Hand Hygiene, Nurse Manicures, and Infant Deaths
It’s Patient Safety Week – and if you’re a nurse, you’ve probably seen articles on the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) infant who passed away due to bacteria from a nurse’s long nails. It stirred up an upsetting – but valuable – Internet conversation on hand hygiene. In fact, Google searches around nurse nails and NICU […]
Heart Health in Tribal Nations
You see them every February: campaigns for American Heart Month reminding us that cardiovascular disease (CVD) is the leading cause of death in the U.S. Riding alongside Valentine’s Day ads, we’re told to check our blood pressure, start a fitness routine, and eat healthier. That one person dies from heart disease every 33 seconds. What […]
Announcing our Moms & Minis™ Program
“Maternal mortality” – those aren’t two words you ever want to hear together. But together, they describe a sad reality in healthcare. In the US, this is especially true for rural counties, where maternity mortality rates are 1.6 times higher compared to larger counties. And Tribal nations? Native women have the highest rates in the […]
Preparing for Joint Commission Surveys
By Brian Gallagher The overhead page repeats three times: “Gotham City Hospital would like to welcome the Joint Commission.” It’s the one page that can strike panic into even the most prepared organization. Team members run through the department making sure there is no food or drink visible. Cabinet doors and drawers are locked, wipe […]
The Rural Health Transformation Program: How It’s Changing Native and Rural Health
“Healthcare is broken.” We hear that all time, don’t we? And magic bullet solutions don’t exist anywhere except in someone’s imagination. So it’s understandable that there’s been a lot of excitement about the $50 billion Rural Health Transformation Program – a new source of federal funding for rural healthcare. States applied last fall for a […]
Beyond the Bedside: When a Nontraditional Nursing Voice Reaches the Capitol
by Zoe Sanabria, RN Last week, I walked the marble halls of Florida’s Capitol not as a politician or lobbyist, but as a Family Nurse Practitioner (FNP) student, and as a voice for thousands of nursing students whose futures depend on decisions made far beyond the classroom. I had the opportunity to participate in […]
