St. Michael’s Hospital (SMH) is a major tertiary and quaternary referral centre with 500 acute adult inpatient beds serving a marginalized inner-city population in downtown Toronto. Demonstrating that they engage in best practices to provide quality patient care is a key corporate imperative...
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The Care Utilizing Evidence Initiative
Winnipeg’s Seven Oaks General Hospital (SOGH) has a high percentage of older nurses and other health-care professionals. Of 1,547 health-care staff in 2008, close to half were over the age of 45; of this group, 32 per cent were over the age of 50 and five per cent were eligible for retirement...
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A new approach to retaining older workers
The Ottawa Hospital (TOH) employs more than 4,500 nurses, who are guided and served by the nursing professional practice department. Within this department are several work groups and reflective groups in which nurses and other health-care professionals collaborate on professional practice...
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Wiki where you work: Supporting professional practice activities
In 2005, Guelph General Hospital, a 165-bed community hospital located in Guelph, Ont., decided to broaden the focus of its Human Resources Quality Team by establishing the Healthy Hospital Human Resources Quality Team (HHHRQT). Its role is to identify and implement strategies that will improve the...
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Guelph General Hospital's HHHRQT
Homelessness is a serious health-care issue, particularly in major urban centres. Homeless people face many challenges, including unemployment, lack of life skills, family breakdown, mental illness and substance abuse. Poverty, delays in seeking health care, nonadherence to therapy and the adverse...
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Pathways to Housing: A response to homelessness in Calgary
Public health nurses at the Middlesex-London Health Unit (MLHU) in London, Ont., have offered home visits after the birth of a child to all families as part of the Healthy Babies Healthy Children (HBHC) program introduced across the province by the Ontario government in 1998. The program is...
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A new model of care for low-risk postpartum families
Obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) is a disorder characterized by complete or partial upper airway obstruction occurring at intervals during sleep. Untreated OSA is associated with oxygen desaturation, increased levels of carbon dioxide and cardiac complications, any of which may lead to cardiac arrest...
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Bedside capnography: Better management of surgical patients with obstructive sleep apnea
Polypharmacy in the elderly population was the theme of a poster presented by baccalaureate nursing students at Vancouver Community College. Their work included sound scientific reporting on the prevalence of the problem and the effect on quality of life and on recommendations for reducing the risk...
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The faces of polypharmacy
Responding to seniors in crisis using a multidisciplinary mental health crisis team
Although a body of knowledge exists for assessing older adults with dementia, delirium, and depression, little is known about how best to respond to older adults in crisis. The creation of a seniors mobile mental...
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Teaming Up
Standardizing weight measurement and documentation in continuing care
Long-term care homes in Ontario are required to use a weight-monitoring system that measures and records the weight of each resident on admission and then monthly. Weight changes of 5 per cent or more over one month, 7.5 per cent...
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Taking the weight