Healthcare-Associated Infection? Not on my watch!

Healthcare-associated infections (HAI) or formerly known as nosocomial infections are illnesses acquired in the hospital inpatient environment not resulting from the reasons the patient was admitted. Healthcare-associated infections are one of the top 10 leading causes of death in the United States and it costs the health care system $5-10 Billion annually. The funny thing is HAI is easily preventable: hand washing or the use of antimicrobial gels could save patients from unnecessary stays in the hospital and additional expenses.

Kimberly-Clark has launched an effort to promote awareness and prevention of HAI. Kimberly-Clark has created the HAI Watchdog Community where health care providers are provided a venue to discuss best programs to prevent HAI and a venue to gather resources and information about HAI.

A contest has also been held where health care facilities are able to submit their prevention initiatives; this contest is called the HAI Watchdog Award. Any health care facility from the US or Canada are invited to submit their programs to reduce the occurrence of HAI. Winning facilities would receive an educational grant, a commemorative plaque, and a chance to be recognized in the health care community for their efforts to combat HAI.

Please help raise awareness about HAI by joining the HAI Watchdog Community and invite other colleagues as well. Remember, prevention is better than cure.

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References:

http://www.idph.state.ia.us/patient_safety/glossary.asp

http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/dhqp/healthDis.html

https://dicon.mc.duke.edu/wysiwyg/downloads/HAI_cost_abstract-shea_FINAL_by_Dev.pdf

Stop Hate

I've been blog hopping these past few days when I ran into this awesome post by a friend of mine.

I won't summarize what he posted and instead I'll encourage each and everyone of you to visit his website and read the entire post. Just for the record, I completely agree with what he wrote.

I think everyone is familiar to what cyber bullying is. We have seen this occurring everywhere on the internet: YouTube, forums, even on our Facebook pages. 

Grilling the Perfect Steak

This is a Sponsored Post written by me on behalf of henderson bas. All opinions are 100% mine.

Summer has always been the best season to go out and enjoy the sun. Many would agree with me that summer is also the best time of the year to do some serious grilling. I love barbecues, especially steaks that are juicy and tender. Unfortunately, I’m not gifted with any culinary skills and my dad… well he can grill but the steak tends to be burnt to a crisp.

One Word: Grammar

Holy Cow! I've been reading my older blog entries and I wasn't happy with what I saw. It brings me great shame to read my past entries as they were littered with so many grammatical mistakes, mistakes that would force the Grammar Police to lock me up and throw away the keys.

In my defense, I never proofread when I blog and I do not use the spell check on Microsoft Word like other people. Whenever I make posts, they are always a spur of the moment, so I never pause to organize my thoughts. If I did stop to think, I tend to lose my interest in writing the entire entry and my creativity goes to a standstill. Of course, just writing down whatever pops in my head has resulted to my numerous sentence fragments and run-on sentences. 

A Change of Pace

I can't believe that it's almost three weeks since I've last updated my blog. I have no excuse for my absence except admit that I was too lazy to blog and that I've wasted most of my time playing Dragon Age: Origins.

I know, MLIA. That's "my life is average" for you people who aren't cool enough to know what MLIA is. I know that you were thinking that MLIA stands for "my life is awesome" because I'm pretty awesome myself but no, it stands for average because my life is average. I'm not really complaining because, believe it or not, I do love the way my life is right now... except that I want more money.

Speaking of shopping and school, I have already went scrub shopping. Scrubs are the clothes that health professionals wear in the hospital by the way. It was so hard to find scrubs for men but women had so many designs and sizes to choose from. It was a bit frustrating but I guess this just shows how men in nursing are underrepresented.