The following is a guest blog from Anthony Cirillo:  Accountable care organizations and medical homes are terms being bantered about with reform. An accountable care organization (ACO) would consist of a group of healthcare entities that share responsibility for the quality and cost of care to a defined population. People I have ...

An organizational environment that provides open communication and joint problem solving between staff and managers is associated with less role conflict among nurses. Job dissatisfaction and turnover are the primary significant negative organizational outcomes of role conflict. Other negative outcomes include absenteeism, less professional ...

How do we get to the heart of learning about the people we care for?  How can we understand what their unique needs and struggles are?  How do we create training programs that make an impact on the care that we provide?  How do we learn from family members? Recently I had the opportunity to attend a seminar given by my ...

Over the summer I made a major purchase at a home improvement retailer. To make a long story short, the vendor: lost my order data due to a computer power failure, delayed product delivery, ordered the wrong size product, forgot to collect payment from me while I was in the store (which meant I had to make an extra trip to the store), allowed the ...

In my last post on Sara Gruen's book ''Water for Elephants,'' I discussed the book's main character, 93-year-old Jacob, who lives in a long-term care facility. In the chapter where Jacob recounts his family's decision to send him to the facility, he says the dialogue between him and his children went like this: ''It's not a nursing home, they ...