Federal officials recently warned that ''nightmare bacteria'' are becoming increasingly resistant to even the strongest antibiotics, and represent a growing threat to hospitals and nursing homes nationwide, according to this article from The Washington Post. At a news conference, Thomas Frieden, director of the Centers for Disease Control and ...

ADVANCE for LTC Management regularly features articles on infection control. Many of those articles have mentioned C. difficile infections in the past. And C. diff, as it's known in the infection control vernacular, is in the news yet again: In fact, the CDC has issued a report that C. diff infections are at record-high rates in health care ...

One-fifth of Medicare nursing home patients with advanced Alzheimer's or other dementias were sent to hospitals or other nursing homes for questionable reasons in their final months, according to a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine. Researchers from Harvard University and Dartmouth Medical School studied almost 475,000 ...

The American Geriatrics Society's newest clinical tool, the AGS Guide to the Management of Psychotic Disorders and Neuropsychiatric Symptoms of Dementia in Older Adults, is now available on the AGS Web site, according to an AGS news release.  The guide gives health care professionals an overview of the risk factors, evaluation and ...

It seems that older adults are overtreated and overtested, according to a recent post on Paula Span's New Old Age blog on The New York Times Web site. Span discusses how nearly 20 percent of elderly women with advanced dementia are subjected to mammograms. She also highlights how older diabetics are urged to maintain very low blood sugar levels ...

An OIG audit found that almost one in seven elderly nursing home residents, nearly all of them with dementia, are given powerful atypical antipsychotic drugs even though the medicines increase the risks of death and are not approved for such treatments, according to a New York Times article. More than half of the antipsychotics paid for by the ...

A study at two nursing homes suggests doctors commonly prescribe unnecessary antibiotics to elderly people with suspected urinary tract infections, according to this Reuters Health article on MSNBC.com. In fact, two out of every five residents with urinary issues received inappropriate drugs, which increased their chances of developing a ...

In the November/December edition of Scientific American-Mind, one of the feature articles discusses an often misdiagnosed illness called Frontal-Temporal Dementia (FTD).  Formerly called Pick's Disease, a disease that has been known about for a number of years but not often diagnosed, it is a form of dementia that obliterates the ...

In her blog post, ''Respecting Elders'' at http://transformingcaregiving.blogspot.com/2010/10/alive-n-kickin-respecting-elders.html, Holly Whiteside writes: ''I recently gave a keynote address to a local caregivers' expo. During the Q&A, one woman raised her hand and said, ''What do you think about the way people talk down to old people?'' I ...

Did you know that this is National Gerontological week? Here are some ways to celebrate, courtesy of the NGNA. Obtain a proclamation from the mayor of your town proclaiming October 1- 8 as National Gerontological Nurses Week. Develop a calendar of events. Plan to honor your colleagues with a recognition award (certificate or plaque). ...