New Item: Nova Scotia gives $330 million to nurses, health-care workers as … – Saltwire

STORY CONTINUES BELOW THESE SALTWIRE VIDEOS

The Nova Scotia government is throwing cash at nurses, paramedics and others in the health-care system to try to get them to keep working in the province, or to come back if they have already left.

Premier Tim Houston announced Monday afternoon that 11,000 registered nurses, licensed practical nurses and nurse practitioners who work for health authorities, Emergency Medical Care Inc. (EMCI), continuing care and disability support programs will be immediately eligible for a $10,000 retention bonus.

They can get another $10,000 next year if they sign an agreement to stay for another two years

Another $10,000 incentive will be paid next year to nurses who commit to staying in the system for another two years.

Premier Tim Houston announced that 11,000 registered nurses, licensed practical nurses and nurse practitioners who work for health authorities, Emergency Medical Care Inc. (EMCI), continuing care and disability support programs will be immediately eligible for a $10,000 retention bonus. - Tim Krochak / File — Premier Tim Houston announced that 11,000 registered nurses, licensed practical nurses and nurse practitioners who work for health authorities, Emergency Medical Care Inc. (EMCI), continuing care and disability support programs will be immediately eligible for a $10,000 retention bonus. – Tim Krochak / File

And any nurses who left the public health care system and agree to return to work before the end of this month for another two years will also get a $10,000 payment.

Another 44,000 health-care workers including paramedics, telehealth staff, respiratory therapists, continuing care staff, ward clerks, housekeeping and food service staff and more, will receive a retention bonus of up to $5,000. Eligible employees work for publicly funded health authorities, EMCI, Hearing and Speech Nova Scotia, the continuing care sector and disability support programs.

“Every single day nurses and health-care professionals are asked to shoulder an enormous burden monitoring, treating, providing world-class care to patients who are also dealing with an enormous range of health care challenges and their own emotions,” Houston said at the announcement at the Dartmouth General Hospital.

“The workload continues to grow, the pressure continues to grow, and you face it with a ‘do-not-quit’ attitude. And we see it.”

Houston said he knows the pressures lead to many in the health-care system “burning themselves out,” and the first $10,000 payment is a way to say thanks for that “with no strings attached.”

All the money is part of the Progressive Conservatives’ promise to invest whatever it takes to fix the health-care system, he said.

The bonuses and incentives will be prorated based on the full-time equivalent position that people hold, and if they started work after January of this year.

“Money certainly isn’t the answer to everything … but it’s a way to recognize your effort, to help keep people working in our health-care system and bring people back to our system, and to support each other,” Houston said.

If each employee were to receive the full amount, the bonuses over the next two years would total $440 million, with another $24 million earmarked for people returning to work.

“Money certainly isn’t the answer to everything … but it’s a way to recognize your effort, to help keep people working in our health-care system and bring people back to our system.”

– Premier Tim Houston

Managers who provide direct clinical patient care, physicians and medical residents are not eligible, nor are those working in federally regulated groups, or those not directly employed by a provincially funded health employer.

Nova Scotia Nurses’ Union president Janet Hazleton said in a release that the retention payments for nurses working in all sectors of care across the province is a “step in the right direction.”

The money acknowledges the hardships that nurses have endured, which were exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, but Hazelton more needs to be done to retain staff.

“Money is part of a multi-pronged approach to keeping nurses on the job, in our public healthcare system,” she said. “We must restore work-life balance, ensure nurses are not working short and are not working an excessive amount of overtime.”

The Nova Scotia Council of Nursing Unions is now bargaining for acute care nurses on issues such as workplace violence, burnout and moral injury, time off, access to professional development opportunities, 24-hour shifts, staffing ratios, workload, incentives for late-career nurses, and scheduling flexibility. All are factors in retaining nurses, Hazleton said.

Nova Scotia Liberal Leader Zach Churchill says he hopes the bonus will help retain health-care workers, but added it's not just about the money. - Eric Wynne / File — Nova Scotia Liberal Leader Zach Churchill says he hopes the bonus will help retain health-care workers, but added it’s not just about the money. – Eric Wynne / File

The union expects the news will be well-received by many of its members but expects some will want remuneration beyond Monday’s announcement.

“In addition to this announcement, it’s vital to achieve wage increases during negotiations, an economic adjustment that keeps Nova Scotia competitive in the long-term,” Hazleton said.

Liberal leader and health and wellness critic Zach Churchill said a record number of nurses and other health-care workers have left the system over the past two years.

“We hope this is helpful in keeping and retaining those critical people in our health care system, but we also know that it’s not all about money,” Churchill said. “But we also know that it’s not just about the money. Working conditions have been playing a big part in why nurses, paramedics and other health care professionals have been leaving the system.”

He said health workers are in high-stress jobs “and can’t even get a vacation or a break. We do hope this helps stop the bleeding, certainly nurses and other health-care professionals deserve this, but we also know that working conditions have to improve if we’re going to have success at retaining people.”

Source: Ross Arrowsmith

New Item: Analysis | Workplace attacks have been rising — almost entirely … – The Washington Post

A surprising (and growing) gender gap in the most dangerous jobs

March 17, 2023 at 6:00 a.m. EDT

By almost every measure, the American workplace is getting safer. But one troubling type of injury is on the rise: violent attacks that cause injuries so severe that the victim misses a day of work. And the increase has come almost entirely in attacks against women.

That’s a deadly serious finding, and one we did not expect. After all, our analysis began with the intriguing discovery that the Survey of Occupational Injuries and Illnesses includes a category called “self-tasered — unintentional.”

This database of workplace injuries is incredibly detailed, offering a concise but wide-ranging portrait of tragedy and mishap in the American workplace. It tells us how often workers are strangled by another person and how often they are caught in running machinery. It dutifully logs injuries caused by horseplay (which, the government helpfully notes, includes “roughhousing”) and walking (without other incident), alongside injuries to people who accidentally Taser themselves (a risk presumably encountered by a limited subset of workers).

When we dove into the database, which is powered by an annual survey of 230,000 employers conducted by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the good news immediately rose to the top: We’re getting hurt less at work.

But the deeper we dug, the more distressed we became. The drop in workplace injuries occurred primarily in the largest categories: Overexertion injuries including those caused by heavy lifting. Repetitive-stress injuries. Slips and falls. Contact injuries, which typically involve getting hit by something, like a piece of equipment.

Department of Data

We here at the Department of Data are dedicated to exploring the weird
and wondrous power of the data that defines our world.

(In 2020, the most recent year for which we have data, the biggest cause of injury was actually exposure to harmful substances, a category of workplace danger that shot up dramatically during the covid pandemic. But coronavirus exposure at work is really a different story. Our Post colleagues have addressed it elsewhere in impressive depth.)

Another major category, injuries caused by people or animals, remained flat. Or at least that’s how it first appeared. In fact, that flat line concealed two diverging trends: A sharp decline in people accidentally injuring each other. And a huge increase in injuries caused by intentional workplace attacks.

The number of intentional human-caused injuries just keeps rising. Every year, more and more Americans are hit, kicked, beaten or shoved so badly that the victim misses at least a day of work. (The number of injuries fell in 2020 when many of us were social distancing and working from home, but the broader trend is ominous.)

To understand who is being attacked, we analyzed the largest category — hitting, kicking, beating, shoving — by gender. The gap was alarming. Not only are women far more likely to be attacked and injured so badly that they miss work, but almost all the past decade’s increase in hitting, kicking, beating and shoving in the workplace has been targeted at women.

What is going on? On deeper examination, we discovered that only a handful of major occupational groups are at real danger of being attacked by other people at work: Education and health-care workers, and a broad group of service workers that includes everything from home health aides to cooks.

But which of those jobs drove the increase?

Based on total injury rate, the most dangerous job is athlete, a fact not lost on the fans and gamblers who eagerly await the latest sports-injury reports. But athletes aren’t getting attacked. They are most often injured accidentally by others, or succumb to slips and falls.

Narrowing our focus to the most dangerous jobs where violent attacks are the top cause of injury is revealing. Those jobs are much-lower-profile, and much less generously compensated. No. 1 on that list — and the second-most-dangerous job overall after athlete — is psychiatric aide, a position that cares for patients with mental illness or disability, often in psychiatric hospitals. It’s followed by psychiatric technician, a role that has similar but more specialized responsibilities. Both occupations paid significantly less than $40,000 a year in 2021.

“They often are the ones that are the punching bags for the [patients] because they don’t have any defensive tactics training, they don’t have any weapons on them, they don’t have anything like that,” said Coby Pizzotti, who has worked with the California Association of Psychiatric Technicians for more than a decade. “They’re there just to treat these patients.

“So what they end up seeing are horrific, horrific things. And what they end up suffering are incredibly horrific events,” Pizzotti said. “We have many psych techs that have been beaten so badly that they can’t return to work.”

As it turns out, about 4 in 5 psychiatric techs are women. We’re used to seeing lists of the most fatal jobs, which are dominated by largely male professions such as fishing, logging and roofing. But a job can be exceedingly dangerous without being fatal. And when we judge dangerous jobs by injuries rather than deaths, jobs dominated by women rise to the top.

That fact comes into startling view when we chart the jobs where the number of injuries caused by violent attacks is rising. Teaching assistants, personal care aides, psychiatric aides and techs, elementary teachers and registered nurses top the list. Every last one of those occupations is done mostly by women.

Meanwhile, the jobs with the largest decrease in attacks — police officers, correctional officers and police supervisors — are all performed largely by men.

But why the rise? We started with education workers. Research on school violence used to focus primarily on students. But the past 15 years have seen an increased focus on violence against teachers, said psychology professor Susan Dvorak McMahon of DePaul University in Chicago, chair of a school violence task force that recently briefed Congress on the issue.

McMahon told us she wasn’t surprised that such attacks have risen. It takes experience and training to defuse violent situations with students, parents and even colleagues, and many front-line education positions have high turnover. Our analysis of Bureau of Labor Statistics data shows that turnover among teachers’ aides soared between 2010, when the typical assistant had been on the job 5.6 years, and 2020, when the typical aide stuck around for just 3.2 years.

“There’s definitely a connection between violence and victimization and teacher turnover,” McMahon said.

Next we turned to psychiatric aides and technicians, the folks who most frequently face being grabbed, scratched, bitten, choked, punched, kicked, shoved and spit on at work. There’s no smoking gun that explains why their work has grown increasingly dangerous, said Jack Rozel, a professor of psychiatry at the University of Pittsburgh who leads meetings and trainings about workplace violence in psychiatric hospitals, in addition to treating patients enduring mental health crises.

But Rozel did note one critical source of trouble with those jobs: The skills needed to deal with high-risk patients are developed only through training, experience and mentorship. But the riskiest patient-facing jobs are low-paid, entry-level positions that do not inspire workers to stick around long enough to learn them.

“It’s technically demanding, emotionally challenging work. It takes time to get good at it,” Rozel told us. “The challenge is finding a way to learn how to manage someone who’s upset or threatening or potentially violent that doesn’t involve the staff or the patient getting hurt in the process.”

The vast majority of people who live with psychiatric illness are not violent, Rozel told us. But there are, he said, a few people with illnesses and life experiences that put them at higher risk for violent behavior. That risk rises when they fall through holes in the fraying social safety net and are allowed to get sicker and sicker before they reach the hospital.

Elizabeth Sinclair Hancq directs research at the Treatment Advocacy Center, a nonprofit that works to improve care for those with severe mental health issues. She says that as the nation’s capacity to treat the severely mentally ill has declined, particularly at state-run facilities, it has become harder for people to access care.

Many patients enter a treatment facility only when their symptoms have become so serious that they present a danger to themselves or others. To that point: A growing share of state mental hospital patients are connected to the criminal justice system, either because they are awaiting trial or have been deemed not guilty by reason of insanity, Hancq’s research shows.

“As psychiatric beds decline, the ability to access beds also declines,” Hancq told us. “So patients that are ultimately being hospitalized in an inpatient unit have higher levels of acuity — higher levels of more severe symptoms — which is known to also correlate with increased attacks and violent and aggressive behaviors.”

Future data releases on workplace injuries may paint an even darker picture. During the pandemic, patients have been cooped up, dangerous behavior has risen across the board and psychiatric beds were further limited to make room for covid patients.

The nation also is experiencing massive shortages in the number of workers willing to do such dangerous and traumatic work — most of them women.

Howdy! The Department of Data turns quantifiable questions into columns! What are you curious about: Who shows up most on White House visitor logs? Do they still use as many 555 phone numbers in movies? Which American city has the narrowest downtown streets? Just ask!

If your question inspires a column, we’ll send an official Department of Data button and ID card. This week’s buttons go to Mike Morde in Rochester, N.Y., who asked about psychiatric hospital capacity, and to Sydney Sonneville in Chicago, who sent us data from Definitive Healthcare on the hundreds of thousands of health-care workers who have dropped out of the workforce.

Source: Ross Arrowsmith

New Item: Simmons believed radiation exposure at Idaho laboratory was … – InMaricopa.com

INL Pic — The Idaho National Laboratory sits about 35 miles west of Idaho Falls. Idaho National Laboratory/Flickr

EDITOR’S NOTE: Brian Simmons was shot and killed in August by Maricopa Police during a noise complaint that escalated into a shootout. Simmons, who had 21 interactions with the Maricopa Police Department in the last eight months of his life, had mental health issues that likely stemmed from radiation when he worked at Idaho National Laboratory.

Brian Simmons always had a suspicion the days were numbered until he would become the victim of a radiation exposure while working at Idaho National Laboratory, 35 miles west of Idaho Falls.

Looking back on Nov. 8, 2011, and the plutonium contamination in the Zero Power Physics Reactor Facility at Idaho National Laboratory, Simmons was right.

Simmons’ father, Hal, recalled a discussion with his son afterward.

“Brian told me, ‘Dad, it’s not the first (event), it’s just the worst,’” Hal said.

Ralph Stanton, a friend and co-worker of Simmons, said it was normal operating procedure for Nuclear Facility Operators, like the two of them, to handle weapons-grade plutonium at the facility in street clothes, sneakers and a lab coat.

On the day of Simmons’ and Stanton’s exposure, Stanton said he unwrapped plastic and duct tape covering a plutonium research-reactor fuel plate. Black powder trickled out, exposing Stanton, Simmons and 14 other employees.

Stanton took one look at the obviously compromised package and knew the situation was grim. He said he took his concerns to management at Battelle Energy Alliance, the Department of Energy’s main contractor for the lab, who told him to either open the package or go home without a job.

After their exposure, meters measuring radioactivity registered dangerously high on Simmons and Stanton. Stanton said INL did not have mitigation procedures in place at the site of the exposure.

“Radiological Control Technicians from other facilities started arriving at our facility to help evacuate us to the medical facility,” Stanton said. “Some of the first responders showed up in full anti-contamination clothing with full respiratory protection, while others showed up with no protection at all. It was very disorganized.”

Other precautions were nonexistent, according to Stanton.

“Decontamination showers were historically available in the ZPPR (Zero Power Physics Reactor) Facility but had been removed to cut costs,” Stanton said. “Due to the ZPPR facility showers having been removed, the only thing that they could do for us was take our clothes and put us in modesty clothing (surgical scrubs).”

The only treatment the two men received that day, Stanton said, was chelation, which attaches to metals and minerals in the bloodstream. It can be eliminated through urination. Those treatments typically are done on a weekly basis. Stanton said he and Simmons received that treatment only once. Such treatments, however, are worthless when radiation is inhaled, as was the case with Simmons and Stanton.

The exposure made national news that day. Leaders at INL promised no radiation had escaped from the facility. Stanton and Simmons went home to their families that night without even the precaution of a shower, still covered in radioactive isotopes.

For the next six months, the two were banished to the basement of the laboratory by management to keep from exposing other employees to radiation.

According to Stanton, one day, management at the site suddenly decided to put the two of them back to work. Any future radioactive readings on the two would be attributed to other incidents.

Battelle Energy Alliance pegged the radiation dose Stanton and Simmons received at just 2 percent of the yearly limit for nuclear workers.

Stanton knew immediately the readings were wrong. He and Simmons were constantly sick, suffering from fits of bloody diarrhea and vomiting. On top of all else, according to Stanton, they were being denied access to their medical records from the event by BEA.

Simmons and Stanton both pressed for copies of the records from their accident, but Stanton said Battelle stonewalled them. Later, a federal report of the incident indicated Stanton’s and Simmons’ exposure from that event was likely 5 times higher than their yearly exposure limit, far, far greater than BEA claimed. A link to that report is at the end of this story.

One day, Stanton said he and Simmons were talking at Stanton’s house and an unidentified person called and asked to meet that night in the Albertsons parking lot.

The stranger delivered — and in a big way — supplying Stanton and Simmons with documentation showing INL’s senior management was warned in 2009 and five months prior to their accident that damaged plutonium fuel plates stored at the plant could lead to the exact kind of event they experienced.

Stanton said he demanded answers from BEA. They refused. He said he and Simmons became victims of a campaign of harassment.

“They were either going to make our lives so difficult that we quit, or they were going to find some kind of a technicality to fire us on,” Stanton said.

Stanton said BEA re-assigned Simmons and him to different departments and forbade them from talking to each other while at the facility.

Stanton, a veteran of the Iraq War, held a high-level security clearance, perhaps one of the highest at the facility. He was accused of workplace violence and harassment because a teddy bear was placed in someone’s cubicle, he said, adding he was written up for negative body language and accused of putting his feet up on his desk.

Stanton was fired two days before Christmas in 2013.

In separate lawsuits, Simmons and Stanton settled out of court with BEA. Terms of those settlements were not disclosed.

The Department of Energy’s report on the Plutonium Contamination in the Zero Power Physics Reactor Facility at the Idaho National Laboratory on Nov. 8, 2011 can be found here: INL_AI_Report_11-08-2011

Source: Ross Arrowsmith

New Item: India witnessed significant human rights violations in 2022, says US report – India Today

India witnessed significant human rights abuses in 2022, including arbitrary arrests, extrajudicial killings and violence targeting religious and ethnic minorities, a US report said.

New Delhi,UPDATED: Mar 21, 2023 07:36 IST

Activist protests against repression of free speech rights. (Photo: PTI)

By India Today News Desk: A US report has listed significant human rights issues in India in 2022, including unlawful and arbitrary killings, freedom of press and violence targeting religious and ethnic minorities.

The annual report, released by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, mentions human rights violations such as extrajudicial killings, torture or cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment by police and prison officials, and harsh and life-threatening prison conditions.

READ | India, too, has views on human rights situation in US, says Jaishankar

Arbitrary arrest and detention, political prisoners or detainees, arbitrary or unlawful interference with privacy, restrictions on freedom of expression and media, including violence or threats of violence, unjustified arrests or prosecutions of journalists, and enforcement of or threat to enforce criminal libel laws to limit expression are some of the other human rights violations mentioned in the report.

It is noteworthy that India has rejected similar reports by the US government in the past. The Union government has asserted that India has well-established democratic practices and robust institutions to safeguard the rights of all.

ALSO READ | India has several human rights issues, working on restoring normalcy in Kashmir: US report

The US report also mentions restrictions on internet freedom, interference with the freedom of peaceful assembly and harassment of domestic and international human rights organisations among serious rights violations in India.

Among other issues, it listed lack of investigation of and accountability for gender-based violence, including domestic and intimate partner violence, sexual violence, workplace violence, child, early, and forced marriage, femicide, and other forms of such violence; crimes involving violence or threats of violence targeting members of national/racial/ethnic and minority groups based on religious affiliation, social status or sexual orientation.

ALSO READ | Pyaar se samjha denge: What S Jaishankar said on new US envoy’s views on CAA

“There were reports that government authorities accessed, collected, or used private communication arbitrarily or unlawfully or without appropriate legal authority and developed practices that allow for the arbitrary or unlawful interference with privacy, including the use of technology to arbitrarily or unlawfully surveil or interfere with the privacy of individuals,” the report said.

The report added that citizens generally enjoyed freedom of speech, but the government continued to restrict content based on broad public and national interest provisions.

(With PTI inputs)

Published On:

Mar 21, 2023

Source: Ross Arrowsmith

New Item: Province gives $330 million to nurses, health care workers as … – Saltwire

STORY CONTINUES BELOW THESE SALTWIRE VIDEOS

The Nova Scotia government is throwing cash at nurses, paramedics and others in the health care system to try to get them to keep working in the province, or to come back if they have already left.

They can get another $10,000 next year if they sign an agreement to stay for another two years

Another $10,000 incentive will be paid next year to nurses who commit to staying in the system for another two years.

And any nurses who left the public health care system and agree to return to work before the end of this month for another two years will also get a $10,000 payment.

Another 44,000 health care workers including paramedics, telehealth staff, respiratory therapists, continuing care staff, ward clerks, housekeeping and food service staff and more, will receive a retention bonus of up to $5,000. Eligible employees work for publicly funded health authorities, EMCI, Hearing and Speech Nova Scotia, the continuing care sector and disability support programs.

“Every single day nurses and health care professionals are asked to shoulder an enormous burden monitoring, treating, providing world-class care to patients who are also dealing with an enormous range of health care challenges and their own emotions,” Houston said at the announcement at the Dartmouth General Hospital.

“The workload continues to grow, the pressure continues to grow, and you face it with a ‘do-not-quit’ attitude. And we see it.”

Houston said he knows the pressures lead to many in the health care system “burning themselves out,” and the first $10,000 payment is a way to say thanks for that “with no strings attached.”

All the money is part of the Progressive Conservatives’ promise to invest whatever it takes to fix the heath care system, he said.

The bonuses and incentives will be prorated based on the full-time equivalent position that people hold, and if they started work after January of this year.

“Money certainly isn’t the answer to everything … but it’s a way to recognize your effort, to help keep people working in our health care system and bring people back to our system, and to support each other,” Houston said.

If each employee were to receive the full amount, the bonuses over the next two years would total $440 million, with another $24 million earmarked for people returning to work.

The money acknowledges the hardships that nurses have endured, which were exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, but Hazelton more needs to be done to retain staff.

The Nova Scotia Council of Nursing Unions is now bargaining for acute care nurses on issues such as workplace violence, burnout and moral injury, time off, access to professional development opportunities, 24-hour shifts, staffing ratios, workload, incentives for late career nurses, and scheduling flexibility. All are factors in retaining nurses, Hazleton said.

The union expects the news will be well-received by many of its members but expects some will want remuneration beyond Monday’s announcement.

“In addition to this announcement, it’s vital to achieve wage increases during negotiations, an economic adjustment that keeps Nova Scotia competitive in the long-term,” Hazleton said.

Liberal leader and health and wellness critic Zach Churchill said a record number of nurses and other health care workers have left the system over the past two years.

He said health workers are in high-stress jobs “and can’t even get a vacation or a break. We do hope this helps stop the bleeding, certainly nurses and other heath care professionals deserve this, but we also know that working conditions have to improve if we’re going to have success at retaining people.”

Source: Ross Arrowsmith

New Item: Free OSHA training available for federal employees in charge safety … – Safety+Health Magazine

Washington — OSHA will conduct a free, three-day training event for federal employees who are responsible for their agencies’ workplace safety and health.

Scheduled for Aug. 8-10, the in-person and online training will be administered by OSHA’s Office of Federal Agency Programs and the OSHA Training Institute, and will take place in Arlington Heights, IL.

Half-day seminars will cover topics such as incident investigations, fall protection, the construction “Focus Four” hazards, confined spaces, workplace violence, job hazard analysis, forklift and material handling, and Safety Data Sheets.

The registration period runs from June 5 to July 14. For assistance, email [email protected].

OSHA also offers training for private-sector employees, including federal contractors, with paid tuition. “OTI provides training and education in occupational safety and health for federal and state compliance officers, state consultants, other federal agency personnel, and the private sector,” the agency says in a press release.

Source: Ross Arrowsmith

New Item: Green: Legislature enters crucial second half of session – Vermont Biz

Green: Legislature enters crucial second half of session Vermont Biz

Source: Ross Arrowsmith

New Item: Judge Approves Restraining Order for Former Councilmember Watson – North Coast Journal

click to enlarge

file
Humboldt County Courthouse

A Humboldt County Superior Court judge has issued a workplace violence restraining order for former Arcata City Councilmember Brett Watson that restricts him from contacting, being near or entering the workplace of four city officials, among other requirements.

Filed by Judge Timothy Canning on Friday, after several days of hearings earlier this month and last that included witnesses, the order is in effect for three years and replaces a temporary order that had been in effect since October. Watson opposed the order.

A workplace violence restraining order differs in that it is requested by an employer, in this case the city of Arcata, rather than an individual. The initial request was filed in October, with the city citing Watson’s “escalating behavior” for moving forward with seeking the protective injunction.

The action came five months after the public release of an outside investigation that found Watson sexually harassed a city employee. He has denied any wrongdoing.

Source: Ross Arrowsmith

New Item: 5 Things You Need to Know about Health & Safety Conference in … – AFGE

5 Things You Need to Know about Health & Safety Conference in … AFGE

Source: Ross Arrowsmith

New Item: Learn about training to keep your practice staff up to date – American Medical Association

Private practice staffs seemingly do everything all at once. Among other things, they support physicians, manage records, welcome patients, clean examination rooms and serve on the front lines in preventing infections.

But all those responsibilities require training—first to prepare the staff for their myriad tasks and later to make sure they are meeting continuing education (CE) requirements and doing what’s needed to help deliver high-quality patient care. The training can include not just initial onboarding, but annual education as well, noted Taylor Johnson, who manages physician practice development at the AMA.

“Some of the most important considerations for training and education for staff are going to be cost and content availability,” noted Geoffrey Kass, director of Medline University, a division of Medline Industries that provides high quality, evidence-based continuing education courses at no cost to medical professionals.

“One of the great opportunities of Medline University is for your staff to have access to the clinical education they need, particularly clinicians who are required to track CE credits,” Kass said. “It’s also an opportunity for [practice leaders] to have a standardization of care practice in your facility or organization.”

Medline leaders discussed their training resources and Medline University during an AMA webinar. Medline University has more than 250 courses available, with about 160 eligible for CE credits, Kass said.

The self-paced courses allow staffers to start, stop and continue where they left off without losing their previous work—an important feature for busy practice teams.

“It’s also a great opportunity to onboard new staff and get everybody on the same playing field,” he added.

Staying up to date

The training course list highlighted in the webinar has been curated specially for AMA members and is a service provided to AMA members in addition to the AMA Medline Buying Program, according to Tom Balabon, national accounts director for Medline.

There is zero cost for AMA members to enroll in the Medline Buying Program and enjoy access to a hand-picked CE course list, staff training and education through Medline University as well as:

Up to 20% savings on all purchases.
Next-day delivery and low order minimums.
Medline’s extensive apparel program.

The curated list available to AMA members allows physicians to assign the relevant courses to staff without having to spend extra time identifying which courses meet their needs.

The Medline University platform also tracks course completions. While the curated course list is available to AMA members, the content overall is open access.

The Medline University courses fall into three categories: clinical education to support standardization of care and provide access to CE credits; onboarding courses for new employees; and annual training to maintain skills and meet state mandates.

Onboarding courses include HIPAA training, infection control, bloodborne-pathogens control and office management classes such as sexual harassment prevention. Courses also cover case management and patient-centered care, along with health equity topics such as care for LGBTQ+ patients.

Medline University courses can also help practices attract and retain employees—particularly when CE is required—and manage change by providing consistency in training, Kass said.

Just 15 minutes to learn something new

Brenda Kozak, senior clinical education specialist for Medline, noted that courses can provide insight into other topics such as health literacy and end-of-life care, which she said is needed by all staff. New topics added this year include guidance on battling the opioid epidemic, preventing nurse burnout, and preventing workplace violence, she said.

Medline University also offers 10 “microlearning” opportunities—10-to-15-minute courses that are optimized for mobile devices to establish a concise and accelerated learning experience, she said.

Medline University has partnered with several leading industry organizations, including the California and Florida state nursing boards, American Medical Certification Association, National Association of Long-Term Care Administrator Boards, as well as organizations supporting laboratory technicians and respiratory therapists.

It takes astute clinical judgment as well as a commitment to collaboration and solving challenging problems to succeed in independent settings that are often fluid, and the AMA offers the resources and support physicians need to both start and sustain success in private practice.

Find out more about the AMA Private Practice Physicians Section, which seeks to preserve the freedom, independence and integrity of private practice.

Source: Ross Arrowsmith