Developmental disorders, disabilities, and delays are common outcomes for infants with complex congenital heart disease. Targeting early factors influencing these conditions after birth and during neonatal hospitalization for cardiac surgery remains a critical need. However, significant gaps remain in understanding the best practices to improve neurodevelopmental and psychosocial outcomes for these infants.
Sometimes hospital staff nurses cannot provide required care due to time constraints. This reality can contribute to potentially dire outcomes for very low birthweight (VLBW) infants, who weigh less than 3.3 lbs. at birth. These newborns depend on the nurse for survival. Missed nursing care is likely clinically relevant to whether VLBW infants develop an infection, develop a brain hemorrhage, or even die. Given post-pandemic staffing shortages and the increased burden placed on nurses, routine measurement of missed care and managerial efforts to prevent it could be vital to improving the health and life course of VLBW infants.
The Center for Global Women’s Health (CGWH) has been awarded another $30,000 grant through It’s On Us PA, a statewide campaign that aims to end sexual assault by bringing together college and university presidents, superintendents, administrators, teachers, students, families, and community members to reframe the conversation around sexual violence and pledge to be part of the solution.
Penn Medicine recently profiled Azucena (Susy) Villalobos, BSN, a nurse in the surgical intensive care unit (SICU), a fellow in the Leonard A. Lauder Community Care Nurse Practitioner Program at Penn Nursing, and the president-elect of the National Association of Hispanic Nurses (NAHN) Philadelphia chapter. Her profile was featured in HUPdate.
According to a new study published in Nursing Outlook, the journal of the American Academy of Nursing, chronic hospital nurse understaffing and poor hospital work environments that predated the Covid-19 pandemic largely explain the disruptions in nursing care seen during the pandemic and continuing today.