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Four years after a drug-resistant strain of gonorrhea surfaced in Japan, the World Health Organization reports that the infection has spread worldwide. The World Health Organization is renewing its call to raise awareness about the disease and for the development of new treatments to curb its reach.

Ineffective handoff communication presents a critical threat to patient safety. An estimated 80% of serious medical errors involve miscommunication during handoffs and transfers. These errors can lead to patient harm and increased costs. To help prevent such problems, The Joint Commission Center for Transforming Healthcare has released a new handoff communications tool.

Elsevier, a world-leading provider of scientific, technical and medical information products and services, announced the winners of the Mosby’s Suite “Superheroes of Nursing” contest, designed for peers to single out real-life superheroes in the nursing profession. Created by Elsevier in 2011, the contest is part of a nationwide campaign to recognize nurses who represent four key categories – The Validators, The Achievers, The Educators and The Protectors – and identify how they address the issues they face daily.

With the growth in electronic health records (EHRs), more and more facilities are gathering huge amounts of digitized patient data. Much of the responsibility for patient data input has been taken on by nurses who previously recorded patient information in paper-based formats. Although accurate documentation is essential for patient care, computerized patient data also enhances quality for the entire healthcare system.

Noroviruses are the leading cause of viral gastroenteritis, affecting an estimated 21 million people in the U.S. each year. This highly contagious virus can take a toll on a patient, producing nausea, acute-onset vomiting, watery diarrhea, abdominal cramps, and other problems. An outbreak can have a massive clinical impact, causing life-threatening complications for patients while disrupting healthcare facilities and impacting costs.

Integrating ExitCare with Elsevier’s suite of clinical decision support solutions provides a comprehensive set of offerings – available independently and through an EHR – to help clinicians improve patient outcomes, manage costly readmissions and control healthcare expenditures

Blasting germs with beams of light or replacing surfaces with an electrically conductive metal may sound far-fetched, but these practices are becoming reality as hospitals search for more innovative ways to combat infection.

Medication errors are the most common errors in health care. In fact, the average hospital patient can be subjected to at least one medication error per hospital day, and these errors may account for up to 7,000 hospital deaths every year. Fortunately, by relying on clinical reasoning and appropriate actions to intercept these errors before they reach patients, nurses can prevent many medication errors before they occur.

As state legislatures continue to slash budgets for mental health services at the same time that the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression continues to take a toll on the population, emergency departments (EDs) across the U.S. are confronting a drastic increase in psychiatric emergencies. Already overburdened with uninsured patients whose deteriorating conditions force them to seek medical care, EDs are being inundated with mentally ill patients who have nowhere else to turn.