Tag: healthcare

Categories
Crisis Global Health Public Health

Opioids given and monitored by the government instead of various clinics?

In City of Vancouver, a pilot program began in providing Fentanyl, a synthetic opioid used to manage severe pain (it is about 50-100 times more potent than morphine). Public Health Agency of Canada | Agence de la santé publique du Canada finances the program and it is all legal – with the goal of harm reduction for those in need of the drug. This approach is aimed to reduce deaths and severe illnesses from illicit drugs by making the drugs safer for people who use them.

Last year, over 20+ United States Attorneys’​ Offices reject the current bankruptcy plan offered by Purdue Pharma L.P., who have ongoing claims against them for their role in the opioid epidemic in United States. This addiction crisis in the US has killed more than 450,000 Americans.

Today’s thoughts may be deeply controversial in the United States, but how can we provide harm reduction (ie reduce the overdoses) while at the same time providing quality care for those in need of such potent pain medication?

Categories
COVID-19 Pandemic Mental Health Public Health Research

A Clean Bill of Health Newsletter – June 23, 2022

Peek Inside today’s A Clean Bill of Health Newsletter:

– US President Biden approved State of Montana’s request for a major disaster declaration, which sets in motion federal aid for the three counties devastated by severe flooding in Yellowstone Park, per The Washington Post.

– LinkedIn News Top 25 Healthcare companies to grow your career:
1. Kaiser Permanente | 2. Arthrex | 3. Parexel | 4. athenahealth | 5. Teladoc Health | 6. Walgreens Boots Alliance | 7. MicroVention-Terumo | 8. The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine | 9. CVS Health | 10. City of Hope | 11. ZEISS Medical Technology | 12. Hologic, Inc. | 13. Allscripts | 14. UnitedHealth Group | 15. Galderma | 16. Avanos Medical | 17. Curology | 18. UChicago Medicine | 19. Varian | 20. University of Maryland Medical Center | 21. The Janssen Pharmaceutical Companies of Johnson & Johnson | 22. Nevro | 23. Medtronic | 24. Pfizer | 25. Elanco

Which company should I visit this Summer? Help me and tag people in the thread!

– Latest review on the impact by COVID-19 lockdown on the performing and creative artists in the entertainment industry was just published in Elsevier Social Sciences & Humanities Open Journal.

– Next Week Free Webinar on Tuesday, June 28 at 1 PM EDT with researchers and practitioners University of Washington, US Maritime Administration, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and WESTON MEDICAL PUBLISHING, LLC in the mental health area and in the maritime industry

Our newsletter community is growing and thank you for your emails, comments, and messages! We are building a newsletter that constantly empowers and connects all the various ways we strive for a clean bill of health.

Please continue to help me spread the word!

Categories
Crisis Global Health Public Health Research

New Study on Basic Emergency Care education course in Ukraine

BMJ open - BEC course in Ukraine

New paper is out now! The publication is open-access and the web link is https://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/12/6/e050871.

Publication Title: Evaluation of change in emergency care knowledge and skills among front-line healthcare providers in Ukraine with the Basic Emergency Care course: a pretest/post-test study

Abstract:
Objective: Evaluate the change in participant emergency care knowledge and skill confidence after implementation of the WHO-International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) Basic Emergency Care (BEC) course.
Design: Pretest/post-test quasi-experimental study.
Setting: Mechnikov Hospital in Dnipro, Ukraine.
Participants: Seventy-nine participants engaged in the course, of whom 50 (63.3%) completed all assessment tools. The course was open to healthcare providers of any level who assess and treat emergency conditions as part of their practice. The most common participant profession was resident physician (24%), followed by health educator (18%) and prehospital provider (14%).
Interventions: The 5-day WHO-ICRC BEC course.
Primary and secondary outcome measures Change in pre-course and post-course knowledge and skill confidence assessments. Open-ended written feedback was collected upon course completion and analysed for common themes.
Results: Participant knowledge assessment scores improved from 19 (IQR 15–20) to 22 (IQR 19–23) on a 25-point scale (p<0.001). Participant skill confidence self-assessment scores improved from 2.5 (IQR 2.1–2.8) to 2.9 (IQR 2.5–3.3) on a 4-point scale (p<0.001). The most common positive feedback themes were high-quality teaching and useful skill sessions. The most common constructive feedback themes were translation challenges & request for additional skill session time.
Conclusions: This first implementation of the WHO-ICRC BEC course for front-line healthcare providers in Ukraine was successful and well received by participants. This is also the first report of a BEC implementation outside of Africa and suggests that the course is also effective in the European context, particularly in humanitarian crisis and conflict settings. Future research should evaluate long-term knowledge retention and the impact on patient outcomes. Further iterations should emphasise local language translation and consider expanding clinical skills sessions.

Categories
Public Health

Are you subscribed to my newsletter yet?

Having a weekly newsletter isn’t an easy task especially when not selling anything. For the past 13 weeks, I have curated conversational and important updates to public health, healthcare, and technology intersectional space.

Our growing newsletter community is now over 800 people strong, and thank you for your supportive emails, comments, and messages! We are building a newsletter that constantly empowers and connects all the various ways we strive for a clean bill of health.

In the latest ‘A Clean Bill of Health’ newsletter, we discuss briefly past week’s well-attended and wonderful Zoom webinar on the mental health research of emergency management and public health professionals since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Thank you for everyone joining us!

We also share the neat healthcare technology case in hospitals for improving patient experiences with the partnership of Feedtrail & Cedars-Sinai in Los Angeles.

Please continue to help me spread the word!

Quote of the week:
“We all get scared and want to turn away, but it isn’t always strength that makes you stay. Strength is also making the decision to change your destiny.”
~ Zoraida Córdova, Labyrinth Lost #quoteoftheweek #dailyquote

Categories
Public Health Research

How can we create frictionless experiences to connect the elderly populations to their healthcare teams?

There is an ongoing assumption that elderly communities are averse to technology, but that is not true. Could it be that the digital health companies are just not designing for their needs and/or improving educational outreach efforts to teach new tech advancements?

In past years, colleagues and I have been discussing the practicalities of using emerging technologies to address the growing issue of elderly loneliness and its implications and adaptations to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Technological advancements have offered remarkable opportunities to deliver care and maintain connections despite the need to stay physically separated. These tools can be integrated into crisis communications, public health responses, and healthcare programs to help the elderly communities. However, it must be done strategically and informed by the type of loneliness at play, environmental factors, socioeconomics, and technological literacy (including feedback to improve tech design and function).

What are ways your teams are creating frictionless experiences to connect to the elderly populations?

Categories
COVID-19 Pandemic Public Health

“No jab, No job” – latest on vaccine mandate in workplace

“No jab, No job” is being passed around the workplaces this week. Announcement is from Citi to adopt a COVID-19 vaccine mandate policy, marking first major bank with such policy.

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Categories
Mental Health

Will 2022 bring better mental health action in the workplace?

With the new year around the corner, will your workplace change next year to be more inclusive and supportive of better mental health action in the workplace?

Continue reading “Will 2022 bring better mental health action in the workplace?”
Categories
COVID-19 Pandemic Public Health

SUSPENDED? OSHA pauses Emergency Temporary Standard for businesses

The enforcement of COVID-19 vaccine mandate for businesses is now suspended by U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration, pending further court order.

Timeline of events: less than 2 months ago, news emerged about President Biden’s plans for large businesses (>100 employees) to have employees vaccinated for COVID-19 or undergo weekly testing. Less than 2 weeks ago, U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) announced January 4, 2022 as deadline to meet this requirement, labeling it as an Emergency Temporary Standard (https://publichealthdisasters.com/2021/11/12/new-us-covid-19-requirement-for-100-employees/).

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Categories
COVID-19 Pandemic Global Health

The death toll of COVID-19 pandemic reached 5 million people today

The global death toll of the COVID-19 pandemic reached 5 million people today, roughly under 2 years since first identification of novel coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2 (https://time.com/6112287/5-million-covid-deaths/). The pandemic is still not over until it is over everywhere.

The U.S., European Union, Britain and Brazil account for one-eighth of the global population, but almost half of reported deaths from the coronavirus. For example, US leads the world in the number of confirmed deaths from the virus with more than 745,800 people dead from COVID-19, then Brazil (with more than 607,000 deaths) and India (with more than 450,000 deaths) [https://www.npr.org/2021/11/01/1051020063/the-covid-19-pandemic-has-killed-5-million-people-globally].

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Categories
Crisis Public Health Research

New Report on Flood Risk in US Infrastructure

How informed are you with your flood risk and the flood risk of your community’s essential infrastructure?

New report by First Street Foundation found flood risk in United States to grow exponentially in upcoming years due climate change.

Climate disasters have already caused at least 388 deaths and more than $100 billion in damage this year in the United States (The Wall Street Journal).

Continue reading “New Report on Flood Risk in US Infrastructure”