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Features

August 1-7, 2010 was World Breastfeeding Week. This year commemorated the 20th anniversary of the Innocenti Declaration that called for implementation of the Ten Steps to Successful Breastfeeding. These steps provide a supportive pathway for women to achieve their breastfeeding goals and guidance for health care professionals to provide effective breastfeeding support.

• Richmond Agitation Sedation Scale: Is Your Patient in the Zzzzone?
• Hospital Acquired Infections: The Nurse's Role in Prevention
• Be Cool in the Shade & Save Your Skin

Headlines in Health

If you've ever seen a child with pertussis, you won't forget it in a hurry! The child coughs violently, rapidly and repeatedly, over and over, until breathless. When the child is forced to inhale again, there is a loud "whooping" sound that accompanies the intake of air and gives the disease its nickname of Whooping Cough. After inspiration, the coughing may begin again. These severe coughing spells can go on for weeks. The child might turn blue from lack of air, or vomit after a coughing spell (American Academy of Pediatrics [AAP], 2010).

• Tip to Treasure: Accurate Pain Assessment in 5 Easy Steps
• Rapid Reporting: Minimizing Risk
• Recent Breakthroughs in Melanoma Treatment

Nursing organizational news

By Suzi Birz, principal, HiQ Analytics, LLC

In December 2008, the California HealthCare Foundation published Equipped for Efficiency: Improving Nursing Care Through Technology—a report that examined hospitals’ experiences with a variety of technologies that enhance nursing care delivery.

• Holistic Nursing Considers All Aspects of a Patient’s Life
• Hospitals Switch to Reusable Sharps Containers

Clinical Insights

Intravascular catheters are indispensable in modern-day medical practice, particularly in intensive care units (ICUs). Although such catheters provide necessary vascular access, their use puts patients at risk for local and systemic infectious complications, including local site infection, catheter-related bloodstream infections (CRBSIs), septic thrombophlebitis, endocarditis and other infections (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [CDC] 2002).

• Wrong Site Surgery – How the Heck Does That Happen?
• MMRV vs. MMR: New Vaccine Combinations
• pH Sleuth: The Case of Acid-Base Imbalance