Valuable Support After My First Adverse Event.

A good charge nurse can see the effect an unanticipated emergency has on the staff and knows the support of colleagues is critical.

The feasibility and impact of midnight routine blood draws on laboratory orders and processing time.

OBJECTIVES: To evaluate the feasibility of midnight routine blood draws and assess their impact on test result availability and stat laboratory orders. METHODS: We changed the timing of routine blood draws from early morning to midnight on five inpatient wards during the period November 16 to 30, 2011. RESULTS: For the entire institution, of all orders placed each day, laboratory test orders placed from 4:00 to 8:00 am decreased from 55% to 39%, and those placed from 12:00 to 4:00 am increased from 12% to 30%. Stat orders per day decreased during the intervention period (301 ± 53 vs 344 ± 55, P = .04). Morning specimens were more likely to be available by 9:00am (78.1% vs 58.9%, P < .001), and their turnaround time improved by 25.8 minutes (158 vs 184 minutes, P < .001). Patient survey revealed potential preference for midnight blood draws. CONCLUSIONS: Midnight is a feasible alternative for the timing of routine blood draws. Redesigning inflow of laboratory orders improved efficiency of laboratory processing and reduced stat orders.

Yoga as a complementary therapy for children and adolescents: a guide for clinicians.

Yoga is being used by a growing number of youth and adults as a means of improving overall health and fitness. There is also a progressive trend toward use of yoga as a mind-body complementary and alternative medicine intervention to improve specific physical and mental health conditions. To provide clinicians with therapeutically useful information about yoga, the evidence evaluating yoga as an effective intervention for children and adolescents with health problems is reviewed and summarized. A brief overview of yoga and yoga therapy is presented along with yoga resources and practical strategies for clinical practitioners to use with their patients. The majority of available studies with children and adolescents suggest benefits to using yoga as a therapeutic intervention and show very few adverse effects. These results must be interpreted as preliminary findings because many of the studies have methodological limitations that prevent strong conclusions from being drawn. Yoga appears promising as a complementary therapy for children and adolescents. Further information about how to apply it most effectively and more coordinated research efforts are needed.