Editor's Note ECRI, on May 18, announced the winners of its annual 2023 Alerts Impact Award. The Award is given to members of ECRI’s Alerts Workflow system for excellence in recall management. The system’s software is used by supply chain, clinical engineering, IT, pharmacy, lab, clinical departments, and ancillary-care points…

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Editor's Note The Food and Drug Administration (FDA), on May 11, finalized its recommendations for assessing blood donor eligibility, which uses individual risk-based questions to reduce the risk of transmitting HIV. The questions will be the same for all donors, regardless of sexual orientation, sex, or gender. The new policy…

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Editor's Note Because there is limited data to guide return to driving recommendations for patients after surgery, researchers at the Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, performed this nested case-crossover study to find if the risk of a motor vehicle crash increases after surgery, compared to before. The analysis included 70,722 licensed…

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Editor's Note The Joint Commission, on May 17, released a new Speak Up public education campaign on mental health. The campaign was released this month—Mental Health Awareness Month—to help consumers understand the signs and symptoms of mental illness as well as ways to receive help and advocate for care. “Speak…

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Editor's Note Because of the rising incidence of violence in healthcare settings, nearly 40 states have laws that establish or strengthen penalties for assaults on healthcare workers, and 29 more have approved or are working on similar laws, the May 15 KFF Health News reports. Some laws would allow healthcare…

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Editor's Note Five of dozens of defendants charged in the Southern District of Florida for their alleged participation in an illegal licensing scheme for aspiring nurses have plead guilty to wire fraud conspiracy, according to a May 15 news release from the US Attorney’s Office, Southern District of Florida. All…

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Editor's Note This study led by Olivia Jung, PhD, EmoryUniversity, Atlanta, and Linda Aiken, PhD, RN, University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing, Philadelphia, finds an association between the work environment of nurses and hospital-onset Clostridioides difficile (C diff) infection. The analysis, which the authors say is the first to examine…

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Editor's Note According to a May 14 Government Accountability Office (GAO) report, the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is continuing with the persistent, systemic problems that impaired its ability to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic as well as other public health crises, such as H1N1 influenza, Zika,…

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Editor's Note Estimates from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention find the emerging COVID-19 Omicron subvariant XBB.1.16, dubbed Arcturus, is responsible for more than 14% of COVID-19 cases in the US over the past 2 weeks, up from nearly 7% in the prior 2 weeks, according to the May…

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Editor's Note A qualitative study funded by Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) and published in JAMA Network Open in April 2023 found that a majority of diagnostic errors are "at least partially caused by problems with electronic health records" (EHR), the American Organization for Nursing Leadership May 9…

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