A new study has shown that doctors and nurses that often skip soap and water in favor of an alcohol-based hand gel, had no bearing on the rate of infections among patients. The doctor who studied the problem pointed to many villains: Rings and fingernails that are too long and hard to clean, poor handling of catheters and treatment areas that aren't sanitized. The study appears in the January issue of Infection Control and Hospital Epidemiology.
Substandard care at a southern Illinois Veterans Affairs hospital may have contributed to 19 deaths over the past two years. The hospital in Marion, IL, initially drew scrutiny over deaths connected to a single surgeon, but two federal reports found fault with five other doctors. The hospital undertook many surgeries that its staffing or lack of proper surgical expertise made it ill-equipped to handle, and hospital administrators were too slow to respond once problems surfaced.
Overweight and obese patients have long complained that doctors treat them insensitively and are too quick to attribute health problems to their weight, but their claims of bias were often met with skepticism. But now research is adding to evidence that the problem may be real and may affect patients' quality of care. Doctors' negative views of obese patients, some experts charge, may be helping to drive patients away.
A survey of more than 3,000 doctors, reported in the August 2007 Joint Commission Journal on Quality and Patient Safety, found that doctors lost confidence, were anxious about future errors and had trouble sleeping and reduced job satisfaction when they had been involved in a medical error. Only 10 percent said they thought their institution provided adequate support following an error.
The numbers can be worrisome--1 out of 10 hospitalized patients picks up an infection or suffers some kind of mistake while in the hospital, statistics show. So what is a medical consumer to do?
R. Barker Bausell says he arrived at the University of Maryland's alternative medicine center with an open mind toward exploring the potential of acupuncture, herbal remedies and other unconventional treatments. But after five years as research director, he quit the Center for Integrative Medicine in 2004, convinced of one thing: None of the alternative treatments he has seen works any better than a placebo.