As students, we are taught about laboratory safety and how to handle situations as they arise. However, you never know how you are going to react in a situation until you're faced with it head-on. It's important to realize blood products could pose a threat to you. Even the slightest cut could expose you to a lot of bacteria and ...

While running on my treadmill after work, an interesting headline appeared on the local news channel: ''Hospital nurses reveal risk of cleanliness, Consumer Reports investigates.'' I was shocked to discover that 28 percent of nurses said they had seen problems with cleanliness in the past workweek compared to only 4 percent of patients. We have ...

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 the spread of infection.

My mother, despite her 92 years of age, maintains the mind of a brilliant, life-loving 30-year-old. Unfortunately, her physical self never sipped from the fountain of youth. Her sight has dimmed, her mobility is nil, and she's done battle with cancer, gall bladder disease, vertigo, hypertension, insomnia and muscular and joint ...

The other week I watched a show on the Discovery channel in disbelief. Called Pig Bomb, it described hoards of feral pigs roaming the Southeast. Locals may have cross-bred the American boar with its ill-tempered cousin, the Eurasian wild boar, for hunting. A six hundred pound, sixty mile per hour beast with tusks would be hard to shoot, never ...

In attempt to increase awareness on infection prevention and call attention to the need to protect patients and the public from the risk of healthcare-associated infections, the Association for Professionals in Infection Control and Epidemiology (APIC), in collaboration with 3M Health Care, is pushing for statewide recognition of International ...

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 in their ability to perform simple tasks, ...

Through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, healthcare facilities should be able to ramp up their infection control programs.According to the American Medical Association's website, the ''Prevention and Wellness'' section of the healthcare provisions of the stimulus package allows for ''$1 billion in funding for wellness and ...

Results of two recent studies may provide respiratory therapists with some flexibility in treating their acute respiratory distress syndrome patients, according to Timothy A. Mullen, RRT, in an article titled ''Beyond ARDS Net: A Two-Study Review Shows a Reduction in Mortality.'' Behind the scenes, he shows how the debate over use of low tidal ...

Decisions! Decisions! Decisions! That's the status quo in many healthcare departments today as clinicians ponder the many choices they confront on the flu vaccine front. The hard part is deciding whether to get the flu shot or not, and according to a current  ADVANCE survey, many are opting not to get one. Even in states like New York which ...