DiversityNursing Blog

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After roughly 40 years, U.S. health regulators are seeking data to see if the cocktail of ingredients in antiseptics used in hospitals, clinics and nursing homes are as safe and effective as they were once considered.

The Food and Drug Administration said on Thursday it is asking manufacturers for more data, including on absorption, potential hormonal effects and bacterial resistance of thehe 'active' ingredients in antiseptics, to see if they are still appropriate for use in a health care setting.

Since the review of health care antiseptics in the 1970s, things have changed, the FDA noted, alluding to a shift in frequency of use, hospitals' infection control practices, technology and safety standards. (1.usa.gov/1EUrzCd)

An independent panel of experts to the FDA raised similar concerns last year. In 2013, the regulator issued a warning to manufacturers, saying it was aware of at least four deaths and multiple infections caused by over-the-counter antiseptics. (1.usa.gov/1DNxOSp)

Commonly used active ingredients in health care antiseptics include alcohol and iodine. Data suggests that, for at least some of these ingredients, the systemic exposure is higher than previously thought, the agency noted.

"We're going to try to answer their questions in great detail as called for, but we believe the FDA already has sufficient data on these products," said Brian Sansoni, a spokesman for American Cleaning Institute (ACI), a trade association for the cleaning products industry.

The FDA said no health care antiseptics were going to be pulled off shelves as of now, and that their review excluded home-use antiseptics such as antibacterial soap and hand sanitizers.

The new data request relates only to health care antiseptics covered by the over-the-counter monograph, a kind of "recipe book" covering acceptable ingredients, doses, formulations and labeling. Once a final monograph is implemented, companies can market their product without having to go through the FDA.

Companies will have one year to submit the data, which the FDA will evaluate before determining if the OTC monograph needs to be revised.

"We're concerned if the FDA takes maybe a too narrow view regarding the safety and effectiveness data – depending how the final rule ends up – they could take effective products or ingredients off the shelves," Sansoni said.

Alexandra Wilson Pecci

www.healthleadersmedia.com 

Hospitals have a broader responsibility to elderly trauma patients than just the time spent within their walls, and should consider updating their strategies to ensure the best outcomes for these patients, research suggests.

Elderly trauma patients are increasingly likely to be discharged to skilled nursing facilities, rather than inpatient rehabilitation facilities (IRF), finds a study in The Journal of Trauma and Acute Care Surgery published in the April issue.

Discharge to skilled nursing facilities for trauma patients has, however, been associated with higher mortality compared with discharge to inpatient rehabilitation facilities or home.

Researchers wanted to "better characterize trends in trauma discharges and compare them with a population that is equally dependent on post-discharge rehabilitation." They not only examined trauma discharges, but also discharges of stroke patients, who have been taking up more inpatient rehabilitation facility beds.

Using data from 2003–2009 data from the National Trauma Data Bank and National Inpatient Sample, the retrospective cohort study found that elderly trauma patients were 34% more likely to be discharged to a skilled nursing facility and 36% less likely to be discharged to an inpatient rehabilitation facility. By comparison, stroke patients were 78% more likely to be discharged to an inpatient rehabilitation facility.

This is despite the findings of a 2011  JAMA study of patients in Washington State showing that "Discharge to a skilled nursing facility at any age following trauma admission was associated with a higher risk of subsequent mortality."

The Journal of Trauma and Acute Care Surgery study notes that "elderly trauma patients are the fastest-growing trauma population," which leads to the question: Where should hospitals be investing their money and time to ensure the best outcomes for these patients?

"I think hospitals should be investing in post-acute care discharge planning," says Patricia Ayoung-Chee, MD, MPH, Assistant Professor, Surgery, NYU School of Medicine, and lead author of the study. "What's the best post-acute care facility for patients? And it may end up needing to be individualized."

She says reimbursement and insurance factors have "played more of a role than anybody sort of thought about" in discharges, rather than what is always necessarily best for patients.

For example, to be classified for payment under Medicare's IRF prospective payment system, at least 60% of all cases at inpatient rehab facilities must have at least one of 13 conditions that CMS has determined typically require intensive rehabilitation therapy, such as stroke and hip fracture.

"I think the unintended consequence is that we may be discharging patients to the best post-acute care setting, but we also may not be," Ayoung-Chee said by email, and that question "is only now being looked at in-depth."

She says hospitals should think about truly appropriate discharge planning upfront.

Proactive Hospitals
For instance, at admission, hospitals can find out who the patient lives with, or what their social support system is like. If they have a broken dominant hand after a fall, will they be able to get help with their groceries? Do they live alone? Will they be able to use the bathroom?

Caring for patients also doesn't end when patients leave the hospital, she adds. Hence the study's title: "Beyond the Hospital Doors: Improving Long-term Outcomes for Elderly Trauma Patients."

Ayoung-Chee says the next step in her research is to look at a more longitudinal picture, following individual patients to see what factors play into their function or lack of function.

But hospitals can do some of that work on a smaller scale, with internal audits to determine which facilities have the best post-acute care outcomes. For instance, they could spend time examining which facilities had fewer readmissions compared to others, as well as how long it took patients to get home and their how satisfied they were with their care.

Other research is also trying to determine which facilities are best for elderly trauma patients. For instance, a second study, also published in The Journal of Trauma and Acute Care Surgery, shows that geriatric trauma patients have improved outcomes when they are treated at centers that manage a higher proportion of older patients.

One of the overarching takeaways from Ayoung-Chee's research is the idea that hospitals have a broader responsibility to patients than just the time spent within their walls.

"What we do doesn't just end upon patient discharge. If we truly want to get the biggest bang from our buck, we're going to have to think about the entire continuum," she says.

That could range from working to prevent falls that can cause elderly trauma, to seeing patients through all of the appropriate care needed to expect a good functional outcome. Good healthcare for elderly trauma patients should extend beyond the parameters of morbidity and mortality, and toward returning patients to their original functional status and, ultimately, independence, says Ayoung-Chee.

"Our long-lasting effect as healthcare providers isn't just what we do in the hospital," she says. "And we have to start thinking outside."

By Tracey Boyd

http://news.nurse.com

Informatics programs that allow med/surg nurses to cut down on documentation and increase patient safety at the touch of a button are becoming more essential in today’s fast-paced healthcare environment.

“Most all nurses use the electronic health record in their daily practice,” said Jill Arzouman, MSN, RN, ACNS-BC, CMSRN, president of the Academy of Medical-Surgical Nurses and clinical nurse specialist in surgical oncology at the University of Arizona Medical Center, Tucson. The university has computer stations inside each patient room for access to charting, she said, and some hospitals are investing in iPads to facilitate charting. Arzouman is a DNP candidate.

Med/surg nurses at New York’s Montefiore Health System in the Bronx use informatics throughout the day to document patients’ electronic medical records and provide direct care to patients, said Maureen Scanlan, MSN, RN-BC, vice president, nursing and patient care services and former director of informatics for the health system. “Electronic documentation has provided us the ability to track and trend patient outcomes data in a more efficient manner. We have the added benefit of decision support alerts to guide practice and documentation. We then can leverage information collected from the records to streamline workflows and improve patient safety.” 

According to a HealthIt.gov study “Benefits of EHRs,” (www.healthit.gov/providers-professionals/improved-diagnostics-patient-outcomes), having quick, up-to-date access to patients’ information can also reduce errors and support better patient outcomes by keeping a record of a patient’s medications or allergies, checking for problems whenever a new medication is prescribed and alerting the clinician to potential conflicts. 

“The ability to clearly read a medication order printed from a computer is vastly different than trying to decipher a handwritten order,” said Arzouman.

In addition, staff can revisit patient information at any time. 

“Many of the systems are very intuitive and allow the entire interdisciplinary team to document and communicate with precision and ease,” she said “A medical/surgical nurse may be busy with another patient but she or he can go back and read documentation from the dietitian who may have visited the patient at the same time.“

A reduction in medication errors was the catalyst for a project using computerized EHRs at Abington (Penn.) Health. When staff realized that patients with heart failure were being readmitted largely because of incorrect medication lists upon discharge, Diane Humbrecht, MSN, RN-BC, chief nursing informatics officer, devised a plan to evaluate the accuracy of such lists. 

Humbrecht, a DNP candidate who is also a chapter director for the American Nursing Informatics Association, has worked in both cardiac and home care during her career and said she had experienced heart failure patients going home with medication lists that were either incorrect or missing information. 

“It was very frustrating for both the patient and the nurse who is trying to follow up,” she said.

As part of her DNP program, Humbrecht decided to focus on transitions of care for this vulnerable population to help correct their discharge medication instructions and reduce their risk for readmission.

“As I began researching, I saw medication errors on medication discharge lists were the main reasons patients were readmitted to the hospital,” she said. •

Her findings were validated, she said, when the transition nurses who were involved in the postop discharge process informed her of problems with patients going home with incorrect medication lists. “Medication reconciliation and discharge instructions are done by the physician, but the nurses are the ones who review them and they were finding these errors after discharge,” she said. 

Humbrecht implemented three changes to remedy the situation. The first step was to bring the pharmacists in on the front end. Pharmacists already performed patient rounding on units, but they were not involved in medication reconciliation at all, she said. The new protocol called for pharmacists to come in within 24 hours of a patient’s admittance to review the co-medications. The input from the pharmacists on the front end was crucial. “The pharmacists had to change about 80% of the lists,” Humbrecht said.

Next, upon discharge, the nurses perform a thorough review of the co-medications list that was corrected by the pharmacist. “If anything needed to be corrected, the nurse then called the physician to tell them they need to change a medication,” Humbrecht said. “Once that was done, it caused the physician to perform medication reconciliation again, automatically updating the entire medication list.” 

The transition nurses were the final piece to the puzzle. Prior to the new protocol, upon calling the discharged patient and finding any errors, the nurse would make notations on paper. If the patient was readmitted, and the change was not transferred onto the patient’s EHR, the incorrect information was still in the system. Now, using the computerized medication list, any errors are updated immediately in the system. 

The changes worked. Since implementation last fall, the transition nurses have found one error on the medication list of a discharged patient, Humbrecht said. 

“We figured if we can get the home medication list correct on the front end by using the pharmacists and double-checked and changed as needed by the nurses on the back end, then the transition nurses should find less errors,” she said.

Besides documentation and patient safety, med/surg nurses are using informatics to enhance patient care. “Our staff nurses provide expert advice when we are defining a new process for delivering patient care,” said Scanlan, who holds board certification in nursing informatics. “A recent implementation of a new lab system that changed the way specimens are collected was successful due to workflow and hardware recommendations from the frontline staff.” 

Scanlan said staff nurses recently have contributed to revising the electronic skin assessment template as well. 

“Although not a clear time saver,” she said, “it has significantly improved the ability to track, trend and communicate hospital-acquired pressure ulcers [and] has supported performance improvement efforts that are led by the nursing staff.”

Arzouman also noted innovative uses. “For a postoperative patient who needs to continue to ambulate and exercise while at home, a medical/surgical nurse can teach the patient how to track his activity using a smart phone app,” she said. “I have had the opportunity to trial an app on my smart phone that translates basic medical information into many different languages without needing to use a translator. For something simple like ‘Hi, my name is Jill and I will be the nurse coordinating your care today,’ it is a very helpful tool.” 

By David McNamee

A new report finds that by 2100, there will be more people alive on the planet than has ever previously been predicted. We investigate what the consequences these extra bodies may have for maintaining public health.

The potentially catastrophic consequences of an exponentially growing global population is a favorite subject for writers of dystopian fiction.

The most recent example, Utopia - a forthcoming David Fincher-directed series for HBO - won critical acclaim in its original incarnation on UK television for its depiction of a conspiracy-laden modern world where the real threat to public health is not Ebola or other headline-friendly communicable viruses, but overpopulation.

Fears over the ever-expanding number of human bodies on our planet are not new and have been debated by researchers and policy makers for decades, if not centuries. However, recent research by University of Washington demographer Prof. Adrian Raftery - using modern statistical modeling and the latest data on population, fertility and mortality - has found that previous projections on population growth may have been conservative.

"Our new projections are probabilistic, and we find that there will probably be between 9.6 and 12.3 billion people in 2100," Prof. Raftery told Medical News Today. "This projection is based on a statistical model that uses all available past data on fertility and mortality from all countries in a systematic way, unlike previous projections that were based on expert assumptions."

Prof. Raftery's figure places up to an additional 5 billion people more on the Earth by 2100 than have been previously calculated.

A key finding of the study is that the fertility rate in Africa is declining much more slowly than has been previously estimated, which Prof. Raftery tells us "has major long-term implications for population."

Fertility rates declining more slowly in Africa than previously reported

A 2003 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) report found that, in sub-Saharan Africa, both fertility and mortality rates were high, with the proportion of people aged over 65 expected to remain small, increasing from an estimated 2.9% in 2000 to 3.7% in 2030.

The CDC report notes that fertility rates declined in developing countries during the preceding 30 years, following a 20th century trend among developed countries. The pattern established by developed countries - and presumed to follow in developing countries - was that countries shift from high fertility and high mortality rates to low fertility and delayed mortality.

This transition starts with declining infant and childhood mortality as a result of improved public health measures. Improvements in infant and childhood mortality contribute to longer life expectancy and a younger population.

This trend of adults living longer, healthier lives is typically followed by a decline in fertility rates. The CDC report suggested that by 2030, there would be similar proportions of younger and older people in developing countries, by that point mirroring the age distribution in developed countries circa 1990.

Prof. Raftery's research, however, notes that in Nigeria - Africa's most populous country - each woman has an average of six children, and in the last 5 years, the child mortality rate has fallen from 136 per 1,000 live births to 117. This works out as a population increase of 20 people per square mile over the same timespan.

How will population growth affect developing countries?

But what does this mean for countries where the public health system is already stretched to breaking point - as has been demonstrated by the recent Ebola epidemic?

"Rapid population growth is likely to increase the burden on the public health service proportionally," answered Prof. Raftery.

"There are already big public health needs and challenges in high-fertility countries, and rapid population growth will make it even harder to meet them." However, if the fertility rate declines faster, Prof. Raftery suggests that high-fertility countries can reap "a demographic dividend."

He explained:

"This is a period of about a generation during which the number of dependents (children and old people) is small. This frees up resources for public health, education, infrastructure and environmental protection, and can make it easier for the economy to grow. This can happen even while the population is still increasing."

Does this suggest that an increasing population is not quite as much of a threat, but that it is more specifically the accelerations and decelerations in fertility rates that provide warning signs to future public health crises?

"Following a long run of an increasing human population growth rate, over the past half century the rate has been halved from about 2% to about 1%," Darryl Holman, professor of biological anthropology at the University of Washington, explained to MNT.

"The turnaround is quite remarkable," he said. "But as long as the growth rate remains positive, our species will eventually reach numbers and densities where technological solutions cannot ameliorate resource scarcity."

High population density leads to a much higher rate of contact between humans, which means that communicable diseases - ranging from the common cold to Dengue fever - can be much more easily transmitted.

And more people means greater efforts are needed to control waste management and provide clean water. If these needs cannot be adequately met, then diarrheal diseases become much more common, resulting in what Prof. Holman described to the University of Washington's news website The Daily UW as a "huge, huge, huge difference in mortality rates."

Taking a more general view, "the anticipated increase in the number of older persons will have dramatic consequences for public health, the health care financing and delivery systems, informal caregiving, and pension systems," wrote the authors of the CDC's 2003 report.

Overpopulation and the environment

"Can we assume that life on earth as we know it can continue no matter what the environmental conditions?," asked the authors of a 2001 Johns Hopkins School of Public Health report on the health consequences of population growth.

The Johns Hopkins report quoted figures demonstrating that unclean water and poor sanitation kill over 12 million people every year, while air pollution kills 3 million. In 64 of 105 developing countries, population has grown faster than food supplies.

By 2025, the report claimed, humankind could be using over 90% of all available freshwater, leaving just 10% for the world's plants and animals.

Prof. Holman summarizes the writings of experts Joel Cohen, E.O. Wilson, Paul Ehrlich and Ronald Lee, who have argued that the consequences of long-term environmental degradation - "specifically rising sea levels, disruption of agriculture and the increased frequency of extreme weather events resulting from anthropogenic climate change, exacerbated by resource scarcity" - create social problems that lead to social unrest.

With more people living together than ever before, it seems inevitable that this compounded social unrest would lead to increased warfare and fighting for resources.

According to the Johns Hopkins researchers, about half of the world's population currently occupies a coastal strip 200 kilometers wide - which means that 50% of us are squeezed together on just 10% of the world's land surface.

The projected flooding of these coastal regions as a result of global warming and rising sea levels could displace millions of people, result in widespread droughts and disrupt agriculture.

The Johns Hopkins team identified two main courses of action to divert these potential disasters.

Firstly - sustainable development. The report authors argued this should include:

• More efficient use of energy
• Managing cities better
• Phasing out subsidies that encourage waste
• Managing water resources and protecting freshwater sources
• Harvesting forest products rather than destroying forests
• Preserving arable land and increasing food production
• Managing coastal zones and ocean fisheries
• Protecting biodiversity hotspots.

The second vital area of action is the stabilization of population through good-quality family planning, which "would buy time to protect natural resources."

How to reduce fertility in a morally acceptable way?

Commenting on Prof. Raftery's finding that we may be welcoming an additional 5 billion individuals onto the planet by 2100 than had previously been estimated - a potential global population of 12.3 billion people - Prof. Holman admits that "it is difficult to know what the public health effects will be."

He explains:

"By then, we may see severe petroleum and fresh water resource shortages, climate changes that affect agriculture patterns that, in turn, affect food supplies. Reducing fertility in socially and morally acceptable ways seems like one public health strategy to avoid - or at least postpone - testing some of these limits."

In Utopia, a sinister governmental organization proposes to sterilize a large percentage of the population by rolling out a secretly modified vaccine in response to a manufactured flu pandemic. Obviously, that is not a socially or morally acceptable strategy for reducing fertility - but what is?

Experts consider boosting the education of girls in developing countries to be a prime solution.

As well as acquiring more control over their reproductive life, an educated female workforce should have more opportunities of employment and of earning a living wage. Studies report that the children of educated women also have better chances of survival and will become educated themselves. This pattern continuing across generations is associated with a decline in fertility rates.

A 2011 article by the Earth Policy Institute (EPI), analyzing data from the United Nations (UN), states that "countries in which more children are enrolled in school - even at the primary level - tend to have strikingly lower fertility rates."

In particular:

"Female education is especially important. Research consistently shows that women who are empowered through education tend to have fewer children and have them later. If and when they do become mothers, they tend to be healthier and raise healthier children, who then also stay in school longer. They earn more money with which to support their families, and contribute more to their communities' economic growth. Indeed, educating girls can transform whole communities."

The relationship between education, fertility and national poverty is a direct one. As the EPI authors add: "When mortality rates decline quickly but fertility rates fail to follow, countries can find it harder to reduce poverty."

The UN's 2012 Revision of the world population prospects report suggested if we make rapid reductions in family size, then it may still be possible to constrain the global population to 8 billion by 2045.

No projections are set in stone - all are contingent on what extent fertility rates will sway over the next century. And, as Prof. Holman pointed out to us, the nature of the threat posed by overpopulation has "been vigorously debated for over 200 years" with experts still not in complete accord.

For instance, in the 1980s, said Prof. Holman, the economist Julian Simon and ecologist Paul Ehrlich went on tour together, with a series of debates about the consequences of population growth.

"Ehrlich argued that continued population growth would lead to disaster for humans. Simon argued that population growth provided more people to invent new solutions to the problems confronting humans," said Prof. Holman, adding:

"Given the trends to this point, Simon has been 'more right.' One simple measure of this is mortality rates, which have decreased for most human groups. The flaw in Simon's argument may well be that we have never hit the limits of our finite earth. Positive population growth guarantees that we will, someday, hit some hard limits."

"So that," Prof. Holman concluded, "is the long term."

Source: www.medicalnewstoday.com