Recently in Health Care Workers Category

Source: Mischa Gaus, Labor Notes, no. 364, July 2009

Big Bother Comes in for a Check-Up

Beyond the whiz-bang applications that will smooth record-taking and make the hospital safer lie more familiar reasons why Shands is spending up to $7 million installing a high-tech backbone in its newest facility.

The sensors can also track the location of each IV stand - and every hospital worker, whose badges will include a tag that registers their location.

Hospitals could also use the technology to defeat organizing drives by identifying union supporters.

Source: Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Press Release, June 12, 2009

Health Affairs today unveiled a series of six studies examining the nursing workforce in the context of health reform. The papers were released at a forum presented by Health Affairs and the Center to Champion Nursing in America (CCNA) that featured a lively discussion among policy-makers, nursing leaders and researchers, and health reform experts. The Center is a joint initiative of AARP, the AARP Foundation and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

The papers released today include:

Education Policy Initiatives to Address the Nurse Shortage
Linda H. Aiken, Robyn B. Cheung and Danielle M. Olds

The Recent Surge in Nurse Employment: Causes and Implications
Peter I. Buerhaus, David I. Auerbach and Douglas O. Staiger

Expanding the Capacity of Nursing Education
Brenda L. Cleary, Angela Barron McBride, Margaret L. McClure and Susan C. Reinhard

Addressing the Nursing Workforce: A Critical Element for Health Reform
Risa Lavizzo-Mourey and John Rother

Nursing: A Key to Patient Satisfaction
Ann Kutney Lee, Matthew D. McHugh, Douglas M. Sloane, Jeannie P. Cimiotti, Linda Flynn, Donna Felber Neff and Linda H. Aiken

The Role of Nurses in Improved Hospital Quality and Efficiency: Real-World Results
Jack Needleman and Susan Hassmiller

Source: Suzanne Gordon, WorkingUSA, Volume 12 Issue 2, June 2009
(subscription required)

From the abstract:
The essay examines private sector unionization in the U.S., arguing that elections for representation frequently are unfairly unbalanced against supporters of union representation. Given that hospital administrators typically harbor an antiunion bias, with few exceptions, representation elections are permeated with employer propaganda to ensure their institutions remain nonunion. Passage of the Employee Free Choice Act would significantly improve the capacity of nurses to organize unions of their choice through card check rules, while reducing the hospital management "vote-no" campaigns that are highly unfavorable toward labor organizing. Unionization is a means to significantly improve conditions for nurses, who are the principle "guardians of the sick."

Source: Craig Slatin, NEW SOLUTIONS: A Journal of Environmental and Occupational Health Policy, Volume 19, Number 1, 2009
(subscription required)

Cost control has become a battle cry for health care--and it is being fulfilled on the backs of health care workers--literally. As health care labor costs are cut, health care work has been intensified. Health care workers are being made to "do more with less." Increasingly, direct care and ancillary support are provided by low wage and inadequately trained personnel. Skilled tasks that were formerly performed by licensed professional workers (nurses) are being shifted to nonlicensed and inadequately trained personnel (aides/assistants).

Source: United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, 2009

From the press release:
The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), along with leaders from Catholic health care and the labor movement, released "guidance and options" for creating a fair process for health care workers to decide whether or not to form a union. Outlined in a new document entitled Respecting the Just Rights of Workers: Guidance and Options for Catholic Health Care and Unions, the principles reflect a unique and ground-breaking consensus between Catholic health care employers and unions and are the result of a dialogue that began more than a decade ago.

Source: Rita P. Thomas, RN, June 2009

MRSA is not just a hospital problem anymore. Community-acquired MRSA requires vigilance and prevention tactics to keep it in check.

Source: Ann Kutney-Lee, Matthew D. McHugh, Douglas M. Sloane, Jeannie P. Cimiotti, Linda Flynn, Donna Felber Neff, and Linda H. Aiken, Health Affairs, Vol. 28 no. 4, published online 12 June 2009
(subscription required)

Patient satisfaction is receiving greater attention as a result of the rise in pay-for-performance (P4P) and the public release of data from the Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (HCAHPS) survey. This paper examines the relationship between nursing and patient satisfaction across 430 hospitals. The nurse work environment was significantly related to all HCAHPS patient satisfaction measures. Additionally, patient-to-nurse workloads were significantly associated with patients' ratings and recommendation of the hospital to others, and with their satisfaction with the receipt of discharge information. Improving nurses' work environments, including nurse staffing, may improve the patient experience and quality of care.

Source: Allison N. Canton, Martin F. Sherman, Lori A. Magda, Leah J. Westra, Julie M. Pearson, Victoria H. Raveis, Robyn Gershon, Home Healthcare Nurse. Vol. 27 no. 6, June 2009
(subscription required)

From the abstract:
Workplace violence, defined as violent acts directed toward workers, includes physical assault, threat of assault, and verbal abuse and is widely recognized as a threat to workers' health and safety. Healthcare workers, especially nurses, are known to be at high risk. As employees who work alone, have access to drugs, provide care to people in distress, and/or have frequent close contact with clients, they face a greater likelihood of exposure to violence. Nurses' risk has been correlated with degree of patient contact; the odds of physical violence are 7.2 and 9.0 times greater for healthcare workers with moderate and high patient contact, respectively, compared with those with little or no contact.

Source: Andis Robeznieks, Modern Healthcare, June 4, 2009
(subscription required)

Computer simulations can be used to improve U.S. hospital disaster preparations, according to a study in the American Medical Association's Disaster Medicine and Public Health Preparedness journal which modeled a release of poisonous sarin vapor in Manhattan public transportation centers that had the potential to expose some 22,000 people to its harmful effects leading to 178 intensive-care unit admissions. Researchers used population statistics, and plugged in data on the New York City borough's healthcare resources such as available hospital beds, emergency department services, hospital surge capacity, variable exposure effects, and behavioral and psycho-social characteristics to mimic response to an attack. According to the simulation report, "A Novel Approach to Multihazard Modeling and Simulation," (subscription required) implementing disaster plans within 30 minutes compared to two hours diminished mortality and waiting times and reduced the number of patients who were severely affected.

Source: Amanda Sounart, AMN Healthcare News, 2009

As economic woes continue to plague U.S. hospitals, one of the areas seeing the deepest cutbacks is infection prevention. Leading epidemiologists point out that these budget cuts could become detrimental to both patient care and the financial health of hospitals.

According to a recent APIC survey of 2,000 hospital infection preventionists, 41 percent of respondents have experienced budget cuts within the last 18 months.

Infection preventionists are instrumental in reducing HAIs among inpatients. They survey infection rates, educate hospital staff on new and emerging infections and implement methods of infection prevention. A reduction in staff infection preventionists could lead to greater HAI rates, more deaths and mounting costs.