Showing posts with label President Barack Obama. Show all posts
Showing posts with label President Barack Obama. Show all posts

Tuesday, March 1, 2011

Helping Patients Understand Their Medical Treatment - Kaiser Health News

An elderly woman sent home from the hospital develops a life-threatening infection because she doesn't understand the warning signs listed in the discharge instructions. A man flummoxed by an intake form in a doctor's office reflexively writes "no" to every question because he doesn't understand what is being asked. A young mother pours a drug that is supposed to be taken by mouth into her baby's ear, perforating the eardrum. And a man in his 70s preparing for his first colonoscopy uses a suppository as directed, but without first removing it from the foil packet.

Each of these examples provided by health-care workers or patient advocates illustrates one of the most pervasive and under-recognized problems in medicine: Americans' alarmingly low levels of health literacy — the ability to obtain, understand and use health information.

Translating Medical Jargon

Some technical terms and what they mean in plain English:

  • "myocardial infarction" (heart attack)
  • "hyperlipidemia" (high cholesterol)
  • "febrile" (feverish)

A 2006 study by the U.S. Department of Education found that 36 percent of adults have only basic or below-basic skills for dealing with health material. This means that 90 million Americans can understand discharge instructions written only at a fifth-grade level or lower. About 52 percent had intermediate skills: They could figure out what time a medication should be taken if the label says "take two hours after eating," while the remaining 12 percent were deemed proficient because they could search a complex document and find the information necessary to define a medical term.

Click on the "via" link for the rest of the article.

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Wednesday, February 23, 2011

Where are the Nurses Mr. President? Nobody Cares.

To the President of the United States from the Yoga Nurse:

Dear Mr. President,

May I be so bold to tell you in my not-so humble opinion the answer to your question, “Where are the nurses?”  Elementary dear Watson.  Nobody wants the job.  why not? because … “This Job is Killing Me.

As an advocate for nurses, I currently teach meditation, natural stress relief techniques and medical yoga to nurses and nursing organizations through out the country to help them with morale and wellness on the job.  Shockingly, I often hear nurses say these exact words to me: “This job is killing me and I’d kill to get off the floor.” It shocked me because I too said those very words at times in my nursing career, but never out loud, and only to myself.  These words are engraved in my psyche as the global lament of way too many nurses.  Never mind what country, color, religion or background of the nurse, (I have worked in Canada and the USA) it is the same story and not a pretty one.

Why is this job killing me? There are endless reasons why nurses are “dying” from their work and why the job is literally making them sick.  Just a few examples that you can surely relate to: Insufficient staffing, overwork, impossibly long shifts, endless charting, little time for patient care, working with inexperienced nurses, burnt out nurses, slackers, disrespect, conflicts between nurses, nurses and doctors, managers, management, lawsuits and liability, being abused by patients i.e. hitting, biting, scratching, punching, yelling, poor health issues, obesity because the only reward is eating…that is, if you get the chance on any given shift, accusations of improper care, etc. etc. etc… (Your turn, fill in the blanks____. _____. _____.). Enough already, you get the idea.

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Sincerely,

Andrew Lopez, RN
Nursefriendly, Inc. A New Jersey Corporation.
38 Tattersall Drive, Mantua New Jersey 08051
http://www.nursefriendly.com info@nursefriendly.com ICQ #6116137
856-415-9617, (fax) 415-9618

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GOP Counts The Ways To Defund Health Law : Shots - Health Blog : NPR

Did House Republicans keep their promise to defund the health care overhaul as part of their bill to cut more than $60 billion from the federal budget for the rest of the fiscal year?

You betcha. They've come up with more than half a dozen ways to throttle spending on overhaul, in fact.

 

Most of the attention went to the amendment to the spending bill offered by Rep. Denny Rehberg (R-MT). Rehberg, who chairs the spending subcommittee that oversees the Department of Health and Human Services, offered language to the bill that would bar the use of funds to pay the salaries of any HHS "employee, officer, contractor, or grantee" to implement the health law. It passed on a 239-187 vote, almost exclusively along party lines.

But just in case that doesn't work, House Republicans passed several other amendments as well.

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Sincerely,

Andrew Lopez, RN
Nursefriendly, Inc. A New Jersey Corporation.
38 Tattersall Drive, Mantua New Jersey 08051
http://www.nursefriendly.com info@nursefriendly.com ICQ #6116137
856-415-9617, (fax) 415-9618

150,000 + Nurse-Reviewed & Approved Nursing Links

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Tuesday, February 22, 2011

Obama administration asks states to cut costs without dropping Medicaid coverage

By Marilyn Werber Serafini
Kaiser Health News
Tuesday, February 22, 2011; 12:58 PM

The Obama administration is deploying squadrons of in-house experts to help budget-strapped states figure out how to save money on Medicaid, the health program for the poor that has been a source of rising tensions between state capitals and Washington.

In recent weeks, both Democratic and Republican governors have been pressing the administration to be flexible in enforcing a requirement in the new health-care law that bars states from tightening eligibility for the program between now and 2014, when an additional 16 million people will be eligible for the program. Some states want to tighten eligibility now to curb spending.

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius has a difficult balancing act. The former governor of Kansas wants to improve relations with the governors, who are due Saturday in Washington for a big meeting. But she also wants to expand Medicaid, not shrink it.

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******************************************************

Sincerely,

Andrew Lopez, RN
Nursefriendly, Inc. A New Jersey Corporation.
38 Tattersall Drive, Mantua New Jersey 08051
http://www.nursefriendly.com info@nursefriendly.com ICQ #6116137
856-415-9617, (fax) 415-9618

150,000 + Nurse-Reviewed & Approved Nursing Links

http://www.4nursing.com
http://www.legalnursingconsultant.com
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http://www.nursefriendly.com
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http://www.nursingexperts.com

Tuesday, February 15, 2011

Obama budget targets brand name medicines, Health.Yahoo.net

Big pharmaceutical companies could face increased competition from generic drugmakers under two proposals put forth by the Obama administration on Monday despite earlier savings extracted from drugmakers as part of last year's healthcare law.

President Barack Obama, as part of his 2012 budget proposal, called for cutting the number of years drugmakers could exclusively market brand-name biologic drugs to 7 years from 12.

He also set his sights on ending controversial "pay-for-delay" deals that affect traditional, chemical drugs by giving the U.S. Federal Trade Commission power to block them. Under such pacts, brand-name and generic drugmakers settle patent challenges with payoffs that delay lower-cost rivals from reaching the market.

The proposals face a tough challenge of getting through the divided Congress, but could alter the landscape for consumers' access to cheaper medicines.

They quickly drew industry protests.

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******************************************************

Sincerely,

Andrew Lopez, RN
Nursefriendly, Inc. A New Jersey Corporation.
38 Tattersall Drive, Mantua New Jersey 08051
http://www.nursefriendly.com info@nursefriendly.com ICQ #6116137
856-415-9617, (fax) 415-9618

150,000 + Nurse-Reviewed & Approved Nursing Links

http://www.4nursing.com
http://www.legalnursingconsultant.com
http://www.nursinghumor.com
http://www.nursefriendly.com
http://www.nursingcasestudy.com
http://www.nursingentrepreneurs.com
http://www.nursingexperts.com