Women's health

"Women’s Health...in the news" is a comprehensive online digest of time-sensitive news on women’s health topics. This free, online service comes to subscribers weekly with synopses of the latest news and studies concerning women’s health. "Thousands of health care professionals subscribe to this service and rely on it to ‘triage’ the news...to keep them up to date on critical information without requiring them to commit hours to the process," say the service providers. Topics have included breast cancer, breast feeding, ERT, asthma, heart disease and many, many more. One topic "of note" per week, normally, is pegged to a particular pharmaceutical; the rest are linked to studies, journal items and information in the news. To subscribe, go to http://www.womenshealthinthenews.com/ or call Susan Null at 845/634-9140.

Welcome new council member

Ralph Hickle, RN and president of HealthCare-PSEA and vice president of the Brownsville Nurses Association, is the newest member of the Federation of Nurses and Health Professionals program and policy council. The 1,500-member HealthCare-PSEA joined forces with the FNHP last year. Hickle has been an RN since 1992, having graduated from the Washington School of Nursing in Washington, Pa. He has worked in the ICU/CCU of Brownsville General Hospital in Brownsville, Pa., since obtaining board certification, and has served as Brownsville Nurses Association/ PSEA local vice president since February of this year. Hickle has been HealthCare-PSEA state president since 2000 and has held a number of union positions prior to that time.

Tip of the iceberg

The Institute of Medicine’s findings in 1999 that more people die from medical mistakes each year than from highway accidents, breast cancer or AIDS is just the "tip of the iceberg in the larger story about quality care," says the IOM’s Committee on Quality of Health Care in America. The committee, which issued the report on medical errors, released another report in March calling for an overhaul of a health care system it describes as disjointed and inefficient. In addition to an "innovation fund" of $1 billion to be used over the next three to five years to renovate the system, the IOM report outlines a five-part agenda for improvement that includes: the availability of patient care 24 hours a day (including Internet, phone and face-to-face access); the use of technology to eliminate most handwritten clinical data within the next 10 years; unfettered patient access to their own medical records; payment policies that reward quality. For more information about the report, "Crossing the Quality Chasm: A New Health System for the 21st Century," go to the National Academy of Sciences’ Web site at: http://nationalacademies.org/.