6/30/03
A shortage of nurses continues to be a serious problem in the health care field. Health officials in East Texas are trying to do something about it. They are recruiting as young as high school.

Registered Nurse Coordinator Melanie Miller said, "I think it is a good opportunity especially for students who have never done anything in the health care field. It gives them the hands on training on a day to day basis."

6/26/03
The most powerful incentive for reducing medical errors is to align payments for service with the successful provision of safe, high quality care, Joint Commission President Dennis S. O'Leary, M.D. told a United States Senate Committee on June 11th.

"Health care professionals, who work under continuous high stress, will make errors," says Dr. O'Leary. "The goal is to prevent those errors from reaching or affecting the patient."

6/23/03
Code of Ethics with Interpretive Statements: An Independent Study Module will familiarize nurses with the nine major planks of the current Code of Ethics and the accompanying interpretive statements. It will orient nurses to the ethical code and how it affects their own nursing practice; facilitate nurses' ability to use the Code as a guide; and demonstrate how it directs the profession of nursing as a whole.

6/20/03
HHS Secretary Tommy G. Thompson announced 19 new grants totaling nearly $11 million to help communities provide comprehensive health care services to an estimated 150,000 people, including many without health insurance.

The grants continue President Bush's five-year initiative to expand health centers. Launched in 2002, the initiative will add 1,200 new and expanded health center sites and increase the number of people served annually from about 10 million to 16 million by 2006.

6/19/03
NYTimes.com Article:
June 19, 2003
By DONALD G. McNEIL Jr.

ATLANTA, June 18 - Government officials said today that both the civilian and military smallpox vaccination programs had virtually come to a halt, the military program because it has vaccinated everyone it can and the civilian program because few people volunteered for it.

6/18/03
In response to the growing shortage of nurses, Fisk and Vanderbilt universities are launching a program that offers an undergraduate nursing degree at the historically black liberal arts college, using the teaching facilities.

Tennessee Center for Nursing Executive Director Ann Duncan hailed the new partnership as a quick way to begin meeting the challenge of a Tennessee nursing shortage that has been estimated at 9,400 by 2020.

6/17/03
The newly revised 2004 Joint Commission pre-publication standards are now posted on the JCAHO website, allowing individuals the opportunity to familiarize themselves with the standards before the accreditation manuals are published in September. A crosswalk is also available to help users navigate between current and new requirements.

The standards become effective January 1, 2004, for the ambulatory care, behavioral health care, home care, hospital, laboratory and long term accreditation programs. The standards for assisted living, critical access hospitals, health care networks and office-based surgery will be revised in 2005.

6/16/03
Health care spending per privately insured person increased 9.6 percent in 2002, a slight reduction from the 10 percent increase in 2001. Health care spending grew nearly four times faster than the U.S. economy grew in 2002. Growth in hospital spending accounted for the largest portion of the overall increase (51 percent) for the second straight year.

6/13/03
ANA was recently appointed to the influential Council of State Governments (CSG) Health Policy Task Force. The Task Force serves as a forum for state executive and legislative officials to analyze and discuss current issues affecting health policy in the states, to identify trends and to share information on critical health care issues between the public and private sector.

6/11/03
ANA was one of five national organizations that met recently to examine how nurses and pharmacists can work together to improve patient safety. Medical error and patient safety are serious public health concerns that have long been critical issues to both nurses and pharmacists. Both professions are facing continuing workforce shortages.

6/11/03
"Not For Ourselves, But For Others", a video documentary highlighting the National Student Nurses Association's fifty-year journey from a revolutionary idea to a powerful association, has won three major media awards this spring. The video is based on the historical research of the Executive Producer, Dr. Diane J. Mancino.

The video received a score of 85 out of 100 in the 2003 Aegis Awards, and was recognized as a Winner in the Documentary category. It captured the Bronze award in the "Film and Video Production - Biographical" category in this year's WorldFest Houston International Film Festival. And finally, the video won a Bronze award in the 2003 HeSCA (Health Sciences Communications Association) Media Festival.

6/09/03
An extensive multidisciplinary investigation in Wisconsin, Illinois, and Indiana has identified cases of febrile rash illness in persons who had direct or close contact with recently purchased ill prairie dogs. Scientists at the Marshfield clinic in Marshfield, Wisconsin, recovered viral isolates from a patient and a prairie dog and demonstrated a virus morphologically consistent with a poxvirus by electron microscopy.

In the current U.S. outbreak, cases have been reported among residents of Wisconsin (17), northern Illinois (1), and northwestern Indiana (1). Onset of illness among patients began in early May. Patients typically experienced a prodrome consisting of fever, headaches, myalgias, chills, and drenching sweats. Roughly one-third of patients had nonproductive cough.

6/05/03
The complexities of the nursing shortage go far beyond looking at numbers and trying to enhance existing structures. The Center for the Health Professions News has posted an essay that examines eight tangible ways leaders in the care delivery system can restructure health care employment and organizational dynamics to remake the profession of nursing.

6/04/03
"Comprehensive Approaches to Cancer Control: The Public Health Role" will provide participants from a wide constituency of local, state, territorial, tribal, federal, national, and community-based cancer prevention programs with information and skills to identify strategies to increase and improve public health involvement in developing a comprehensive approach to cancer control; identify the public health role for each of the major comprehensive cancer control elements: cancer prevention, early detection, treatment, rehabilitation, and palliation; apply skills to enable the improvement, expansion and use of scientific data for decision making; and to explore innovative community interventions for cancer screening outreach and public education.

6/03/03
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Tommy G. Thompson has announced the awarding of nearly $3.5 million in nursing education grants for disadvantaged students, including those from racial and ethnic minorities that are underrepresented among registered nurses. The 16 Nursing Workforce Diversity grants will go to nursing schools and non-profit organizations to fund scholarships or stipends, pre-entry preparation and retention activities. Members of minority groups account for about 30 percent of the total U.S. population but just over 12 percent of the nursing workforce, according to HHS. Minority enrollment in the nursing schools receiving the grants averages 38 percent, about double the national average of 19 percent.

6/03/03
The Institute of Medicine (IOM) has named three registered nurses (RNs) as Robert Wood Johnson Health Policy Fellows for 2003-2004. The fellowships were awarded to a total of seven mid-career behavioral scientists and health professionals this year. Competing nominations came from academic institutions, organized health-care delivery systems and other community-based providers.

The RNs selected are:

• Pamela Bataillon, R.N., M.S.N, Chief Operating Officer, Visiting Nurse Association of the Midlands, Omaha, NE, and a member of the Nebraska Nurses Association.
• Debra Haire-Joshu, R.N., Ph.D., Professor, Behavioral Science and Health Education, Saint Louis University School of Public Health, Salus Center, St. Louis, MO.
• Ellen-Marie Whelan, R.N., N.P., Ph.D., Assistant Professor, Johns Hopkins University, School of Nursing and Urban Health Institute, Baltimore, MD.