NLN: Health Care Bill Passes House

As announced today by Kathleen A. Ream, director of Government Affairs of the National League of Nursing:

After months of debate and negotiations, the House of Representatives approved the most ambitious effort ever to change the country’s health care system, with 219 Democrats and one Republican voting for the bill and 39 Democrats voting against the bill. Action will now turn to the Senate Democrats who have yet to bring their bill to the floor for debate.

Permit me a personal note. As a boy of the tender age of 7 in early fall of 1960, I sat with my parents in the front row center of the gallery of the US Senate the night that Medicare first came up for a vote. Seated directly across from us on the floor of the Senate was Richard M. Nixon, vice president of the United States and in that capacity president of the Senate. Seated directly below us was the junior senator from Massachusetts, John F. Kennedy. Both men were candidates for the presidency.

That night, the bill that would have created Medicare went down in defeat by only a few votes. My mother’s parents, who were in declining health at the time, would be dead (my grandmother) or dying (my grandfather) by the time Medicare legislation was finally passed in 1965, their income exhausted by healthcare expenses.

It has been estimated that nearly 50,000 Americans die annually as a direct or indirect result of a lack of health insurance. If we can mobilize public support (or at least public acquiescence) for a variety of costly and unproductive endeavors, why not to save lives and improve quality of life?

CFS: Health, Culture, Body International Conference

Call for abstracts: An International and interdisciplinary conference on Health, Culture and the Human Body

Epidemiology, ethics and history of medicine, perspectives from Central Europe and Turkey

Mainz, Germany, 17-19 September 2010

The face of medicine is rapidly evolving: New developments in medicine, preventive and therapeutic interventions are raising novel ethical questions in societies undergoing fast demographic change at home while participating in global interactions through travel and migration. Throughout history, the perception of health and illness and the ethical assessment of medical practices have often been different between diverse value-cultures. This may affect the responses to well-established themes in medicine, such as the control of infectious diseases, attitudes towards a person’s death, or culturally specific approaches to dealing with the integrity of the human body. Consequently, these ethical considerations have given rise to complex ethical debates resulting in different legal regulations of these developments in different countries.

The international conference “Health, Culture and the Human Body” will focus on selected cases from Turkey, Germany, and other countries. These countries have been closely connected by substantial migration processes for some fifty years. Historically, these countries were linked by medical sciences and clinical practice. These interactions will be analysed jointly from historical, epidemiological, and ethical perspectives, paving the way for the implementation of an interdisciplinary “medicine studies” approach in the field of intercultural and migration medicine.

(See also: www.springer.com/philosophy/philosophy+of+sciences/journal/12376 )

The chosen thematic areas are:

§ infectious diseases (e.g., plague, leprosy, cholera, tuberculosis, HIV/AIDS)

§ the end of life (e.g., patient autonomy vs. family autonomy, advance directives, active and passive euthanasia, palliative care)

§ dealing with the human body (e.g., anatomical research, organ donation, biomaterial in international studies)

§ migration and medicine

Abstracts (max. 250 words) of proposed conference papers need to be submitted by 31 January 2010,

to the attention of Ilhan Ilkilic MD PhD, E-Mail: ilkilic@uni-mainz.de  (Institute for History, Philosophy and Ethics of Medicine, Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, Germany)

Phone +49-(0)-6131-39-37343, Fax +49-(0)-6131-39-36682

Publication of selected papers is envisaged.

Venue: Mainz Academy of Letters and Sciences, Mainz, Germany

Organising institutions:

* JohannesGutenberg University Mainz Medical Centre (Germany)

* IstanbulUniversity (Turkey)

CFP: Penn Medical Humanities Meeting

Call for proposals: Pennsylvania Medical Humanities Consortium Eighth Annual Meeting, May 19-20, 2010
College of Physicians, Philadelphia, PA
Deadline for abstracts: 31 January 2010
Through the Lens of Time: Perspectives on Medicine and Health Care
RLSoricelli@comcast.net
http://www.collphyphil.org –click on Library & Wood Institute

NY Times: Making Health Care Better

Featured in today’s New York Times Sunday Magazine, the article “Making Health Care Better,” by David Leonhardt. It discusses evidence-base care through collaborations among physicians, nurses and other healthcare practitioners.

Concerning the history of health care, the article notes:

But there is one important way in which medicine never quite adopted the scientific method. The explosion of medical research over the last century has produced a dizzying number of treatments for different ailments. For someone with heart disease, there is bypass surgery, stenting or simply drugs and behavior changes. For a man with early-stage prostate cancer, there is surgery, radiation, proton-beam therapy or so-called watchful waiting. To enter mainstream use, any such treatment typically needs to clear a high bar. It will be subject to randomized trials, statistical-significance tests, the peer-review process of academic journals and the scrutiny of government regulators. Yet once a treatment enters the mainstream — once we know whether it works in certain situations — science is largely left behind. The next questions — when to use it and on which patients — become matters of judgment, not measurement.

RN Among Ft. Hood Slain

Nurses and nurse educators have lost one of their own in the shootings on a US Army base.

Russell Seager, an enlisted Army nurse practitioner, VA hospital nurse, and nurse educator, was among those soldiers slain this past week at the Ft. Hood Army Base in Texas.

A brief notice can be found on the Washington Post Web site.

Dr. Seager, age 51, hailed from Wisconsin, whose public radio station WUWM interviewed him last summer. He specialized in complementary healing practices. Ironic now in light of the circumstances of his murder, WUWM noted in its report that:

In Iraq, Seager will work to prevent the mental health problems he sees at the VA from developing in the first place. His Combat Stress Control unit will watch for warning signs among soldiers on the front lines – things like anger and insubordination – which could signal long-term problems.

Call for Abstracts: 2010 CANS State of the Science Congress on Nursing Research

Call for Abstracts: 2010 State of the Science Congress on Nursing Research, Council for the Advancement of Nursing Science (CANS), September 27th – 29th, 2010 – Omni Shoreham Hotel, Washington, D.C.

Call Open: Monday, August 3, 2009 – Submission Deadline: Friday, January 15, 2010

Detailed information at: http://aan.confex.com/aan/cans10/cfp.cgi 

Overview: In an effort to showcase advances in nursing science and influence the national health care agenda, the Council for the Advancement of Nursing Science (the Council) invites you to submit an abstract for the landmark biennial 2010 State of the Science Congress on Nursing Research happening September 27th – 29th at the Omni Shoreham Hotel in Washington, D.C.

The Council’s mission is to promote “better health through nursing science” and act as a national networking and advocacy entity for nursing scientists and supporters of nursing science. At the Conference, nurse researchers from around the country and the world will join with clinical experts, nursing research funders, health care policy makers and academic leaders to dialogue about the impact of emerging scientific discoveries and the state of nursing science.

We welcome abstracts from all interested parties; membership in the Council is not a requirement.

Purpose:

• Create an international forum for dialogue on advances in nursing science related to nursing and health care practice.
• Disseminate research findings that can influence health care practice, education, research and policy.
• Influence the future agenda of nursing research.

General Guidelines: The Planning Committee is seeking papers, posters and symposia that best exemplify the state of nursing and health care science in a focused area of study, including methodological innovations, research technologies and interdisciplinary research. Investigators should submit abstracts derived from completed research only and should clearly specify the contributions of the work to the current state of nursing and health care science. Areas of special interest include translational/implementation science, technology, behavioral change and research to policy.

Presentation Options:

Podium Presentation (20 minutes total; 15-minute presentation with 5-minute question/answer; One presenter per abstract)

Symposium Presentation (60 – 90 minutes total; Minimum of 3 and maximum of 5 total abstracts of related research; One session organizer and 3-5 presenters)

Poster Presentation (Display Board only, no use of AV; Informal oral presentation during designated session times; A 4’x 4’ area on a posterboard will be provided. Posters larger than 4’x 4’ will not be accommodated. Presenters should bring materials to affix their poster to the board as they will not be provided onsite.)

Note: The submission choices are Podium Only; Symposium; Poster Only; Podium or Poster. Submitters will indicate their preference during the submission process.

Submission Deadline: To be considered for the program, submit abstracts according to the instructions by 11:59 p.m. on Friday, January 15, 2010 (EST).

CFS: Workshop Proposals, Sexual Minority Youth

Call for Workshop Proposals True Colors Conference

True Colors, the Sexual Minority Youth and Family Services of Connecticut, seeks proposals for workshops for sexual minority youth, their families, and their teachers, school nurses, and counselors to be presented at the 17th annual True Colors Conference, at the University of Connecticut-Storrs on Friday and Saturday, March 12 & 13, 2010. The conference theme is Focusing on OUR Families.

True Colors “works to create a world where youth, adults and families of all sexual orientations and gender identities are valued and affirmed . . .[and] challenge all forms of oppression through education, training, advocacy, youth leadership development, mentoring and direct services to youth and those responsible for their well-being.”

Conference workshops fall under the following categories:

• College students only
• General workshops for youth and adults
• Junior high school only
• High school only, and
• Professional best practices (for educators, healthcare providers, school nurses, and social services providers).

Deadline for proposals is Friday, December 11, 2009

You can learn more about True Colors and its conference at: http://www.ourtruecolors.org/

CFS: Adult Children Caring for Parents (Book)

ADULT CHILDREN caring for parents, directly or at a distance—editor seeks creative nonfiction for anthology on trials and pleasures of tending those who tended us. Aging, dying; medical, financial challenges; siblings, sandwich generation. Narrative, lyrical, or meditative essays. Reflective, experimental, humorous, or mixture. Above all, elegantly written. Janet Wondra, editor. Postmark deadline: January 15, 2010. Guidelines: http://sites.google.com/site/parentscnf

Ig Nobel Award Winners

Now that the Nobel Prize news has exhausted itself, it’s time for the Ig Nobel Awards, given annually for research that makes you laugh, and then think. Hmmm . . .

Among this year’s awardees in health-related research:

MEDICINE PRIZE: Donald L. Unger, of Thousand Oaks, California, USA, for investigating a possible cause of arthritis of the fingers, by diligently cracking the knuckles of his left hand — but never cracking the knuckles of his right hand — every day for more than sixty (60) years. REFERENCE: “Does Knuckle Cracking Lead to Arthritis of the Fingers?”, Donald L. Unger, Arthritis and Rheumatism, vol. 41, no. 5, 1998, pp. 949-50.

PUBLIC HEALTH PRIZE: Elena N. Bodnar, Raphael C. Lee, and Sandra Marijan of Chicago, Illinois, USA, for inventing a brassiere that, in an emergency, can be quickly converted into a pair of protective face masks, one for the brassiere wearer and one to be given to some needy bystander. REFERENCE: U.S. patent # 7255627, granted August 14, 2007 for a “Garment Device Convertible to One or More Facemasks.”

As flight attendants might remind us, Please don your brassiere mask first before assisting others with theirs.

10,000 and Counting!

Like the Dow Jones Industrials Index, NursingWriting has broken 10,000!

In the past three months our “traffic” has grown considerably, and we have welcomed over 1,000 visitors per month.

In the past day we welcomed our ten thousandth visitor.

Thanks to all our readers for their support. Thanks to all our nurse writers for their good work.