[Efforts toward Venous Access of Anti-Cancer Drug by Nurses].

Our hospital has an established outpatient chemotherapy room, and medical doctors have accessed veins for infusion so far. We trialed venous access by nurses for the purpose of managing safe and proper cancer chemotherapy, reducing the work of doctors, and reducing patient waiting time. A questionnaire was conducted in June 2013, and nurses secured routes at 19 facilities(58%)of the 33 national university hospitals. In November of the same year, the working group was established, and from September 2016 to March 2017, lectures, practical skills, a paper test, and a practical test were conducted; successful applicants were approved as in-hospital certified nurses. From April 2017, we started intravenous injection of anti-cancer drugs by nurses in outpatient chemotherapy rooms and always waiting for doctor in chemotherapy room. There have been many favorable reports of reduced pain and less route failure from patients, and issues, such as extravasation and dyspnea, have not occurred yet. The doctors who were interrupting their work by 29 minutes(20 minutes to and from the patient for a 9-minute procedure)could concentrate on their own tasks. However, patient waiting time increased from 14 minutes to 21 minutes because the amount of work for nurses increased. In the future, reducing the burden on nurses, for example, by increasing the number of nurses, is warranted.

[Clinical characteristics in 8 sporadic cases of community-acquired Legionella pneumonia].

To study the clinical characteristics of community-acquired Legionella pneumonia, we carried out a study of 8 patients (7 men and a woman; mean age, 68.4 years) with Legionella pneumonia at Yaizu Municipal General Hospital between 1996 and 1999. We surmised that the sources of infection were travel or a hot spring, or both, in 4 cases, occupation (plumbing and fish market work) in 2 cases and gardening in one. All patients had fever above 38 degrees C, hypoxemia and a high inflammation reaction of. The initial findings of chest radiography were air-space consolidation in all cases, lobar pneumonia in 7, and unilateral shadows in 6, similar to those seen in acute Streptococcus pneumoniae pneumonia. Diagnostic methods were urinary antigen in 4 of 7 cases, bacterial culture in 4 of 6 cases (L. pneumophila, 3 cases; L. longbeachae, 1 case), polymerase chain reaction on the serum in 2 of 5 cases, and serum antibody in 1 of 7 cases. Urinary antigen was most useful for early diagnosis. The clinical presentation and the initial chest radiography findings were non-specific, despite the high fever, severe hypoxemia, and radical progression within a few days.