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• Nurses use iTouch and iPhones to communicate and stay connected

  Sarasota (FL) Memorial Healthcare System plans to bring peace and quiet, along with improved healthcare, to its hospital by supplying Apple's iTouch to all its nurses.

  Sarasota Memorial was approached by Voalte, a startup developing point-of-care communications company, to be part of a piloting program. Voalte uses mobile technology, specifically applications from Apple, to send pages and alerts. During the 60-day pilot program that started in June, Sarasota Memorial handed out 25 iPod Touches to nurses on one specific floor with the goal of reducing the amount of noise and inefficiency involved in paging nurses.

• What should be included in a professional portfolio?

  Q: I would like to begin using portfolios as a tool to document achievement of particular competencies. What should be included in a portfolio?
  A: Although portfolios currently are not widely utilized in the United States, they will become prevalent in the future.

• New accreditation decision: How will this affect 2010 surveys?

  The Joint Commission has announced the adoption of a new accreditation decision for 2010, “Medicare Condition-Level Deficiency Follow-Up Survey,” which will be used when surveyors evaluate a facility with one or more condition-level deficiencies out of compliance.

• Hospital educates staff on abandoned child law

  Educators at an Alabama hospital are offering classes to teach their staff about the state’s Safe Haven Law and their policies on newborn abandonment. An emergency room nurse and nurse educator at Athens-Limestone Hospital, in Athens, decided to implement the educational program so staff was properly trained if they had to deal with a parent abandoning their child.

• Iowa nurses bust VAP with song

  Nurses at the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics in Iowa City recently found a lighthearted way to educate caregivers about preventing ventilator-associated pneumonia (VAP): They filmed themselves dancing and singing about VAP prevention to the tune of the Ghostbusters theme song.

• Nurses help needy families during holiday season

  For the third consecutive year, the nurses at Montgomery Regional Hospital in Blacksburg, VA, came together to support the Montgomery County Christmas Store. The Christmas Store is an all-volunteer, community-wide nonprofit organization that assists low-income families during the Christmas season by providing a shopping experience characterized by choice and dignity. Customers must meet income qualifications to shop, and with rising unemployment rates, the need for the store is greater than ever.

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