COVID-19: SNFs Need Better Infection Prevention & Control Leadership

Posted on by James Shannon

I am writing based on my experiences as a Health Facilities Evaluator Nurse. HFENs for CDPH’s Licensing and Certification section are tasked with visiting Skilled Nursing Facilities to review facility practice to ensure compliance with state and federal regulations and laws. Inherently, our work processes are confrontational. HFENs have realized increased confrontation during COVID-19. Whether it is because emotion and burnout are high, or because […]

Are You Having Trouble Finding Quality, Essential Personal Safety Products for COVID-19?

Posted on by James Shannon

Welcome to the intra-COVID-19 world. Here, we are creating new questions and definitions, as well as new approaches to the clinical practice of medicine. This is a confusing period for licensed clinicians and providers in the healthcare industry, and is especially confusing (sometimes maddening) to lay Americans. Not all American consumers can effectively navigate common marketplaces to avoid unsafe personal safety products (PSPs) promoted as […]

Freshening the Air with COVID-19

Posted on by James Shannon

“Never be afraid of open windows … .” ~ Florence Nightingale, 1860. This timeless adage came back to relevance during a phone call last week. When asked by a director of nursing at a nursing home in LA County whether his staff may open windows to give isolated residents fresh air, I froze. I told myself, “This is exactly what Florence Nightingale preached.” However, I […]

Staff Decorum, Dignity and Respect

Posted on by James Shannon

I have a friend. Let’s call her Jill. Jill is a middle-aged woman who leads a healthy and active lifestyle, and has since childhood. Last Spring/Summer, Jill began experiencing stressors in her personal and family life. Over a six-month period of time, these stressors started to manifest physically, as evidenced by significant weight loss and cardiovascular symptoms. Upon seeking medical attention, Jill encountered a multitude […]

Care Planning for Cannabis Use: Vaping

Posted on by James Shannon

During Prohibition, “Bathtub Gin” (a spirit made at home by amateurs) caused documented instances of sickness and death among American citizens. As cannabis legalization rolls-out across America, cannabis vaping concentrates manufactured for and sold on the black market exhibit a similar public health risk. Over the past year, users of cannabis vaping products following national news and public health concerns may have lost their spark […]

The Dyad of Nursing and Law

Posted on by James Shannon

On 11/12/19, at 1:00 p.m. EST, the American Nurses Association (ANA) hosted a webinar (Title, Managing legal issues in nursing leadership) describing the intersection of day-to-day nursing leadership and the law. The offering was educational and free (as part of ANA membership). Nurse managers and risk managers were its intended audience. During the webinar, the Presenter (Edie Brous, Esq., PC) provided a global survey of […]

Calling All Volunteer Directors and Managers

Posted on by James Shannon

I had an experience the other day that made me re-think the importance of customer service as it relates to volunteer programs at healthcare organizations. The fact of the matter is this: many volunteer programs don’t teach the skills necessary to allow volunteers to competently interact with the customer at the point-of-service. Healthcare likely presents one of the most common human-to-human interactions in the daily […]

Innovation of the Mind

Posted on by James Shannon

In his recent New Yorker article, Atul Gawande talks about the time it takes for innovations to spread. From the title of the article, one can easily deduct the gist without reading it: the spread of innovations takes longer than it probably should, with this temporal gap directly affecting the health, safety and general well-being of those without access to the innovation. Innovation isn’t new to […]

Extinction of the Rural Practitioner

Posted on by James Shannon

The changes taking shape in rural parts of our country are causing access issues for rural consumers. Not surprisingly, money is at the root of the problem. General practice physicians in rural areas just aren’t able to maintain the financially viable private practices they once were. Decreasing reimbursement rates are frustrating the private practice business model. Federal reimbursement rates, most notably, have been decreasing over […]

Our Aging Population, as A Trend in Healthcare

Posted on by James Shannon

The US population is aging. Markets in the health care industry are changing as a result. People are getting older at a faster rate than children are being born. In fact, the present US birthrate is at its lowest level since 1920! According to the graph above, over the next forty years, the ratio of 0-17 year-olds and 18-64 year-olds in our population will be […]