The Assured Healthcare Blog
Global Handwashing Day took place on October 15th; the event was initiated by the Health In Your Hands organization. The Global Handwashing Day website provides important and timely health-related information. Both the site and the Planning Guide published in conjunction with the event can be viewed at the links provided below. They each contain a wealth of resource information to raise awareness about the importance of handwashing with soap, especially among children:
…At Assured Healthcare, that’s what we are all about. Offering peace and ease to our patients, our customers, our employees and our staff. It’s the philosophy we live by every day, as we go about the business of providing our customers with staffing solutions and our employees with job opportunities. As we celebrate the return of Spring, we also want to recognize some exceptional people who are specialists at bringing peace and ease into the lives of others.
National Nurses Week is coming up, from Wednesday, May 6 (National Nurses Day) through Tuesday, May 12 (Florence Nightingale’s birthday). We are pleased to extend our thanks to all the nurses who work with us, and are proud of our association with them and all the dedicated medical professionals who are employed with Assured Healthcare! Click to learn more about National Nurses Week.
Time to celebrate the women who have made our lives so much easier! Raising children means that mothers serve not only as moms, but as nurses, teachers, mentors, homemakers, chauffeurs, coaches, chief cooks and bottlewashers, working professionals, and so much more. At Assured Healthcare, we count many mothers among our ranks, and wish each of them and mothers everywhere a day of peace and ease to celebrate all the things they do for us.
Copyright © Christine Hammerlund – 2009. Christine Hammerlund is a registered nurse and the owner of Assured Healthcare, a healthcare staffing service headquartered in Gurnee, Illinois.
There was no one quite like Cherry Ames - at least not to those of us who, as adolescents and teenagers, dreamed of being nurses during the era from 1943 into the 1970s. The lively pink-cheeked, dark haired young nurse was the star of the Cherry Ames series of books authored by the prolific Helen Wells. Her sleuthing healthcare heroine traveled from hometown America to exotic locales including jungles, army bases, and anywhere else her enthusiastic bedside manner and crisp white cap were needed. Though I don’t recall the details of every one of the series’ many volumes, I am relatively certain that the patients all lived, the mysteries were all unraveled, and that Cherry always returned home unscathed by tropical illnesses, war wounds or salacious surgeons. That girl knew how to get the job done right, and move straight on to the next highly-specialized nursing assignment - and there were plenty of them!
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As an assessment of my own professional skills, I decided to look back over my nursing career and see just how many nursing specialities Cherry and I had in common. After all, we’re both Illinois natives who kind of grew up around the same time! The results were interesting - and maybe even motivational:
Nurses I HAVE been:
Nurses I HAVE NOT been:
More nurses I HAVE NOT been - yet!
Want to learn even more fascinating insights about Cherry? What was it like growing up in Hilton, Illinois? Where is Hilton, Illinois? How did Cherry get her name? What are the clues to Cherry’s hidden past? Learn the answers to these and many other burning questions by visiting the wonderful Cherry Ames Page ! Enjoy a nostalgic trip back to the days when nurses wore white (mostly) and no one had ever heard of out-patient surgery or HMOs.
Copyright © Christine Hammerlund – 2009. Christine Hammerlund is a registered nurse and the owner of Assured Healthcare, a healthcare staffing service headquartered in Gurnee, Illinois.
At one of my networking group meetings, someone recently asked what I considered to be the four most important advances in healthcare technology over the past twenty or thirty years. Considering the huge leaps in knowledge, daily bio-medical discoveries and amazing technology breakthroughs, that would be a very time consuming task. But, off the top of my head, I did come up with a list of four personal favorites:
Computer software that supports the needs of the staffing industry - specifically, full service medical staffing. In order to make the best, most efficient and safest matches of healthcare professionals with the people who need them, we process a lot of critical information. The specialized software programs we now have access to enable us to rapidly query, sort and filter extensive database records to quickly fill a staffing need. This ability is a far cry from the pull-out drawers of color coded candidate file cards that were still the norm for many staffing agencies well into the 1990s.
New glucometers and sugar testing devices used by diabetic patients. What a relief and convenience for people who often need to test multiple times a day. The devices now used can test from various parts of the body, patients can use them on their own, there is less scar tissue and higher accuracy, and these devices are far more specific and reliable than the urine sticks used way back in the past.
Publically accessible defibrillators. It may take a while for them to be in common use before we fully realize the value of these devices, but that day is coming. With the growth of an aging and highly mobile population, the number of lives saved by defibrillators can only increase. The technology of these devices has been streamlined and simplified to walk the person providing aid through the process, further increasing the odds of survival for someone stricken with a cardiac-event while in a public or private venue.
The migration to electronic medical recordkeeping, or EMR. Let’s face it, this one is a no-brainer. Anything at all that helps to minimize risk to a patient caused by illegibly scrawled prescriptions, diagnoses, instructions, chart notes and medical records is a blessing. Other advantages are the same as the computer software benefits described above - patient diagnostic and treatment records can be queried, accessed, reviewed, and properly routed to the patient and multiple treatment providers quickly and ACCURATELY!
This list is sure to grow with the blog - keep an eye out for future tech faves!
Copyright © Christine Hammerlund – 2009. Christine Hammerlund is a registered nurse and the owner of Assured Healthcare, a healthcare staffing service headquartered in Gurnee, Illinois.
The information below is excerpted from an email that I recently received, and could be very helpful in the case of an emergency such as the one described.
STROKE IDENTIFICATION:
During a BBQ, a friend stumbled and took a little fall - she assured everyone that she was fine (they offered to call paramedics). She said she had just tripped over a brick because of her new shoes. They got her cleaned up and got her a new plate of food. While she appeared a bit shaken up, Ingrid went about enjoying herself the rest of the evening
Ingrid’s husband called later telling everyone that his wife had been taken to the hospital - at 6:00 pm Ingrid passed away. She had suffered a stroke at the BBQ. Had they known how to identify the signs of a stroke, perhaps Ingrid would be with us today. Some don’t die. They end up in a helpless, hopeless condition instead.
It only takes a minute to read this…
One neurologist says that if he can get to a stroke victim within three hours he can totally reverse the effects of a stroke…totally. He said the trick was getting a stroke recognized, diagnosed, and then getting the patient medically cared for within three hours, which is tough.
RECOGNIZING A STROKE
Remember the three steps, STR . Read and Learn!
Sometimes symptoms of a stroke are difficult to identify. Unfortunately, the lack of awareness spells disaster. The stroke victim may suffer severe brain damage when people nearby fail to recognize the symptoms of a stroke.
Now doctors say a bystander can recognize a stroke by asking three simple questions:
S *Ask the individual to SMILE.
T *Ask the person to TALK and SPEAK A SIMPLE SENTENCE (Coherently, i.e. It is sunny out today.)
R *Ask him or her to RAISE BOTH ARMS.
If he or she has trouble with ANY ONE of these tasks, call the emergency number immediately and describe the symptoms to the dispatcher.
AN ADDITIONAL SIGN OF A STROKE - Stick out Your Tongue
Another ’sign’ of a stroke is this: Ask the person to stick out his tongue. If the tongue is ‘crooked’, if it goes to one side or the other, that is also an indication of a stroke.
Copyright © Christine Hammerlund – 2009. Christine Hammerlund is a registered nurse and the owner of Assured Healthcare, a healthcare staffing service headquartered in Gurnee, Illinois.
As the nation’s population ages, more Americans are being confronted with the need to seek assistance with in-home care of elderly or sick parents, or extended family. Couple that fact with the ever increasing trend toward same-day, out-patient surgical procedures, and assessing the qualifications of private duty home care for recovering patients of any age takes on an even greater urgency.
It’s a difficult task for a lot of people. Because it is not pleasant to think about parents or family members becoming ill or needing medical help, many persons avoid planning in advance for those possibilities. When they suddenly have a need for home care, they don’t know where to start in choosing a private duty provider.
Given the rise in reports of elder abuse and the potential for unknowingly retaining illegal or unqualified workers, there is valid cause for concern. However, there are several key inquiries that can be made to help in selecting a qualified provider. Be sure to ask the same questions of each prospective service. You can then compare responses “apples-to-apples”, and that should help in making the right choice. The seven questions below address some of the most important areas of consideration:
These are important questions that any reputable service should be happy to answer - and during stressful times, it’s important that you feel as comfortable as possible with the persons who are providing in-home care.
Copyright © Christine Hammerlund – 2008. Christine Hammerlund is a registered nurse and the owner of Assured Healthcare, a healthcare staffing service headquartered in Gurnee, Illinois.