Worker News and Research

RSS

Fresenius Medical Care's Patient Travel Service to provide free dialysis scheduling assistance to travelling patients

As thousands of people plan getaways for the fall and winter travel seasons, easy access to healthcare is a concern for many travelers with chronic health conditions who require life-sustaining treatments. Twenty-six million Americans suffer from chronic kidney disease, and more than 355,000 of them require dialysis every few days to stay alive.

24 Aug 2009

Mom & Baby mobile health centers serve pregnant women, teenagers and children

Four years after the hurricanes of 2005, four March of Dimes Mom & Baby Mobile Health Centers(R) serve as the primary health care providers for thousands of pregnant women, teenagers and children living along the Gulf Coast.

24 Aug 2009

Safe injection practices for improving safety to be discussed at the Joint Commission Infection Control Conference

Premier healthcare alliance’s Gina Pugliese, vice president of Premier’s Safety Institute, will share insights on safe injection practices to improve patient and worker safety at the Joint Commission Infection Control Conference on August 21 in Crystal City, Va.

21 Aug 2009

Nurses and clinical officers in Africa know when a person should receive antiretroviral therapy

Nurses and clinical officers (non-physician clinicians, NPCs) are capable of determining when a person should receive antiretroviral therapy (ART) for HIV/AIDS. Researchers writing in BioMed Central's open access journal Human Resources for Health suggest that this should ease the strain on overstretched doctors in sub-Saharan Africa and thereby help increase access to antiretroviral therapy, particularly in rural areas.

19 Aug 2009

Schwarzenegger: Health worker discipline delays 'absolutely unacceptable'

"Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger [of California] on Wednesday conceded that long-standing delays in disciplining errant health professionals were 'absolutely unacceptable' and promised broad reforms to better protect patients from dentists, pharmacists, therapists and others accused of misconduct," ProPublica/The Los Angeles Times reports.

13 Aug 2009

High-fat diets just as unhealthy in short term as long term

Short-term memory getting worse? Exercise getting harder? Examine your diet. New research published online in The FASEB Journal showed that in less than 10 days of eating a high-fat diet, rats had a decreased ability to exercise and experienced significant short-term memory loss. These results show an important link between what we eat, how we think, and how our bodies perform.

12 Aug 2009

Stress management to male nursing in Johns Hopkins Nursing Summer issue

The birth of a baby. A diagnosis of breast cancer. The frailty that comes with old age. They are part of the dynamic, complex, and ever-changing landscape that makes up a women's life span. Whatever the ailment, Hopkins nurses are empowering women to embrace healthier lifestyles.

11 Aug 2009

Huge cost of scaling up entire health system in Sub-Saharan Africa

Hiring the nearly 800,000 workers needed to eliminate the staggering shortage of health care professionals in sub-Saharan Africa by 2015 will cost $2.6 billion a year, or 2.5 times the annual funds currently allocated for health worker wages in the region, according to a new study by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, and collaborators from the World Health Organization (WHO) and The World Bank.

6 Aug 2009

Guardian examines U.K. offer to help provide free healthcare in 'world's poorest countries'

The Guardian examines British Prime Minister Gordon Brown's offer "to help some of the world's poorest countries to make healthcare free – starting with pregnant women and children – in a push to widen access to doctors across Africa and Asia."

4 Aug 2009

U.N. program has little effect in reducing deaths among children in Bangladesh, study finds

"The U.N. unveiled a multimillion dollar strategy a dozen years ago to save children worldwide, but a new [Lancet] study has found the program had surprisingly little effect in Bangladesh, one of the world's poorest countries," the Associated Press reports.

31 Jul 2009

In a flu pandemic 1 in 6 health workers will not report for work

With hospitals around Australia struggling to cope with the added burden of swine flu cases researchers say 1 in 6 health workers will not report in for work in a flu pandemic.

28 Jul 2009

Many health won't report in during flu pandemic

A study conducted by researchers at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU) and John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health indicates that approximately 16 percent of public health care workers will not report for work in a pandemic flu emergency, regardless of the severity.

28 Jul 2009

1 in 6 public health workers would not report to work during a pandemic flu emergency

The findings are a significant improvement over a 2005 study conducted by the same research team, in which more than 40 percent of public health employees said they were unlikely to report to work during a pandemic emergency. The new study suggests ways for improving the response of the public health workforce. The results are published in the July 24 edition of the journal PLoS ONE.

24 Jul 2009

Prevention, vaccines addressed at IAS conference

During the 5th International AIDS Society (IAS) Conference on HIV Pathogenesis, Treatment and Prevention meeting in Cape Town, South Africa, scientists "renewed the call for more immediate and urgent effort to be directed towards HIV prevention amid the dominance of treatment interventions and the world-wide search for a quick fix vaccine, which many agree, is years away," Health-e/allAfrica.com reports (Thom, 7/22).

22 Jul 2009

Cost of health care reform emerges as ‘lightning rod’ issue

The cost of health care reform has emerged as a key battle in overhaul efforts. Attention is being paid to how costs will affect specific groups including the middle class and businesses.

16 Jul 2009

Two major companies could join Wal-Mart in backing employer mandate

Target, the second-largest U.S. discount retailer, and Kelly Services, a temporary worker agency, said "they may support Wal-Mart Stores Inc.'s call for mandatory medical insurance by large companies as part of a proposed overhaul of U.S. health care," Bloomberg reports.

15 Jul 2009

Hospira receives FDA approval for Azithromycin for injection

Hospira, Inc has announced it has received U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval for a 500 mg vial of azithromycin for injection in the ADD-Vantage System.

30 Jun 2009

e-health enables more personalized medicine; group fights for digital patient rights

Tonia Odom, a 35-year-old patient with rheumatoid arthritis, a sick father and a young son, each of whom has multiple health problems, has found some relief to the problems of managing her families' array of illnesses in at a Duke University clinic that's a model of the "medical home" approach to medicine, the New York Times reports.

23 Jun 2009

Times of Zambia/allAfrica.com examines maternal mortality

The Times of Zambia/allAfrica.com examines abortion in Zambia and efforts to reduce maternal mortality. "Unsafe abortions are one of the top five causes of maternal mortality in Zambia," writes the newspaper, which adds they are one factor keeping the country from meeting the U.N. Millennium Development Goal target of reducing maternal mortality.

9 Jun 2009

Disparities in self-monitoring of blood glucose among low-income ethnic minority populations with diabetes

Income appears to play a crucial role in how often diabetes patients on insulin check their daily blood glucose levels, and low-income minorities check less often than others, a new research study finds.