Articles Tagged With: COVID-19
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Long COVID Hits Healthcare Workers
A Government Accountability Office report estimates long COVID has “potentially affected up to 23 million Americans, pushing an estimated 1 million people out of work.” This population is a moving target — at any given time, some may be clearing it while others are just starting to succumb to its spiderweb of symptoms. Some have experienced long COVID since the beginning of the pandemic, and their return to baseline health is in question.
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The Efficacy of Prenatal Patients Using a Mindfulness App
This randomized trial conducted early in the pandemic with women from an obstetric and gynecologic practice found use of a mobile app promoting mindfulness practice (such as meditation) was associated with a decrease in perceived stress, self-reported anxiety and depression, and sleep disturbance in the intervention group.
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Misoprostol Alone Is an Option for Self-Managed Abortion
Self-managed medication abortion with misoprostol alone can work well when mifepristone is unavailable because of state laws or other access obstacles, according to a recent study.
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FDA Adopts Flu-Like Plan for an Annual COVID Vaccine
The Food and Drug Administration took a decisive step recently in pivoting to fight COVID-19 with an approach similar to that used for decades against influenza, a seasonal virus for which a vaccine is concocted annually based on the circulating strains.
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CDC: Vaccine Safety ‘Signal’ of Stroke Risk in the Elderly
A vaccine safety surveillance system has detected a “signal” of a possible higher risk of ischemic stroke following vaccination in those age 65 years and older with the bivalent Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 shot, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports.
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Hybrid IPs: With Autonomy Comes Responsibility
For better or worse, infection control and prevention programs had to reinvent themselves as COVID-19 hit the healthcare system in 2020. Some hospitals went to “hybrid” programs, with staff working both inhouse and from home on a rotating basis.
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Does COVID Vaccination Prevent Car Crashes?
In a large Canadian study, lack of COVID vaccination was associated with an increased incidence of being injured in a car crash.
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Shortage of Nursing Home Beds Prompts Creative Solutions
The nursing home crises of too few beds and not enough staff is expected to continue for the foreseeable future. Case managers, discharge planners, and transition of care leaders need to find alternative solutions that will keep patients safe and avoid unnecessary hospitalizations.
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Hospital-to-Nursing Facility Admissions Plunged for VA Patients from 2020 to 2021
The Veterans Health Administration’s community nursing home program reported a readmission decrease of more than one-third from April 12, 2020, to Dec. 26, 2020, when compared with the same period in 2019, according to the results of a recent study.
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Worker Shortage, Pandemic Make Drug Diversion Easier
Drug diversion can happen quickly as healthcare workers move from one facility to another, enabled by lax reporting systems and hospital disincentives to alert patients and raise liability issues. Diverters may slip through cracks in oversight by medical and nursing boards as they move to other facilities and are lost to follow-up.