the abortion issue, Roe and Casey have enflamed debate and deepened division."

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Source: BBC News, 3 May 2022

 

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US Senate investigates ‘catastrophic failure’ to protect female migrant detainees

A US Senate investigation into allegations that unwanted medical procedures were performed on detained female immigrants in Georgia has uncovered “a catastrophic failure by the federal government” to protect the detainees.

A Senate hearing on Tuesday by the bipartisan permanent subcommittee on investigations (PSI), chaired by the Georgia senator Jon Ossoff, announced its findings on conditions and practices at the Irwin county detention center (ICDC).

The ICDC, located in Ocilla, Georgia, housed detainees who shared accounts of poor treatment including gynaecological procedures that were “excessive, invasive and often unnecessary”. An account of what was occurring at the ICDC first came to light when Dawn Wooten, a nurse at the facility, acted as a whistleblower.

Ossoff called the alleged unnecessary and sometimes non-consensual medical treatment and procedures disclosed in the 18-month investigation “nightmarish and disgraceful”.

Ossoff said: “This is an extraordinarily disturbing finding, and in my view represents a catastrophic failure by the federal government to respect basic human rights.”

The report detailed the harrowing account of an unnamed woman who was detained in the ICDC in 2020. The detainee describes how Dr Mahendra Amin allegedly removed a portion of her fallopian tube, a result of a dilation and curettage procedure she was not made aware of, and how Amin told her “she would never be able to have children naturally again”.

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Source: The Guardian, 15 November 2022

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US sees surge in measles cases as health experts plead for more vaccinations

Measles cases in the US are rising, as major health organizations plead for increased vaccination rates and experts fear the virus will multiply among unvaccinated populations.

Most notably, this year’s tally of measles cases has now outpaced last year’s total.

On Thursday, there were 64 confirmed cases in 17 states, compared with 58 cases in the entirety of last year, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). By Friday, the tally in Chicago grew by two to a total of 17.

“Measles is one of the most contagious diseases known to man,” said Dr David Nguyen, an infectious disease specialist at Rush University Medical Center.

Experts say that these incidents could approach the outbreak that spanned 31 states in 2019, when 1,274 patients got sick and 128 were hospitalized in the worst US measles outbreak in decades.

“Every measles outbreak can be entirely preventable,” said Dr Aniruddha Hazra, associate professor of medicine at the University of Chicago.

The American Medical Association has issued an appeal to increase vaccination rates, while the CDC released a health advisory urging providers to ensure all travelers, especially children over six months, receive the MMR vaccine. 

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Source: The Guardian, 26 March 2024

 

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US regulators approve first over-the-counter contraceptive pill

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved the first over-the-counter contraceptive pill, allowing millions of women and girls in the country to buy contraception without a prescription at a time when some states have sought to restrict access to birth control and abortion.

FDA officials said on Thursday it cleared Perrigo’s Opill – an every day, prescription-only hormonal contraception first approved in 1973 – to be sold over-the-counter. The pill will be available in stores and online in the first quarter of next year, and there will be no age restrictions on sales. The regulatory approval paves the way for people to purchase the pill without a prescription for the first time since oral contraceptives became widely available in the 1960s.

“Today’s approval marks the first time a nonprescription daily oral contraceptive will be an available option for millions of people in the United States,” Patrizia Cavazzoni, the director of the FDA’s center for drug evaluation and research, said in a statement.

“When used as directed, daily oral contraception is safe and is expected to be more effective than currently available nonprescription contraceptive methods in preventing unintended pregnancy.”

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Source: The Guardian, 13 July 2023

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US recommends women start screening for breast cancer at 40

A leading health panel in the USA has recommended the age at which women are regularly screened for breast cancer should be cut from 50 to 40.

The US Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) said an extra 20 million women in their forties would benefit from a mammogram every two years.

The change would save 20% more lives, according to the USPSTF, which has drafted the proposal in response to rising rates among middle-aged women.

Currently, all women in the USA aged 50 to 74 are advised to get checked via a mammogram every two years.

The number of new breast cancer cases is rising roughly two percent every year, John Wong, an internist and professor of medicine at Tufts University School of Medicine, who is on the task force, told the Washington Post.

Dr Wong said: "It is now clear that screening every other year starting at age 40 has the potential to save about 20 percent more lives among all women, and there is even greater potential benefit for black women, who are much more likely to die from breast cancer."

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Source: Mail Online, 9 May 2023

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US putting on a full-court press to secure support for hospitals and patients

As the US Congress convenes, the American Hospital Association are turning up the pressure to secure additional support for hospitals and the patients and communities they serve.

Specifically, they are asking Congress to:

  • Prevent any further damaging cuts to health programmes, including stopping the forthcoming 4% Statutory Pay-As-You-Go (PAYGO) sequester.
  • Establish a temporary per diem payment targeted to hospitals to address the issue of hospitals not being able to discharge patients to post-acute care or behavioural facilities because of staffing shortages.
  • Increase the number of Medicare-funded graduate medical education positions to address the workforce need for additional physicians in the USA.
  • Extend or make permanent the Low-volume Adjustment and the Medicare-dependent Hospital programmes — critical rural programmes that are due to expire on 16 December.
  • Make permanent the expansion of telehealth services and extend the hospital-at-home programme.
  • Finalize Senate passage of the Improving Seniors’ Timely Access to Care Act, which streamlines prior authorisation requirements under Medicare Advantage plans.
  • Create a special statutory designation for certain hospitals that serve marginalised urban communities.

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Source: American Hospital Association, 2 December 2022

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US physician gets 59-year sentence for unneeded patient surgeries, $20M fraud

A Virginia gynaecologist has been sentenced to 59 years in prison for a fraud scheme that caused insurance programmes to lose more than $20 million, according to the U.S. Justice Department. 

Javaid Perwaiz was sentenced after being convicted last November of 52 counts of healthcare fraud and false statements related to a scheme in which he performed medically unnecessary surgeries, including hysterectomies and improper sterilisations, on his patients. 

From about 2010 to 2019, Dr. Perwaiz often falsely told his patients that they needed the surgeries because they had cancer or could avoid cancer, prosecutors said. Additionally, evidence showed Dr. Perwaiz falsified records for his obstetric patients to induce labor early to ensure he was reimbursed for the deliveries and violated Medicaid's required 30-day waiting period for elective sterilisation procedures by backdating records to make it appear that he had complied with the waiting period. Dr. Perwaiz also billed insurance companies for diagnostic procedures that he only pretended to perform at his office, prosecutors said. 

"Motivated by his insatiable and reprehensible greed, Perwaiz used an arsenal of horrifying tactics to manipulate and deceive patients into undergoing invasive, unnecessary and devastating medical procedures," Raj Parekh, acting U.S. attorney in the Eastern District of Virginia, stated. "In many instances, the defendant shattered their ability to have children by using fear to remove organs from their bodies that he had no right to take."

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Source: Becker's Hospital Review, 18 May 2021

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US pediatricians’ group moves to ban race-based medical guidance

The American Academy of Pediatrics is attempting to ban race-based medical guidance which the organisation attributes to long-standing inequities in healthcare.

In a statement on Monday, the AAP said: “Race is a historically-derived social construct that has no place as a biologic proxy. Over the years, the medical field has inaccurately applied race correction or race adjustment factors in its work, resulting in differential approaches to disease management and disparate clinical outcomes.”

“Although it will continue to be important to collect clinical data disaggregated by race and ethnicity to help characterize the differential lived experiences of our patients, unwinding the roots of race-based medicine, debunking the fallacy of race as a biologic proxy, and replacing this flawed science with legitimate measures of the impact of racism and social determinants on health outcomes is necessary and long overdue,” the academy added.

A re-examination of AAP treatment recommendations that began before George Floyd’s 2020 murder by police in Minneapolis, and intensified after it and the resulting nationwide protests, has doctors concerned that Black youngsters have been under-treated and overlooked, said Joseph Wright, lead author of the new policy and chief health equity officer at the University of Maryland medical system, a network of hospitals.

According to Wright, the academy has begun to scrutinise its “entire catalog,” including guidelines, educational materials, textbooks and newsletter articles.

The academy went on to recommend a series of policies to medical societies, institutions and pediatricians. “All professional organizations and medical specialty societies should advocate for the elimination of race-based medicine in any form,” it said.

It urged institutions to collaborate with learner-facing organizations such as the Accreditation Council on Continuing Medical Education to expose more people to health equity content with a “specific focus on the elimination of race-based medicine”.

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Source: The Guardian, 2 May 2022

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US Patients can order ‘don’t weigh me’ cards to take to doctors

 

Patients in the US are able to order “don’t weigh me” cards to take to the doctors in a move aimed at reducing anxiety and stress on a visit.

The US group behind the initiative said being weighed and talking about weight “causes feelings of stress and shame for many people”.

The cards say: “Please don’t weigh me unless it is (really) medically necessary.”

It adds: “If you really need my weight, please tell me why so that I can give you my informed consent”.

On the other side, it explains why the patient may not want to be weighed, including “when you focus on my weight I get stressed” and “weighing me every time I come in for an appointment and talking about my weight like it’s a problem perpetuates weight stigma”.

It also says most health conditions can be addressed without knowing the patient’s weight.

Public Health England guidance to health and care professionals says they are in a “unique position to talk to patients about weight management to prevent ill-health” and recommends brief interventions.

It says the first step in a brief intervention over a patient’s weight is to weigh and measure them. “You should view this as a normal part of a routine consultation,” it says.

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Source: The Independent, 23 December 2021

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US overdose deaths hit record 107,000 last year, CDC says

More than 107,000 Americans died of drug overdoses last year, setting another tragic record in the nation’s escalating overdose epidemic, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimated Wednesday.

The provisional 2021 total translates to roughly one U.S. overdose death every 5 minutes. It marked a 15% increase from the previous record, set the year before. The CDC reviews death certificates and then makes an estimate to account for delayed and incomplete reporting.

Dr. Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, called the latest numbers “truly staggering.”

The White House issued a statement calling the accelerating pace of overdose deaths “unacceptable” and promoting its recently announced national drug control strategy. It calls for measures like connecting more people to treatment, disrupting drug trafficking and expanding access to the overdose-reversing medication naloxone.

Experts say the COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated the problem as lockdowns and other restrictions isolated those with drug addictions and made treatment harder to get.

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Source: AP News, 11 May 2022

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US nurses to hold informational picket for patient safety at West Anaheim Medical Center

Registered nurses (RNs) at US Prime Healthcare’s West Anaheim Medical Center (WAMC) will hold an informational picket today to protest chronic short staffing and its impact on safe patient care.

Nurses say that the hospital should cancel elective surgeries because those beds and nurses are needed for other emergent patients. RNs in all medical departments are short-staffed, putting patient safety in jeopardy.

“Nurses are under incredible pressure to care for patients beyond the state’s mandated safe staffing ratios due to the staffing crisis in our hospital,” said John Olarte, RN at WAMC. “The employer should be making beds available by canceling elective surgeries for the foreseeable future. Save those beds for the patients who most need them and at the same time give the RNs a chance to truly care for these patients by not forcing nurses to take patients that don’t need to be in the hospital right now. The public needs to know that the hospital is not doing everything they can to help the nurses care for patients.”

“There is a staffing crisis because RNs are leaving,” said Sofia Rivera, RN in the emergency department at WAMC, “To attract and retain quality nurses — just staff the floors so the RNs do not have to pick up multiple extra shifts due to the revolving door of RNs in this hospital.”

Nurses say they want a strong contract so they can recruit and retain RNs and they want to establish a health and safety committee to ensure they have a voice on issues of nurse safety and patient care. They have been in contract negotiations since May 2021. Their contract expired in June 2021.

“We are getting slaughtered in the ER,” said Rasha Tran, RN. “Ambulances are just leaving their patients in the ER instead of waiting for an available bed because they are waiting too long. I don’t even know how we can sustain this demand to care for so many patients. It means less care for each patient. Continuing elective surgeries means that a regular bed is not available for a patient in the ER who is now is being held for hours or days before they are admitted. Even before this most recent Covid surge, nurses have been picking up extra 12-hour shifts to help our coworkers, often without a break for meals or rest periods.”

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Source: National Nurses United, 11 February 2022

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US nurse who called emergency services on own hospital speaks out

A nurse in the USA who called emergency services in response to staffing issues at Silverdale, Washington-based St. Michael Medical Center spoke out about her decision and the events leading up to the call.

Kelsay Irby has been an emergency department charge nurse at the hospital for less than a year. On the 8 October, the night Ms Irby called emergency services for help, the ED was operating at less than 50% of its ideal staffing grid. Among the nearly 50 people in the hospital's waiting room were patients with cardiac or respiratory issues and children with high fevers — "all patients that made us very nervous to have in the lobby, unmonitored for extended periods of time," Ms. Irby said. 

The ED had one first-look nurse on the clock who was trying to keep up with patients checking in and could not supervise those waiting for care. After exhausting all other available options, Ms. Irby said she called emergency services' nonemergent line and asked the dispatcher if any crews were available to help ED staff. Ms. Irby was connected with a local fire chief who sent an emergency services crew to the hospital to monitor patients in the lobby, retake their vitals and do roll calls to ensure the ED team's patient list was accurate. 

Ms. Irby's actions made national headlines in the US as a dramatic example of the staffing issues hospitals nationwide are facing. 

"I didn’t recognize the impact of what I was doing that night," Ms. Irby wrote. "I was simply working my way down the list of possible sources of help for my coworkers and ultimately our patients."

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Source: Becker's Hospital Review, 8 November 2022

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US nurse sues Kindred Healthcare, alleges retaliation for his patient safety complaints

A nurse in the US sued Louisville, Ky.-based Kindred Healthcare this week, alleging the organisation fired him in retaliation for raising patient safety concerns.

Sean Kinnie worked as an intensive care unit nurse at Kindred Hospital-San Antonio. Mr Kinnie claims he was suspended twice and then fired after leaders at the 59-bed transitional care hospital learned he anonymously reported patient safety concerns to The Joint Commission in November 2019 and January. 

Mr Kinnie said issues related to inadequate staffing and unsanitary care environments put patients in "grave danger," according to the lawsuit. He also said the hospital created a culture in which employees were afraid to stand up for patients for fear of retaliation from management. 

In January, Mr Kinnie told the hospital's chief clinical officer Sharon Danieliewicz that he was the staff member who reported the patient safety concerns to The Joint Commission. Mr. Kinnie claims he faced increased scrutiny after this disclosure and was ultimately fired Feb. 24 for violating facility policy.

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Source: Becker's Hospital Review, 24 August 2020

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US nurse charged with killing 2 patients admits to trying to kill 17 more

A former Pennsylvania nurse admitted she tried to kill 19 people at multiple different care facilities, piling dozens of new charges on the woman who allegedly administered lethal doses of insulin to numerous patients, killing two.

On Thursday, the state's attorney general's office announced the new charges against Heather Pressdee, who now faces two counts of first-degree murder, 17 counts of attempted murder and 19 counts of neglect of a care-dependent person.

The 41-year-old nurse was first arrested in May for killing two nursing home patients and injuring a third.

From 2020 up until her arrest, prosecutors say Pressdee gave 19 patients at five different care facilities excessive amounts of insulin, some of whom were diabetic and needed it and others who did not.

The plaintiff would typically administer these insulin doses overnight while fewer staff members were working and as "emergencies wouldn't prompt immediate hospitalization," Pennsylvania Attorney General Michelle Henry said.

"If Pressdee sensed the victim would 'pull through' there is a pattern of her taking additional measures to try to kill the victims before they could be sent to the hospital by either administering a second dose of insulin or the use of an air embolism to ensure death," the criminal complaint, which also said Pressdee admitted to harming patients with intent to kill, said.

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Source: Scripps News, 3 November 2023

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US news publishes new list of best hospitals in the USA

U.S. News has just released its list of the best hospitals with associated rankings and ratings.

Scores are based on several factors, including survival, patient safety, nurse staffing and more. U.S. News reviews hospitals performance in 15 adult specialties, 10 pediatric specialties and 17 surgical procedures and medical conditions affecting millions of people across the country.

Find all of the rankings and ratings here

 

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US midwife fined $300k for faking vaccine records for 1,500 children after giving them ‘homeopathic pellets’

A midwife in New York who reportedly gave 1,500 children homeopathic pellets rather than the vaccinations required by the state has been fined $300,000 by the state's health department.

The midwife was identified as Jeanette Breen, who operates the Long Island-based Baldwin Midwifery.

Ms Breen reportedly gave the pellets as an alternative to required vaccinations and then proceeded to falsify the children's immunisation records, according to the New York Department of Health.

The midwife reportedly began giving the pellets during the Covid-19 pandemic, specifically during the 2019-2020 school year. The majority of the affected children live in Long Island, according to the Associated Press.

The health department said that the false records have since been voided, and that the families will have to ensure their students are up-to-date with their shots before they can return to school.

“Misrepresenting or falsifying vaccine records puts lives in jeopardy and undermines the system that exists to protect public health,” State Health Commissioner James McDonald said in a statement.

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Source: The Independent, 24 January 2024

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US medical groups warn of 'irreparable harm' to patients In confusing post-Roe era

The American Medical Association and three other major health groups have warned that patients across the nation could suffer “irreparable harm” due to the shattered legal landscape left in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade.

In a statement, co-authored with the American Pharmacists Association, the American Society of Health-Systems Pharmacists and the National Community Pharmacists Association, the groups said they were deeply concerned by state efforts to limit access to medically necessary medicine. Ongoing questions about state laws are already impacting patients, and language in newly enacted rules is “vague,” “unclear” and “disrupting care,” they said.

“Physicians, pharmacists, and other health care professionals face a confusing legal landscape due to state laws’ lack of clarity, confusing language, and unknown implementation by regulatory and enforcement bodies,” the statement reads. “Without such guidance, we are deeply concerned that our patients will lose access to care and suffer irreparable harm.”

The groups pointed to reports that some hospitals had prioritised caution over healthcare, others that have removed emergency contraceptives from kits for victims of sexual assault and pharmacies that have imposed “burdensome” steps for prescriptions.

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Source: HuffPost, 9 September 2022

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