It's all about bouncing back, recovering and then moving forward after a violent weather event. The proper response requires developing plans, practice, practice, practice and then putting those measures to work when the moment calls for action. Whether our hospitals and medical facilities are safe and ready to help communities during and after weather events is a vital topic. Some areas are more prone to disasters than others, but it takes only one serious event to ravage a normally safe area. Hurricanes, tornadoes and floods can cause casualties on a large scale, increasing the need for hospital readiness.
Allegheny Health Network and Johns Hopkins Medicine have signed a five-year agreement to collaborate in cancer care, research and physician education. AHN’s agreement with Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center is expected to help western Pennsylvania cancer patients by advancing cancer research, providing expanded access to Hopkins clinical trials, and helping establish new standards of cancer care. The Kimmel Center is among 41 comprehensive cancers centers nationwide as designated by the National Cancer Institute. The areas covered by the agreement are clinical consultation, research, quality and safety and education for AHN doctors and allied health professionals, including monthly grand rounds and other presentations delivered by Johns Hopkins staff at AHN facilities.
If you have ever had a loved one in a hospital intensive care unit, you know. In that sterile scary room, the nurse can be the most important person. She or he is a steady presence — deftly monitoring the mountain of tubes and beeping machines, while at the same time calming frightened families and friends. I can remember what it was like being in that emotional and physical space. It’s a scene still emblazoned in my memory — my family and I standing at the draped hospital bed praying out loud that my dad would be okay.
First-day jitters come with any new job but when the work involves pushing needles into strangers' bellies, stitching up gaping wounds or even delivering babies, that debut can be especially nerve-wracking -- for everyone involved. Brand-new doctors often launch right into patient care within weeks of graduating from medical school. To make sure their skills are up to snuff, many medical schools and hospitals run crash courses in the basics for these new interns. It's called boot camp at Northwestern Memorial Hospital and its adjoining Feinberg medical school, a program involving two to three days of intense practice before letting the newbies loose on patients.
The number of licensed nurses in Oklahoma stands at nearly 75,000, an all-time high in the state. The Oklahoman reported Sunday that a recent open records request to the Oklahoma Board of Nursing found there are 74,656 licensed nurses in the state, an increase of more than 22,000 during the past decade. Nursing board executive director Kim Glazier said she traces the increase to a panic of sorts that began in 2004 or 2005 when reports began that there was a looming nursing shortage to take care of the aging baby boom generation, generally defined as those born between 1946 and 1964. Efforts were made then to attract more people to nursing.
Saying the elderly can be abused anywhere, the Arizona Supreme Court ruled June 30 that hospitals can be sued under special laws designed to protect vulnerable adults. In a unanimous decision, the justices rejected arguments by attorneys for hospitals that the law was always intended solely to cover only things like nursing homes and similar facilities. Chief Justice Rebecca White Berch said there is nothing in the wording of the statute to support that claim. More to the point, Berch said that adopting the view of the hospitals "would thwart the Legislature's goal of protecting vulnerable adults" in adopting the Adult Protective Services Act in 1989.