A patient is being registered at a hospital. Registration requests to see identification, which states that the patient is male. However, the patient identifies as female, and the electronic medical record (EMR) only has male or female fields. Which one should the registrar select?
Physicians, nurses, and healthcare staff are in a unique position to help the human trafficking victims who walk through their doors. But for that to work, providers first need to know how to identify them.
There’s an estimated 1 million human trafficking victims living in America—a...
The Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) ban on powdered medical gloves went into effect on January 18. It’s now forbidden to use, advertise, and market powdered surgeon's gloves, patient...
People can grow used to anything, even alarms. Such is the danger of alarm fatigue; when excessive and nuisance alerts cause healthcare staff to become desensitized. When this happens, healthcare staff are more likely to have trouble prioritizing, managing, and responding to alerts, resulting in...
Editor’s note: The Institute for Safe Medication Practices (ISMP) released its 2016–2017 Targeted Medication Safety Best Practices for Hospitals guide in December 2015. The first edition of the best practices came out in December 2013 and addressed ...
A recent study sheds new light on the prevalence of postoperative complications.
In November 2016, a study published in the British Journal of Anesthesia (BJA) found that each year there are 50 million postop complications worldwide. Those complications in turn result in 1.5...
Editor’s note: In February, The World Health Organization (WHO) published its first list of a dozen families of antibiotic-resistant “priority pathogens” that pose the greatest threat to humanity.
"This list is a new tool to ensure R&D responds to urgent...
With suicide rates high and getting higher, hospitals and clinics need to revamp how they work with suicidal patients. The first step is developing a system to identify struggling patients so they can get the care they need.
In 2014, the Parkland Health and Hospital System (PHHS) in...
Editor’s note: In March, the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) and the National Patient Safety Foundation (NPSF) announced that they would merge starting May 1. The two organizations have been leaders in the patient safety field for years, and there is much hope...
