Imagine this: You're a cardiac surgeon who is pushing into the five-hour mark of a complicated seven-hour surgery. You ask a nurse for a specific tool, and he drops it. It's now contaminated and useless. The nurse stands dumbstruck until you snap at him to hurry up, grab another tool, and stop being so clumsy. You were rude, but he deserved it, right? He'll get over the uncivil remark and everybody will move on. But that "moving on" actually might not happen — according to a recent study, rude comments in high-pressure medical settings could have potentially deadly effects on patients.
The study, "The Impact of Rudeness on Medical Team Performance: A Randomized Trial," which was published in the September issue of Pediatrics, shows that a rude comment from a third-party doctor decreased performance among doctors and nurses by more than 50 percent in an exercise involving a hypothetical life-or-death situation. "We found that rudeness damages your ability to think, manage information, and make decisions," said Amir Erez, an author on the study and a Huber Hurst professor of management at the University of Florida. "You can be highly motivated to work, but if rudeness damages your cognitive system then you can't function appropriately in a complex situation. And that hurts patients."
For the experiment, Erez and his colleagues gave 24 medical teams from neonatal intensive care units in Israeli hospitals, each composed of one doctor and two nurses, an hour to diagnose and treat a simulated case of necrotizing enterocolitis, a rapid and potentially fatal disease in which a premature newborn's intestinal tissue becomes inflamed and starts to necrotize, or die.
Before beginning, the teams were informed that a leading ICU expert from the United States would be observing them via webcam. The researcher running the experiment then dialed a fake phone number and played a (prerecorded) message that was supposedly from the observer. The message informed half of the participants that he had observed other medical teams and was "not impressed with the quality of medicine in Israel," but told the control group simply that he had observed other teams, without making any rude comments or insults. Ten minutes into the simulation the teams were interrupted by another prerecorded message from the researcher. He told the control group that he hoped the workshop helped them improve as physicians; he told the other teams, however, that the Israeli physicians and nurses he'd been observing "wouldn't last a week" in his department.
More ...
http://nymag.com/scienceofus/2015/10/rudeness-in-hospitals-could-kill-patients.html?x=1
Saturday, August 20, 2016
Institute For Safe Medication Practices
• Collect and analyze reports of medication-related hazardous conditions, near-misses, errors, and other adverse drug events.
• Disseminate timely medication safety information, risk-reduction tools, and error-prevention strategies.
• Educate the healthcare community and consumers about safe medication practices.
• Collaborate with other patient safety organizations, educational institutions, governmental agencies and other healthcare stakeholders.
• Advocate the adoption of safe medication standards by accrediting bodies, manufacturers, policy makers, regulatory agencies, and standards-setting organizations.
• Conduct research to provide evidence-based safe medication practices.
http://www.ismp.org/default.asp
• Disseminate timely medication safety information, risk-reduction tools, and error-prevention strategies.
• Educate the healthcare community and consumers about safe medication practices.
• Collaborate with other patient safety organizations, educational institutions, governmental agencies and other healthcare stakeholders.
• Advocate the adoption of safe medication standards by accrediting bodies, manufacturers, policy makers, regulatory agencies, and standards-setting organizations.
• Conduct research to provide evidence-based safe medication practices.
http://www.ismp.org/default.asp
ConsumerMedSafety.org - Prevent Medication Errors
ConsumerMedSafety.org is provided to you by the Institute for Safe Medication Practices (ISMP). This unique website is designed to help you, the consumer, avoid mistakes when taking medicines. Preventing medication errors is a huge responsibility that doctors, pharmacists, and nurses take seriously. But you, too, can play a vital role in preventing dangerous errors, and ConsumerMedSafety.org is exactly what you need to protect yourself and your loved ones!
The majority of the material provided on our website, is original, written by the ISMP staff. Content is developed from
• Reports submitted to the Medication Error Reporting Program (MERP) by practitioners and consumers with research by our editorial staff to confirm and validate.
• Shared work from our newsletter publications, including the ISMP Medication Safety Alert! For acute care hospitals, a consumer newsletter, a community pharmacy/medicine newsletter and a nursing newsletter.
Together the readership exceeds 2 million. More information about our publication can be seen at: http://www.ismp.org/Newsletters/default.asp
• Independent articles developed, produced and edited entirely for consumermedsafety by ISMP staff.
• Some information, as noted on the website, is shared with us by the US Food and Drug Administration.
• Occasionally, consumermedsafety will make mention of an article from which the topic is derived. In all cases we include the source material.
http://www.consumermedsafety.org/
The majority of the material provided on our website, is original, written by the ISMP staff. Content is developed from
• Reports submitted to the Medication Error Reporting Program (MERP) by practitioners and consumers with research by our editorial staff to confirm and validate.
• Shared work from our newsletter publications, including the ISMP Medication Safety Alert! For acute care hospitals, a consumer newsletter, a community pharmacy/medicine newsletter and a nursing newsletter.
Together the readership exceeds 2 million. More information about our publication can be seen at: http://www.ismp.org/Newsletters/default.asp
• Independent articles developed, produced and edited entirely for consumermedsafety by ISMP staff.
• Some information, as noted on the website, is shared with us by the US Food and Drug Administration.
• Occasionally, consumermedsafety will make mention of an article from which the topic is derived. In all cases we include the source material.
http://www.consumermedsafety.org/
‘America’s other drug problem’: Giving the elderly too many prescriptions - The Washington Post
Dominick Bailey sat at his computer, scrutinizing the medication lists of patients in the geriatric unit.
A doctor had prescribed blood pressure medication for a 99-year-old woman at a dose that could cause her to faint or fall. An 84-year-old woman hospitalized for knee surgery was taking several drugs that were not meant for older patients because of their severe potential side effects.
And then there was 74-year-old Lola Cal. She had a long history of health problems, including high blood pressure and respiratory disease. She was in the hospital with pneumonia and had difficulty breathing. Her medical records showed she was on 36 medications.
"This is actually a little bit alarming," said Bailey, a pharmacist.
He was concerned about the sheer number of drugs but even more worried that several of them — including ones to treat insomnia and pain — could suppress Cal's breathing.
An increasing number of elderly patients nationwide are on multiple medications to treat chronic diseases, raising their chances of dangerous drug interactions and serious side effects. Often the drugs are prescribed by different specialists who don't communicate with each other. If those patients are hospitalized, doctors making the rounds add to the list — and some of the drugs they prescribe may be unnecessary or unsuitable.
"This is America's other drug problem — polypharmacy," said Maristela Garcia, director of the inpatient geriatric unit at UCLA Medical Center in Santa Monica, Calif. "And the problem is huge."
More ...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/americas-other-drug-problem-giving-the-elderly-too-many-prescriptions/2016/08/15/e406843a-4d17-11e6-a7d8-13d06b37f256_story.html
A doctor had prescribed blood pressure medication for a 99-year-old woman at a dose that could cause her to faint or fall. An 84-year-old woman hospitalized for knee surgery was taking several drugs that were not meant for older patients because of their severe potential side effects.
And then there was 74-year-old Lola Cal. She had a long history of health problems, including high blood pressure and respiratory disease. She was in the hospital with pneumonia and had difficulty breathing. Her medical records showed she was on 36 medications.
"This is actually a little bit alarming," said Bailey, a pharmacist.
He was concerned about the sheer number of drugs but even more worried that several of them — including ones to treat insomnia and pain — could suppress Cal's breathing.
An increasing number of elderly patients nationwide are on multiple medications to treat chronic diseases, raising their chances of dangerous drug interactions and serious side effects. Often the drugs are prescribed by different specialists who don't communicate with each other. If those patients are hospitalized, doctors making the rounds add to the list — and some of the drugs they prescribe may be unnecessary or unsuitable.
"This is America's other drug problem — polypharmacy," said Maristela Garcia, director of the inpatient geriatric unit at UCLA Medical Center in Santa Monica, Calif. "And the problem is huge."
More ...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/americas-other-drug-problem-giving-the-elderly-too-many-prescriptions/2016/08/15/e406843a-4d17-11e6-a7d8-13d06b37f256_story.html
Tuesday, August 16, 2016
‘America’s other drug problem’: Giving the elderly too many prescriptions - The Washington Post
Dominick Bailey sat at his computer, scrutinizing the medication lists of patients in the geriatric unit.
A doctor had prescribed blood pressure medication for a 99-year-old woman at a dose that could cause her to faint or fall. An 84-year-old woman hospitalized for knee surgery was taking several drugs that were not meant for older patients because of their severe potential side effects.
And then there was 74-year-old Lola Cal. She had a long history of health problems, including high blood pressure and respiratory disease. She was in the hospital with pneumonia and had difficulty breathing. Her medical records showed she was on 36 medications.
"This is actually a little bit alarming," said Bailey, a pharmacist.
More ...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/americas-other-drug-problem-giving-the-elderly-too-many-prescriptions/2016/08/15/e406843a-4d17-11e6-a7d8-13d06b37f256_story.html
A doctor had prescribed blood pressure medication for a 99-year-old woman at a dose that could cause her to faint or fall. An 84-year-old woman hospitalized for knee surgery was taking several drugs that were not meant for older patients because of their severe potential side effects.
And then there was 74-year-old Lola Cal. She had a long history of health problems, including high blood pressure and respiratory disease. She was in the hospital with pneumonia and had difficulty breathing. Her medical records showed she was on 36 medications.
"This is actually a little bit alarming," said Bailey, a pharmacist.
More ...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/americas-other-drug-problem-giving-the-elderly-too-many-prescriptions/2016/08/15/e406843a-4d17-11e6-a7d8-13d06b37f256_story.html
Sunday, August 14, 2016
Cyberchondria: D.I.Y. Diagnosis in Overdrive : Longreads Blog
In researching his chronic headache on the web, veteran journalist Barry Newman takes a terrifying walk down the Via Dolorosa of digital self-diagnosis.
https://blog.longreads.com/2016/08/10/cyberchondria-d-i-y-diagnosis-in-overdrive/?
https://blog.longreads.com/2016/08/10/cyberchondria-d-i-y-diagnosis-in-overdrive/?
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