The handles on the box springs of patient beds in residential areas. The caulking along the wall of otherwise-solid grab bars in showers. Any loops that might hold mattresses onto a bed frame. All of those and more have been cited as potential ligature risks by The Joint Commission and CMS...
Remind nurses and other clinicians to remain alert for medication errors, including mislabeled products, and empower them to say something if they suspect a problem.
After a customer complaint, C.O. Truxton Inc., a New Jersey drug company, issued a voluntary recall of a batch of...
Editor’s note: Healthcare innovation involves doing something differently than how it’s normally done, whether it’s a new device, policy, or program. Many of these evidence-based practices, promising studies, and groundbreaking programs are never adopted outside their test facilities. Many...
No physician or nurse injects medicine into a patient’s blood planning to make the patient sicker. Sadly, that’s exactly what happened to scores of providers back in 2012. This June, the former president of a Boston compounding pharmacy was sentenced to nine years in prison for racketeering and...
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...
Hospital EDs are extremely busy during the summer months because of accidents and injuries. While there’s no word yet on whether 2017 will break a heat record (though we hope not), you can expect it to bring a familiar brand of dangerous situations. But are you prepared for them?
In the TV show Mr. Robot, there’s a scene where the main character hacks his hospital’s computer system to change his drug test results from positive to negative. Naturally, doing such a thing in real life isn’t as easy as the show makes it out to be. But it does touch upon a real...
Can you take a punch? How do you react to being backed into a corner and screamed at? Can you keep a level head when someone spits at, grabs, slaps, or pushes you? Have you been held at knifepoint before?
If a job interviewer asked you these questions, you’d probably bolt for the door...
On June 2, CMS issued a new memo to surveyors on the importance of reducing cases of Legionella infections. Not long after, the CDC issued a Vital Signs report underlining the bacterium’s risk to patients. First discovered in the 1970s, the Legionella bacterium can cause a type of...
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...
