The HJN Blog

7 Common Injuries Nurses See on Thanksgiving Day

In honor of Thanksgiving, we’ve listed the seven most common injuries that occur on and around Turkey Day.

by Deborah Swanson

One defining factor of working in the ER is that nurses never know who might walk (or be wheeled) through the door. Will it be a middle school soccer player with a broken leg, a gunshot victim in a failed robbery or someone who didn’t get their flu shot and is now horribly ill? But when it comes to the holidays, you can predict what patients will come walking through the door, at least to a certain extent. In honor of Thanksgiving, we’ve listed the seven most common injuries that occur on and around Turkey Day. Put on your scrubs, grab your bandages and be ready to treat any and all of these accidents.

Back Injuries

A 25-pound turkey doesn’t sound like a lot, until you have to deadlift it in a heavy pan straight out of an oven that’s heated to 425 degrees. Even the most dedicated weightlifter can tweak their back if they don’t lift heavy objects with proper form, and people throw their backs out each year trying to maneuver massive turkeys around. There are also other risks for back injuries on Thanksgiving, such as hanging up wreaths or getting down the china dish you only use once a year from the top shelf, so there’s a high likelihood you’ll see at least one of these injuries on Turkey Day.

Cooking Burns

Speaking of turkeys, cooking-related burns are another common issue on Thanksgiving. Firefighters responded to an estimated 1,760 home cooking fires on Thanksgiving in 2015, and that’s just the fires that were severe enough to warrant the fire department. While the ever-dangerous turkey fryer is certainly responsible for some of these accidents, even more mundane cooking methods can result in burns from stove-tops, hot oil or gravy. In the culinary chaos, it’s pretty easy to grab a pan that you think had cooled down (but hasn’t) with your bare hand, or to stir the hot gravy so vigorously it splashes up onto your arm. And simply getting distracted is a major contributor to home cooking fires, as unwatched pots and pans can catch fire.

Knife Lacerations

Speaking of cooking injuries, knife lacerations are another top Thanksgiving injury. Professional and inexperienced cooks alike are pressed into service on Turkey Day, and even the most dedicated takeout devotee may find themselves required to chop vegetables. Dull knives that haven’t been sharpened in a while can slip, and getting distracted in the middle of chopping can lead to accidents. Improperly stored knives and even the sharp edge of an opened can can also pose risks, and sometimes at-home first-aid kits just won’t cut it. One way or another, you’ll probably have to bandage or suture some lacerations on Thanksgiving Day, so keep your nursing supplies on hand.

Gastrointestinal Distress

Yes, all that food is delicious. But people who scarf down too much too fast might find themselves quickly regretting their indulgence, especially if they’re already prone to stomach issues such as acid reflux and heartburn. Traditional Thanksgiving dishes are super tasty, but they’re also loaded with fats, oils, sugars, spices and other known potential triggers for gastrointestinal distress. If patients come in complaining of severe gas, bloating, constipation, abdominal pain or related symptoms, they’ve probably eaten something that disagrees with them or simply eaten too much.

Food Poisoning

It can be hard to get all the Thanksgiving dishes on the table at the same time, but if you don’t, it can expose you to possible food poisoning. In particular, the bacteria Clostridium perfringens grows on food left out at room temperature, and it’s the second most common bacterial cause of food poisoning. Improperly cooked meats, including turkey, can also harbor salmonella, another known cause of food poisoning. If patients complain of nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, abdominal cramps and/or fever, they probably ate food that was not cooked thoroughly or that was left out too long (or both). Keep in mind that food poisoning symptoms can surface in as little as two hours or as many as 24 hours, so you might also get cases the day after Thanksgiving as well.

Amateur Football Injuries

A broken finger, a sprained ankle, a disjointed shoulder, a blown-out knee, a mild concussion. While these injuries happen all over the body, they probably have one cause: the annual Turkey Day amateur football game. The “casual” pickup game sends adults to the ER every year, and there’s always a spike of cases on Thanksgiving. Most adults playing amateur football are (shall we say) a bit past their athletic prime, and they rarely warm up properly before hitting the backyard. Plus, the rules get blurry fast and accidents do happen, so a friendly game of touch or flag football can quickly lead to a broken finger or a blown-out knee. Expect to get a lot of these injuries in the ER if you’re working Thanksgiving. If an adult has one of the problems above but is too embarrassed to admit what happened, it’s a safe bet that things went down during the traditional Turkey Bowl.

Alcohol-Related Incidents

Drinking increases during the holidays, and with it alcohol-related incidents. Drunk driving is obviously a major risk, but drunkenness can also lead to other accidents, such as slips and falls, mild lacerations and more. And the drinking doesn’t only happen on Turkey Day. Thanksgiving Eve (the night before the actual holiday) is an unofficial party and/or bar night. Since the holiday weekend starts Wednesday evening and they don’t have to go to work the next day, many people use that night to grab a few drinks—maybe too many—and catch up with old friends and classmates who are also back in town.

Thanksgiving is full of traditions and, unfortunately, these seven accidents are some of them. If you’re doing a nursing shift in the ER on or around Turkey Day, be prepared to treat any and all of these injuries.

Deborah Swanson is a Coordinator for the Real Caregivers Program at allheart.com. A site dedicated to celebrating medical professionals and their journeys. She keeps busy interviewing caregivers and writing about them and loves gardening.

Disclaimer: The viewpoint expressed in this article is the opinion of the author and is not necessarily the viewpoint of the owners or employees at Healthcare Staffing Innovations, LLC.

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Tell Us: What Are You Giving Thanks for This Year?

Working in the medical field often gives you perspectives that not many other jobs can afford. Tell us, what has working in healthcare made you most thankful for?

Working in healthcare often gives you perspectives that not many other jobs afford. Day in and day out, you may not be focused on the lessons it has taught you or the reasons it has given you to be uniquely thankful, but as Thanksgiving approaches, we are asking you to reflect on those very things. What has working in healthcare made you most thankful for?

Using the form below, tell us how working in the field has shaped you for the better, what it has made you value that you might not have otherwise even noticed, and what you are giving thanks for this year, whether it be the sight of a chair after a long day on your feet, the air in your lungs, or a special coworker. Then, be sure to check back next week to read what your peers are thankful, as well.

Disclaimer: The viewpoint expressed in this article is the opinion of the author and is not necessarily the viewpoint of the owners or employees at Healthcare Staffing Innovations, LLC.

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New Price Transparency Rules Unveiled by Trump Administration

This morning, the Trump Administration issued two rules to increase healthcare price transparency, at both hospital and payer levels.

Today, as directed by an Executive Order from President Trump, the Department of Health and Human Services announced that the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has issued two rules to increase healthcare price transparency, at both hospital and payer levels.

The rule changes require that pricing information be made publicly available in an effort to “increase price transparency to empower patients and increase competition among all hospitals, group health plans and health insurance issuers in the individual and group markets,” as it was stated by HHS in a press release this morning.

The first—”Calendar Year (CY) 2020 Outpatient Prospective Payment System (OPPS) & Ambulatory Surgical Center (ASC) Price Transparency Requirements for Hospitals to Make Standard Charges Public Final Rule”—is a rule that requires hospitals to make all standard charges, including gross charges, payer-specific negotiated rates, the amount a hospital is willing to accept in cash from a patient, and the minimum and maximum negotiated charges, public on the internet in a machine-readable file.

The second rule change, known as the “Transparency in Coverage” rule, which was proposed jointly by the Department of Health and Human Services, the Department of Labor, and the Department of the Treasury, would require most health insurers, including those issuing employer-based group health plans, to disclose price and cost-sharing information to participants, beneficiaries, and enrollees up front.

“President Trump has promised American patients ‘A+’ healthcare transparency, but right now our system probably deserves an F on transparency. President Trump is going to change that, with what will be revolutionary changes for our healthcare system,” said HHS Secretary Alex Azar in this morning’s press release. “Today’s transparency announcement may be a more significant change to American healthcare markets than any other single thing we’ve done, by shining light on the costs of our shadowy system and finally putting the American patient in control.”

Disclaimer: The viewpoint expressed in this article is the opinion of the author and is not necessarily the viewpoint of the owners or employees at Healthcare Staffing Innovations, LLC.

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Where the Female Physicians Are

Female physicians have long been a minority across the country. These are the states with the highest and lowest percentage of active female MDs and DOs.

Female physicians have long been in the minority across the United States, often cited as accounting for only about a third of the physician workforce. Some specialties, however, are dominated by women residents, such as obstetrics and gynecology (83% female), allergy and immunology (73% female), and pediatrics (72% female), and there have been reports of overall gender statistics flipping amongst younger physicians entering the workforce. However, female physicians are still outnumbered by males in every single state in the country. To that end, these are the states that currently have the highest and lowest percentages of professionally active female MDs and DOs.

Highest Percentage of Female Physicians

1. District of Columbia: 48%

2. Massachusetts: 42%

2. Rhode Island: 42%

4. Delaware: 41%

5. Connecticut: 40%

Lowest Percentage of Female Physicians

1. Idaho: 24%

2. Utah: 26%

3. Wyoming: 27%

3. Mississippi: 27%

5. Nevada: 28%

Disclaimer: The viewpoint expressed in this article is the opinion of the author and is not necessarily the viewpoint of the owners or employees at Healthcare Staffing Innovations, LLC.

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These Shoes Just Might Save Your Aching Feet—and a Life

Nike has designed a shoe with you in mind—the Nike Air Zoom Pulse—and they’ll be donating profits from it to a children’s hospital in Oregon.

Nike has crafted a shoe with you in mind: the Nike Air Zoom Pulse.

As they put it in a press release this week, the design is “a shoe for everyday heroes: nurses, doctors, home health providers and others who work tirelessly to support patients.”

That’s right, Nike has created a shoe solely for medical professionals and the physical challenges they face on a day-to-day basis.

To develop the Nike Air Zoom Pulse, the company conducted product testing at OHSU Doernbecher Children’s Hospital and collected worker insights. During their sessions at the Portland, Oregon based hospital, they found nurses walk approximately four to five miles per shift, while sitting for less than an hour, during their 12-hour shifts.

Nike then set out to develop a shoe to confront a range of specific challenges experienced by medical workers—creating a shoe that is easy to get on and off, easy to clean, comfortable for long periods of standing, and versatile enough to support the hurried movements of healthcare professionals in emergency situations.

In December, Nike will release six versions of the shoe, which were designed by Doernbecher patients, and all profits will be donated to OHSU Doernbecher Children’s Hospital.

For more information, and to view the patient-designed styles, click here.

Disclaimer: The viewpoint expressed in this article is the opinion of the author and is not necessarily the viewpoint of the owners or employees at Healthcare Staffing Innovations, LLC.

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Happy NP Week! Here Are 4 Ways to Celebrate.

National Nurse Practitioner Week is a time for gratitude, advocacy, and celebration. Here are four ways to mark the occasion as an NP.

More than 50 years ago, the nation’s first Nurse Practitioners set out to begin training at the University of Colorado. Today, there are more than 270,000 NPs providing exceptional care in the United States, across all settings and specialties. This is the week—National Nurse Practitioner Week—that they are recognized.

National Nurse Practitioner Week, as it was proclaimed by the U.S. Congress back in 1994, is celebrated annually during the second week of November. It is a time for gratitude, advocacy, and celebration. Here are four ways to mark the occasion as an NP.

Thank Your Fellow NPs

Even the smallest act of kindness—a simple “thank you”—can go a long way in an oftentimes grueling profession. Celebrate this week by thanking those who work alongside you with a simple note, words of gratitude, or a small gesture, such a picking up coffee or lunch.

Spread the Word

Raise awareness for the NP profession by using the hashtags #NPWeek and #WeChooseNPs on social media while you celebrate your profession and peers. Use Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and more to give the public an idea of all being an NP entails by doing a day-in-the-life series of posts, or hold a public forum of sorts to answer questions about the profession.

Advocate for Your Profession

Participate in grassroots outreach to your state and local authorities and legislators to make them more aware of the significance of your profession and how your work impacts the community by inviting them to meet with you and tour your practice. Or visit the AANP’s Advocacy Center to learn more about advocating for NPs on a local and national level.

Treat Yourself

If you do nothing else this week, celebrate yourself. Set aside some time for a little extra self-care, and indulge in a good meal, a hot bath, a fulfilling workout, or a treat you’ve been eyeing. After all, you’ve earned it.

No matter how you celebrate this NP Week, know that all of us at HealthJobsNationwide.com are celebrating with you and we are so thankful for all you do to improve the health of our nation, not only this week, but throughout the year.

Disclaimer: The viewpoint expressed in this article is the opinion of the author and is not necessarily the viewpoint of the owners or employees at Healthcare Staffing Innovations, LLC.

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The Drones are Coming

Access to healthcare saw great progress this past week, with the first residential deliveries of prescriptions via autonomous drone.

It sounds like the future, but it’s happening now: prescriptions delivered via drone.

On November 1st, CVS Pharmacy and UPS’s Flight Forward subsidiary successfully used drones to deliver prescriptions to the homes of customers for the very first time.

The drone, which was developed by Matternet, departed on its inaugural flight from a CVS store in Cary, North Carolina and flew to two customers’ homes, where it then hovered about 20 feet over the ground and slowly lowered the packages to the ground via a cable and winch. One of the packages was delivered to a CVS customer with limited mobility, which makes it difficult for them to travel to a store to pick up a prescription—exactly the sort to customer CVS and UPS had in mind while getting into the drone delivery business.

“This drone delivery, the first of its kind in the industry, demonstrates what’s possible for our customers who can’t easily make it into our stores,” said Kevin Hourican, president of CVS Pharmacy, in a press release. “CVS is exploring many types of delivery options for urban, suburban and rural markets. We see big potential in drone delivery in rural communities where life-saving medications are needed and consumers at times cannot conveniently access one of our stores.”

Disclaimer: The viewpoint expressed in this article is the opinion of the author and is not necessarily the viewpoint of the owners or employees at Healthcare Staffing Innovations, LLC.

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Physician Board Certifications on the Rise

As worry surrounding the primary care physician shortage in the U.S. continues, promising numbers were released this week regarding board certifications.

As worry surrounding the physician shortage in the U.S. continues, promising numbers were released this week regarding board certifications.

The figures, which were announced on Monday by the American Board of Medical Specialties in the 2018-2019 ABMS Board Certification Report, show a 2.5% increase over the last year in board certifications, with approximately 940,000 physicians now board certified across 40 specialties and 87 subspecialties.

Of the nearly one million board certified physicians, the largest certifying specialties were Internal Medicine (238,913), Pediatrics (105,685), and Family Medicine (91,208); Colon and Rectal Surgery (2,421), Medical Genetics and Genomics (2,630), and Nuclear Medicine (4,285) were among the smallest.

Other items of note from the report include:

Board certified physicians, when grouped by specialty, were comprised of 59% medical, 27% surgical, and 14% hospital.
Nearly half of all board certified physicians came from only ten states: California (104,258), New York (70,849), Texas (59,208), Florida (48,140), Pennsylvania (40,975), Illinois (36,240), Ohio (31,101), Massachusetts (30,462), New Jersey (26,800), and North Carolina (25,993).
States with the fewest board certified physicians included Wyoming (1,100), North Dakota (1,755), Alaska (1,917), South Dakota (2,108), and Delaware (2,349).

Disclaimer: The viewpoint expressed in this article is the opinion of the author and is not necessarily the viewpoint of the owners or employees at Healthcare Staffing Innovations, LLC.

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Is Telehealth Therapy the Way of the Future?

As our society continues to move in a more “on demand” direction, will therapy professionals follow suit through telehealth therapy? Maybe so.

As our society continues to move in a more “on demand” direction and technologies allow just about everything we, as a population, could possibly need at our fingertips, will therapy professionals and practices follow suit? Possibly so, given the amount of continued chatter around the concept of telehealth or virtual therapy over the years.

Telehealth therapy has a lot of obvious merits, including:

It has huge potential to expand access to care in geographically remote and underserved areas, of which there are many for PTs, OTs, and SLPs alike. This can be particularly helpful in pediatrics, where schools can set up technology for remote therapy for multiple children in one central location, opening access to pediatric patients that might not be able to get the help they need otherwise.
Virtual therapy can also work in conjunction with in-office therapy as an efficient way to perform post-discharge checkups, intake of subjective history, quick screens, post-surgical monitoring, management of chronic illnesses, consultations with other practitioners, such as yoga instructors or pelvic floor specialists, and just about every part of therapy that isn’t manual.
Telehealth also puts a strong emphasis on education and pain science for patients, their families, and their caregivers to help them understand their diagnoses and steps they will need to take to improve function. This can be especially helpful for home health patients, such as those who are aging in place, mental health patients, and outpatient neuro patients.
For therapists, themselves, the benefits are vast. Telehealth affords therapy professionals a flexibility that is not possible with clinical practice. It also isn’t nearly as physically taxing on therapy professionals as traditional clinical therapy practice can be.

Telehealth, despite its many merits, and like anything else, also has drawbacks. At the moment, it is only possible for therapists to practice virtually in the states they are licensed. Also, patient acquisition has proven to be tough for some. Atop that, Medicare does not currently reimburse for use of remote physical, occupational, or speech therapy, though Medicaid does, at least in some states, and third-party payers all come with their own rules for telehealth reimbursement. Though, as telehealth continues to catch on and healthcare, as a whole, moves toward models that involve more immediate, remote care options, those hurdles to successful telehealth practice may be removed.

What are your thoughts on telehealth therapy?

Disclaimer: The viewpoint expressed in this article is the opinion of the author and is not necessarily the viewpoint of the owners or employees at Healthcare Staffing Innovations, LLC.

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Can Nurses Fix the U.S. Healthcare System? Americans Seem to Think So.

Nurses are most trusted by Americans to fix the country’s healthcare system, according to the results of a new survey on health reform.

Being a nurse comes with a significant amount of responsibilities—right down to those that may very well mean life or death—and now it seems as though nurses are charged with another: fixing the U.S. healthcare system.

According to a recent survey on health reform conducted by The New York Times, the Commonwealth Fund, and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, nurses are the healthcare stakeholders Americans trust most to improve the United States’ healthcare system, one which 64% of those polled rated as currently being fair or poor.

Nurses, which 58% of respondents indicated they have “a great deal” of trust in to improve the U.S. healthcare system, outranked doctors (30%), hospitals (18%), labor unions (14%), state (6%) and federal governments (6%), and Congress (5%). Health insurance companies and pharmaceutical companies elicited the least amount of public trust when it comes to healthcare reform, with both receiving only 4% of the votes.

To view the full results of the survey, click here.

Disclaimer: The viewpoint expressed in this article is the opinion of the author and is not necessarily the viewpoint of the owners or employees at Healthcare Staffing Innovations, LLC.

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