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More than Half of 2024 Measles Cases Hospitalized

A measles outbreak continues to hit Chicago, while surveillance nationally found 113 cases in 18 states as of April 4, 2024. With cases both in the community and in migrant shelters, the Chicago Health Department reported 61 measles infections as of April 11, 2024.

CDC Issues Alert on Spike in Meningitis

Infection preventionists should be aware of increasing cases of invasive Neisseria meningitidis, which currently are causing an 18% mortality rate and primarily infecting three risk groups: Black people, people with human immunodeficiency virus, and those in the age range of 30 to 60 years, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports in a public health alert.

All In: If You Share Patients, Collaborate

A regional decolonization collaborative among hospitals and long-term care facilities that commonly share patients led to decreased infections, hospitalizations, costs, and deaths caused by multidrug-resistant organisms, researchers reported.

Healthcare Diversity, Equity Efforts Under Attack After SCOTUS Ruling

Having seen the raw inequity the pandemic exposed in the healthcare system, one would think it has become harder to deny or rationalize the lack of diversity in caregivers and higher adverse outcomes in marginalized patient populations. But one would be wrong.

Nursing Leaders Need Ethicists’ Help with Moral Distress

As an early career nurse in 2020, Preston H. Miller, PhD, RN, CCRN-CMC, PCCN, CFRN, experienced the many effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on nursing practice and healthcare in general. Miller conducted a formal literature review and found that what literature did exist was qualitative in nature. “The findings of this review revealed a lack of research on moral distress among unit-based critical care nurse leaders,” says Miller.

Ethical Informed Consent Is Challenge in NICU

Informed consent is rooted in the ethical principles of patient autonomy and shared decision-making. Suboptimal consenting practices can jeopardize patient autonomy.

Egregious Ethics Violations Require Involvement of State Medical Boards

Ethicists address a wide array of ethical issues in the hospital setting, ranging from conflicts among clinical team members and concerns about potentially inappropriate end-of-life care. But what if a nurse or clinician reports that a physician has committed serious wrongdoing?

Ethical Guidance if Clinicians Use Tests to Search for Covert Consciousness

Clinical professional society guidelines in America and Europe now recommend the use of advanced tests (such as functional magnetic resonance imaging and electroencephalogram) to search for covert consciousness in some patients who appear behaviorally unresponsive at the bedside after severe brain injury.

Emerging Ethical Issues with Chronic Pain Care

The integration of telemedicine and the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in the specialty of pain medicine poses some unique ethical challenges, according to a recent paper.

Strategies to Get Medical Students and Trainees in the Ethics ‘Pipeline’

Many medical schools offer electives or pathways that allow medical students to develop knowledge and skills in bioethics. “These are largely designed to create ethically competent clinicians, perhaps those that can provide ethical leadership within an institution. But I am actually not aware of many MD programs that are aiming to train future clinical ethicists,” says Janet Malek, PhD, an associate professor at Baylor College of Medicine’s Center for Medical Ethics and Health Policy.