A Surprising Way to Decrease Stress in Nursing

A Surprising Way to Decrease Stress in Nursing

What if I told you that it wasn't the patient load that was actually stressing nurses out in the workplace? Would you believe me? Most nurses go into the profession of nursing to care for sick patients. So even those days... read more

3 Tools Doctors Can Use to Prevent Burnout

3 Tools Doctors Can Use to Prevent Burnout

A broad-based study published in the Mayo Clinic Proceedings in 2015 using the Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI) found that 54.4 percent of all physicians combined were experiencing at least one symptom of burnout, and there... read more

Even Proper Technique Exposes Nurses’ Spines To Dangerous Forces

Even Proper Technique Exposes Nurses’ Spines To Dangerous Forces

In this close-up screenshot from a simulation video, you can see the exact moment NPR correspondent Daniel Zwerdling endured dangerous levels of stress on his spine while re-creating the way nurses push their patients in... read more

Patient-important outcomes in randomized controlled trials in critically ill patients

Patient-important outcomes in randomized controlled trials in critically ill patients

Patient-important outcomes are rarely primary outcomes in RCTs in critically ill patients published in 2013. Among them, mortality accounted for the majority. We promote the use of patient-important outcomes in critical care... read more

The Psychological Impact of Intensive Care

The Psychological Impact of Intensive Care

A period in intensive care is known to negatively affect patients' long term physical, cognitive and psychiatric health, in what's known as post-intensive care syndrome (PICS). Researchers from the University of Oxford sought... read more

The Year They Tried to Kill Me: Surviving a Surgical Internship… Even If the Patients Don’t

The Year They Tried to Kill Me: Surviving a Surgical Internship… Even If the Patients Don’t

Not exactly the warm welcome I hoped for. But I was just a naive Wisconsin boy, fresh out of medical school and new to Oakland, California. I chose Highland Hospital for my surgical internship: an entire year filled with... read more

Humanizing the ICU

Humanizing the ICU

In the midst of trying to correct organ failures, clinicians may neglect to carefully consider what the patient is experiencing: to be on the brink of death, be unable to speak, be stripped naked, have strangers enter the... read more

Systematic Review of the Effects of ICU Noise on Sleep of Healthy Subjects and the Critically Ill

Systematic Review of the Effects of ICU Noise on Sleep of Healthy Subjects and the Critically Ill

ICU patients exhibit disturbed sleeping patterns, often attributed to environmental noise, although the relative contribution of noise compared to other potentially disrupting factors is often debated. We therefore systematically... read more

ICU RN Job Dissatisfaction, Burnout Linked to Moral Distress

ICU RN Job Dissatisfaction, Burnout Linked to Moral Distress

Job satisfaction and practice environment are associated with moral distress among critical care nurses, according to a study published online Jan. 3 in the American Journal of Critical Care. The researchers found that 56... read more

Poor Hospital Design Has an Impact on Staff, Patients, and Healthcare

Poor Hospital Design Has an Impact on Staff, Patients, and Healthcare

Many hospitals in which I have worked have struggled with finances over the last 5 years. There has often been a ban on capital investment on new physical infrastructure projects even extended to repairs in some circumstances.... read more

Benzodiazepine Use and Neuropsychiatric Outcomes in the ICU

Benzodiazepine Use and Neuropsychiatric Outcomes in the ICU

The majority of included studies indicated that benzodiazepine use in the ICU is associated with delirium, symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder, anxiety, depression, and cognitive dysfunction. Future well-designed studies... read more

Vitamin C: Should We Supplement?

A short course of intravenous vitamin C in pharmacological dose seems a promising, well tolerated, and cheap adjuvant therapy to modulate the overwhelming oxidative stress in severe sepsis, trauma, and reperfusion after ischemia.... read more

A Nurse’s Story

A Nurse’s Story

The team of nurses that Tilda Shalof found herself working with in the intensive care unit (ICU) of a big-city hospital was known as "Laura's Line." They were a bit wild: smart, funny, disrespectful of authority, but also... read more

Top 10 Tips for New Interns to Survive and Thrive the ICU Rotation

Top 10 Tips for New Interns to Survive and Thrive the ICU Rotation

Graduating residents moving on and new interns, fresh out of medical school with their clean and crisp long white coats, moving in. Out with the old, in with the new! The ICU rotation for medicine residents and medical students... read more