Support The Detainee Basic Medical Care Act of 2008

Via Valtin, the Physicians for Human Rights organization is launching a campaign to support the Detainee Basic Medical Care Act of 2008 on its website. SR 3005 and HR 5950, sponsored by Senator Robert Menedez (D-NJ) and Representative Zoe Lofgren (D-CA), will reverse the alarming inhumane treatment of immigrant detainees. The letter [...]

The US’ New Cadre of Josef Mengeles

I’m stewing over the posts by Valtin about the use of US psychologists as agents of torture. I’m heartsick and soul sick at the evidence that Dana Priest and Amy Goldstein produced in their Washington Post Careless Detainee series about the use of nurses and physicians as agents of abuse and torture.
And just in [...]

The Health Wonk Review at The Health Economist

Every now and then, I get the wonkies and submit a post to the Health Wonk Review blog carnival.  This week, Jason Shafrin at The Health Economist, was kind enough to include my modest post in an always must read edition of the Review, which brings many health policy wonks’ work to the greater blogosphere.

Human Rights Violators: DIHS Nurses

[UPDATE: From the online Q&A with Priest and Goldstein today, I am including the sections where they addressed my specific questions and am pasting them here. The entire Q&A is beneficial to develop a more comprehensive understanding about the issues.]
Boston: Are Public Health Service personnel staffing the medical units of local and [...]

Legal Aspects Of Practicing Nursing As A Federal Government Employee

Dana Priest and Amy Goldstein are presenting an enormous four part investigative series called Careless Detention in the Washington Post, in which they take a hard look at how detainees have and continue to be treated in negligent and harmful ways by healthcare providers and prison personnel.
Throughout the reports, they include case after case after [...]

Daily Constitutional: Spring Divertissements, Torture and Illegal Propaganda

[UPDATE] The links list about the illegal Iraq War propaganda campaign will be updated as I discover new stories and evidence. Please add your own gems in the comments, and I’ll get them inserted into the post pronto. Thanks.
I’ve neglected the Constitution, instead lured by the scents, sounds and sights of Spring [...]

Bill Moyers Addresses Universal Healthcare and Nurses

I write about professional nursing, patient safety and advocacy and healthcare policy, and so I am particularly grateful that universal healthcare and nursing were both addressed by Bill Moyers Journal. I am also appreciative of the thoughtful comments there.
The public has been confused about the differences between universal health insurance coverage and universal health CARE.  [...]

Healthcare-Associated Infections And Nursing

I greatly admire Representative Henry Waxman, the Chair of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. He asks direct questions to uncover problems, abuses and negligence by government and civilian agencies, organizations and individuals. Today, he issued a letter to each of the 50 states’ hospital association chairs, requesting data on the incidence [...]

Where’s Nursing?

The Washington Independent’s Mike Lillis wrote an interesting piece about how legislators are dancing around the edge of healthcare policy, not wanting to commit themselves to anything that possibly might unsettle the corpulent stomachs of the industry’s heavy hitters’ bottom lines. But once again, do a search for the terms nurse and nursing. Come [...]

Determining Actual Working Conditions Of Nurses

Commenter Jennifer (welcome!) wrote:
One thing that scares me about going in to nursing is stories about the bad conditions. How do you find the conditions where you work?
What a good question!
I don’t know how to guarantee that with anything near 100% accuracy, but I can help anyone considering a new nursing position how to find [...]

Hospital Surge Capacity Myth Busters

The Washington Post’s Spencer Hsu presented a two part series (parts one and two) about the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee’s hearings on Emergency Department Surge Capacity and Medicaid funding cuts. I posted about the stark picture behind the experts’ testimony a couple of days ago. Today, I’d like to elaborate a [...]

When Bad Is Good: The Dow(n) Is Up World of the Wall Street Journal

The Wall Street Journal just loves misery. Here’s the latest celebration of it with a nursing twist. Its related blog post echoed its story sentiment.

The ailing economy is helping to ease the nursing shortage.
With house prices falling and the cost of gasoline and food rising, many nurses are going back to work, in some [...]

Grand Rounds 4.33 at Suture For A Living

RLBates stitches her way through life, and she has pieced together an amazing quilt of healthcare blog posts interspersed with facts and fotos of her home of Arkansas at this week’s Grand Rounds carnival.

Emergency Department Surge Capacity: There Ain’t None

[UPDATE 05-07-2008 Day Two of the Hearing is today with Michael Leavitt, Sec DHHS  and Michael Chertoff, Sec DHS testifying. The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee added their testimony and that of Dean Conway-Welch, and the links are at their names.
What comes through loud and clear is the BushCo loyalism of Chertoff: "not my [...]

Nurses Week 2008: “There Were No Nurses”

I wrote this post over a year ago, but the more things change, the more they stay the same. The first week in May - to be more precise, May 6-12 - has been designated - mostly by hospital and nursing employers’ marketing departments - as Nurses Week. It’s usually filled with [...]