Medication administration is a high-risk process that requires critical thinking, efficient decision-making, attention to detail, and a foundational knowledge of basic pharmacology. The process is not a single task but a cascade of events that include handling, ordering, preparing, dispensing, administering, and monitoring. Although nurses’ involvement varies at each phase, the risk for errors always exists, and consequences can have a lifelong impact on patients, families, and healthcare workers.
Veterans exposed to toxic substances in service will have more access to cancer care and other medical assistance thanks to the recently signed Sergeant First Class Heath Robinson Honoring our Promise to Address Comprehensive Toxics Act. The PACT Act passed with bipartisan effort by Congress in August 2022 and later signed into law.
More than two-thirds of patients with hormone receptor–positive metastatic breast cancer respond to personalized immunotherapy with tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes and more than half of those treated experience measurable tumor shrinkage, according to study findings published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology.
Both a patient’s cancer and their subsequent treatment plan can affect their bodies, including pelvic health and sexual functioning. A pelvic health physical therapist can help combat—or even prevent—those issues as a member of the interprofessional cancer care team.
The National Institutes of Health launched the Climate Change and Health Initiative to expand knowledge and address key challenges regarding the environment’s impact on health and conditions like cancer in a collaborating all-hands-on-deck scientific effort, Richard Woychik, PhD, director of the NIH’s National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, said in a blog post in July 2022.
As a term, sexuality is linked to sexual functioning—the ability to engage in sexual behaviors and the body’s physiologic response—as well as sexual reproduction and fertility. But those biologic aspects are just a small part of a person’s overall sexuality. Sexual health is a state of physical, emotional, mental, and social well-being and requires a positive and respectful approach to sexuality and sexual relationships.
On September 27, 2022, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration reported Eugia US, LLC’s, voluntary recall of AuroMedics acyclovir sodium injection 500 mg per 10 ml (50 mg/ml) single-dose vial to the consumer level because of reported presence of a dark red, brown, and black particulate inside the vial.
On September 30, 2022, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration granted accelerated approval to futibatinib (Lytgobi®) for adult patients with previously treated, unresectable, locally advanced or metastatic intrahepatic cholangiocarcinoma harboring fibroblast growth factor receptor 2 gene fusions or other rearrangements.
A new Medicaid health home benefit could improve access to person-centered care management, care coordination, and support resources for children with complex medical conditions and their families—but only if states understand how to opt into offering it. In August 2022, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, through the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, released guidelines for states to better understand the benefit and its requirements.
Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, the American Nurses Foundation has monitored its effect on the nursing profession through a series of surveys, the most recent of which collected specific information on staffing, scheduling, organizational support, and solutions. More than 11,000 nurses contributed to the survey, but those who identified as retired were not included in the data analysis. As I read the findings, the report’s subhead—Nurses Not Feeling Heard, Ongoing Staffing and Workplace Issues Contributing to Unhealthy Work Environment—caught my attention.