Monday, March 17, 2008

Getting My Irish Up

Every channel I clicked on this morning had clips and experts talking about Dennis Quaid's twins. The twins received a life-threatening incorrect dose of medication. This is a too common experience in all hospitals. All the experts were going on and on about labeling and new scanning devices which will help limit errors.

Not one mentioned the most efficient way to decrease medication errors:

Stop slashing nursing staff to the bone.

Study after study after study has proven again and again that the more RN's at the bedside, the less medication errors, the less infections, the less post-operative complications and better outcomes overall for all patients.

But hospitals continue to slash staffing. Why? Because we are expensive and cut deeply into the hospital's bottom line.

And this Irish dander moment brought to you by my grandmother Radigan, daughter of an Irish immigrant from Crossboyne, Ireland.

Thor sez: Kiss me, I'm Irish!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Being affiliated with a med univ (and their frequent broadcast messages) and having a mother recently in the hospital - I'm completely with you on this. Not having an overtaxed (I guess that 'overworked' would perhaps be a better word to use, we're getting too darn close to 15 Aprilth...) staff would go along way - when I hear about the cuts (and the actually numbers), I just cringe. My mother's nurse reminded me of a waitress who had to take care of every table by herself - because the rest of the waitstaff had called in sick.