Our personal handwashing rules: use hot water and soap, do it after potentially touching something yucky and sing "Happy Birthday" to be sure you're scrubbing long enough. Physicians, though, need to know a lot more. And a small study of third-year medical students in Germany finds that they aren't entirely clear on when handwashing is indicated. The study, published in the American Journal of Infection Control, covered 85 third-year students at Hannover Medical School, most of whom said they'd had at least some clinical experience. Researchers asked the students whether handwashing was indicated in seven situations. Among the students, 21% correctly identified all the true and false indications, while 67% correctly identified the five conditions under which handwashing is appropriate. (That means a third missed at least one.)
Researchers from UCLA and the Rand Corp. report in the journal Academic Pediatrics that of the 16 food venues serving 14 hospitals studied in July 2010, 81% offered unhealthful "impulse items" ? think freezers stocked with ice-cream treats ? near the cash register. Only 31% offered nutrition information at the point of purchase, while just 25% sold whole-wheat bread. The cafeterias aren't directly serving the young hospital patients, though, so why does it matter whether they're selling cookies and fried foods?
Pharmacists donned white suits in a sterile chamber then entered a "clean room" on a recent Tuesday at the Cleveland Clinic's main campus, ready to make a medication needed for patients. The team mixed 60 batches of Bupivacaine 0.1% + Fentanyl 2mcg/ml -- an epidural anesthetic used during surgery. They make this anesthetic once, at times twice, a week in addition to other drugs Clinic doctors need for patients. A nationwide shortage of medications continues to worsen at an alarming rate with no solution in sight, forcing medical systems in Northeast Ohio to take steps like this to avoid going without sometimes basic drugs.
A visitor would expect to see the latest weapons in the battle against heart disease or cancer at the new Rush University Medical Center. But the hospital ? which will give the public a sneak preview Dec. 10 ? is also stocked with an arsenal for fighting a different kind of "bad guy" ? namely a viral villain. The 14-story tower on the Near West Side will bring an unprecedented level of preparedness to Chicago in the event of a bioterrorist attack, a deadly pandemic or an industrial accident sending hazardous materials seeping into the streets, experts say. Before patients can be moved there in January, hundreds of staff must be trained on all-new equipment ? from a state-of-the-art patient lift to a trash chute that travels at 60 mph.
One out of every 10 people who get a stent inserted to open up blocked arteries ends up back in the hospital within 30 days, suggests a new study that also found the readmitted patients are more likely to die in the next year. Readmission rates are now publicly reported by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and are one performance measure used to determine how well a hospital is doing at treating its heart patients. The study suggests that at least some of the factors related to a patient's chance of going back to the hospital, including the severity of the diseases they had to begin with, cannot necessarily be changed by better care.
At five Bon Secours Health System hospitals on the East Coast, giving fewer blood transfusions during heart surgeries has had some counterintuitive results: Not only did costs fall, but care improved, officials say. Bon Secours' campaign to reduce blood transfusions during heart bypass and valve replacement surgeries is part of a growing national trend to standardize care and rein in differences in how doctors and hospitals practice medicine.