The following is a guest blog from Anthony Cirillo:  

In his latest book Warren Bennis raises questions about the nature of leadership. He asks, "Can a leader both act and be real?" Bill George, a professor at the Harvard Business School, in his book True North, contends that a "journey to leadership" cannot be made without "framing your life story, discerning your passions, finding your leadership ...

One thing soldiers with recent combat experience say is that frequently it's the non-combatants who suffer the worst in battle. This is something like the observation my daughter, a pediatrician, makes about working in the ER:  it's the innocent bystanders that are always hurt the worst.

The same is true when end-of-life issues clash with expectancies arising from a parent's wealth. Issues usually ...

The nursing home, being predominately a medical environment, relies overwhelming on pharmacology for addressing issues of pain management. However, as I have mentioned in previous articles, pain is more than just a biological issue. The subjective nature of the pain response, and the psychology of the individual, too often fails to be adequately considered in pain management. 

More can be done ...

We all know that washing our hands is the best way to guard against the spread of germs. But there are several other measures that can also help protect us from contamination.

 In this Washington Post article, health care professionals share some other tips on how they stop ...

Nearly every nursing home has labor problems related to getting and keeping good staff members. Good help is exceptionally hard to find. Good-hearted nurses and aides, who are willing to work long hours under difficult conditions are often hard to find.  Too many employees means the bottom line of the facility suffers. Too few and sanctions and state citations can result.  Sometimes the line ...

A new study from PHI, a national non-profit organization working to strengthen the health care services workforce, reveals that less than one-fifth of Massachusetts direct-care workers (nursing home assistants, home health care aides and personal care attendants) are enrolled in employer-sponsored health insurance plans.

The primarily reason for the lapse in coverage is that it's too costly. The study ...

While health care reform has long been a topic of discussion in Washington, D.C., it has become a leading policy issue for the Obama Administration and Congress. Health care reform is no longer perceived as peripheral to our larger economic condition. Instead, it is viewed as an integral element to our long term economic stability as a nation.

As lawmakers debate health care reform proposals, it is ...

The CDC is just beginning to understand why so little H1N1 virus is available to Americans in need, reports National Public Radio. First, vaccine manufacturers didn't have the reagents to know how much active ingredient was in production. When they finally got them, they learned that they had far less than they thought. Then machine glitches caused a bottleneck in packaging. Next up, some vaccine manufacturers have ...

Kimberly Broffman is the little girl at the center of it all. She lives in the retirement community with grandparents Jimmy and Judie Stottler because they are her legal guardians.

The community's homeowner's association wants Broffman out because the bylaws of the community ...

Two new studies from The New England Journal of Medicine indicate that nursing home residents may be receiving futile care measures at the end of their lives.

In one study, doctors examined health records of 3,702 nursing-home residents across the nation who started dialysis between 1998 and 2000. While the average age was 73, many had other health ...

With the H1N1 virus lurking in our office (so far, one confirmed case), experts agree that aside from vaccination, the best defense is thorough handwashing. Check out this video from the Washington Post that shows proper handwashing technique.

We hear these messages all ...

A study published in The New England Journal of Medicine questions whether dialysis is the best treatment for nursing home patients. As reported by USA Today, more than half of older nursing home residents die within a year of starting dialysis and "nearly another third experience a significant decline ...

On September 17, 2009, the Oklahoma State Supreme Court overruled a decision by the Court of Appeals involving a licensure proceeding filed against a former nurse's aide by the Department of Health.

In the proceeding, the Department of Health charged that the nurse's aide copied parts of a patient's medical record to bolster her employment discrimination claim and thereby misappropriated the patient's property ...

Given the recent push ...

Howard Gleckman's new book Caring ...

Not only does my doctor's office not have any, but they don't even know if they'll get any at all. Off I went to the Dept. of Health to investigate.

Each provider must put in ...

There is a difference between a novel and a news story in a newspaper, even though both are printed on paper. Similarly, there is a difference between a legal drama like Law and Order, and what actually happens in the nation's criminal courts.  The fact is that those who practice in the criminal and civil justice systems know that these dramas badly depict the actual legal process.

In the early ...

I recently discovered a rather interesting awards ceremony, the IG Nobels. Hosted by the Harvard-based journal Annals of Improbable Research , the awards honor less-than-traditional research and are handed out by real Nobel laureates.

Highlights from this year include:

• The veterinary medicine prize went Catherine Douglas and Peter Rowlinson at Newcastle University's ...

The following is a guest blog from Anthony Cirillo:

Recent Harvard articles have been consistent in their insistence that a different mode of leadership will be required in all businesses going forward. Business as usual got us into the predicament we are in so we can't simply go back to it when the economy recovers. New leadership will be about facilitating, collaborating and empowering. I write a lot about ...