By Barbara Ficarra, RN, BSN, MPA Thanks to Laura Landro for shining light on unsafe injections in her WSJ blog, “Unsafe Injection Practices Persist Despite Education Efforts.” Landro writes: “A new push is underway to eliminate unsafe injection practices, which remain a persistent safety problem despite years of efforts to educate clinicians about the risks of re-using needles, syringes and drug vials. In the U.S., failure to follow safe practices in delivering intravenous medications and…
Read More...Speaking Event at NY City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene – Patient Empowerment
By Barbara Ficarra, RN, BSN, MPA I’m excited to be a keynote speaker at the NY City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene on October 5, 2010 in New York City. I will be speaking at the Bureau of Tuberculosis Control–2010 Tuberculosis MD Seminar. The topic of my speaking presentation is: “Patient Empowerment: Engaging Our Patients to Take Charge of Their Health.” More info coming soon. —– New York City Department of Health and Mental…
Read More...H1N1 Swine Flu Vaccine Follow-up: Our Reader Writes…
By Barbara Ficarra, RN, BSN, MPA — Ms. Parker writes: “Thank you again for your answers, you have been so very helpful in my decision to get vaccinated against swine flu. I am proud to say I received the vaccine a few days ago and everything was absolutely fine, I had no side effects at all. I am otherwise very healthy other than asthma but being vaccinated has given me peace of mind and will…
Read More...How to Avoid Chaos in the Hospital and Get the Care You Need
A Registered Nurse’s Tips to Stay Safe in a Hospital By Barbara Ficarra, RN, BSN, MPA A hospital can be extremely frightening and overwhelming. Hospitals generally are loud, cold, and sterile mazes of chaos. Unfortunately medical errors happen and it’s estimated that nearly 100,000 people die of medical errors each year. According to the CDC, “In American hospitals alone, healthcare-associated infections account for an estimated 1.7 million infections and 99,000 associated deaths each year.” As…
Read More...After 40 Years, Patients Still Crave Attention and Respect
The Doctor/Patient Relationship By Barbara Ficarra, RN, BSN, MPA What do patients want? Despite the technological promises of the Health 2.0 movement, in some ways it’s really no different today than it was forty years ago. An article that appeared in Time Magazine on May 13, 1966 says: Today, Americans get far better medical care than ever before; as for the rest [of the doctor-patient relationship], they are often lucky to get as much as…
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