"The Daily Dose"

This one is for all you mothers and fathers sending your kids off at school.

Laptops, textbooks and new jeans are among the must-haves for college students heading back to campus, but the most common back-to-school item may well be the blood-sucking bedbug. Colleges around the U.S. are reporting a scourge of the little buggers infesting dormitories, and the problem only gets worse when they hitchhike on their coed hosts going from room to room.

“U.S. college campuses are really the perfect setting,” noted entomologist Richard Cooper told Matt Lauer on TODAY Friday. “We have large numbers of students coming from all over the country and, in fact, all over the world every semester, and it’s inevitable that somebody is going to bring bugs with them. And once the bugs are introduced, they can rapidly spread because of all the interactions students have visiting each other’s rooms.”

The denizens of the mattress — nocturnal critters who feed on their host at night, then hide in the nooks and crannies of a bed during the day — trace their U.S. roots to soldiers returning home from World War II. They gained strength in numbers during the 1990s with widespread infestations of homes, hospitals and hotels.

But Cooper told Lauer that college campuses are a virtual perfect storm for bedbugs to thrive and grow in numbers.

Schools such as Stanford and Ohio State have had to clear out dormitories to deal with the scourge in recent years — and last year, Texas A&M had to empty its coffers of $27,000 to transport bedbug-sniffing dogs and high-heat treatments to rid dorms of the insects. The University of Florida is baking dorm mattresses at 113 degrees-plus to kill their bedbug populace.

Cooper told Lauer bedbugs tend to thrive because they are hard to spot — and even harder to eradicate. He brought along some samples to TODAY, and while Lauer noted there were some “big, juicy ones,” many are too minute to spot.

“They don’t carry disease, but they do leave incredibly itchy, irritating welts that can become heavy rashes on some people,” Cooper said. Checking for bites is one way to spot the furtive insects, and looking for their tiny black droppings on a mattress is another way to detect, he added

Read the entire article at http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26455663/

Known as the “Garden City” for its dense trees and lush green landscape, Missoula is nestled in the heart of the northern Rockies in Western Montana. A community of nearly 100,000 residents, Missoula lies in a beautiful mountain forest setting where five valleys converge. The city began as a settlement called Hell Gate and was later renamed Missoula, taken from the Salish Indian word that means “near the cold, chilling waters”.

One of the most desirable places to live and visit in the United States, Missoula has something for everyone. It serves as Montana’s center for education, medicine, business and the arts. Recreational opportunities abound throughout the entire year-from sightseeing and hiking to horseback riding, skiing, biking, golfing, mountain climbing, water activities and more. As Montana’s most culturally diverse city, Missoula is known for its museums, galleries, dance companies, live theater, symphony orchestra

Here is just a snapshot of the beauty we are surrounded by everyday.  Missoula Montana is such a beautiful place and home to our headquarters.  Being surrounded by this majestic scenery inspires us everyday to stay as energized and forthright with our business as the land commands.  It is hard to describe, but living in such a beautiful area as western Montana keeps you invigorated, inspired and there is a certain honesty that is demanded by the land. 

We carry this into our business ethics and stay inspired to help facilities in our region and nationwide by staffing them with the best possible candidates available.  We serve as advocates to our staff at all times, be it fighting for the highest possible wage or the most desired location, we go to bat for you. 

On my daily commute to the office, i take a big look around me and remind myself why I am in this business, to help healthcare professionals experience the beauty of the location they most desire.

This is a great article by Debra Wood, RN - We found it at www.nurseconnect.com
Copyright © 2008. AMN Healthcare, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Before administrators and staff can improve hospital safety, they must be able to identify processes in the system that can lead to errors. Like nurses at many hospitals, however, those working at the University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston had been reluctant to report a “near miss”—that is until nursing leadership changed the culture with the Good Catch Program.
“We put a positive spin on it and changed the terminology,” said Robert L. Massey, Ph.D., RN, CNAA-BC, director of clinical nursing at M. D. Anderson. “We wanted to make sure we recognized the vital role of nurses in identifying and preventing potential errors and improving patient safety and employee safety.”

Massey provided an example of how things worked before the program; If a nurse found a mislabeled IV bag, she would typically correct the immediate problem but not report the situation, preventing the hospital from digging deeper to find out how that bag made it up to the floor. Now nurses and other members of the health care team are encouraged to anonymously report.

Nursing leaders make rounds on the units, handing out Good Catch pins to the team members and taking the opportunity to discuss patient safety and the types of potential errors to report.

Since the hospital started the program in December 2005, the number of reported potential errors or safety risks increased from 175 in the two and a half years before implementation to 45,000 in the three years since the program started. Reporting of potential errors increased by nearly 1,500 percent in the first six months. Massey said it has taken a long time to change the culture, but staff members are recognizing the benefits.

Massey reads all of the Good Catch reports and separates them into categories. He then forwards them to the appropriate department. Reports related to missing medications go to the pharmacist, and those involving water on the floor from the ice machine—a fall risk—to the refrigeration department.

Team members from the units meet with quality improvement staff and Massey to come up with solutions. For instance, the team suggested that a pharmacist visit the units to assess whether the carts are being stocked at the right time. Pharmacy has now placed IV pumps on each unit, so the nurses can start IVs as soon as they are ordered. The maintenance staff has also placed a plastic guard on the ice machines to prevent ice from landing on the floor.

Nurses quickly see results from their reporting of potential problems.

The hospital also has established end-of-shift safety reports, so the nurses coming on duty will know what transpired during the prior shift.

M. D. Anderson created some friendly team-based competition between units, styled after baseball playoffs and the World Series. Different units compete. The winners receive trophies and a pizza party. Massey reported that the only costs associated with the program are related to the team-recognition events, and he budgets a couple of thousand dollars each year for that.

“It’s low cost and low key,” Massey said. “It seems to be very efficient so far. I’m surprised there are as many reports as we have. It’s now engrained in the culture that we have to look at this stuff. The key is providing feedback.”

Here’s the new taste sensation — your tongue might be able to taste calcium.

The capability to taste calcium has now been discovered in mice. With these rodents and humans sharing many of the same genes, the new finding suggests that people might also have such a taste.

The four tastes we are most familiar with are sweet, sour, salty and bitter. Recently scientists have discovered tongue molecules called receptors that detect a fifth distinct taste — “umami,” or savory.

“But why stop there?” asked researcher Michael Tordoff, a behavioral geneticist at the Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia. “My group has been investigating what we believe is another taste quality — calcium.”

So assuming the human palate can detect calcium, what does the mineral taste like?

“Calcium tastes calcium-y,” Tordoff said. “There isn’t a better word for it. It is bitter, perhaps even a little sour. But it’s much more because there are actual receptors for calcium, not just bitter or sour compounds.”

One way we might regularly perceive calcium is when it comes to minute levels found in drinking water.

“In tap water, it’s fairly pleasant,” Tordoff said. “But at levels much above that, the taste becomes increasingly bad.”

There may be a strong link between the bitterness of certain vegetables and their calcium level. High-calcium vegetables include collard greens, bok choy, kale and bitter melon. One reason some people might avoid these veggies, Tordoff suggests, is because of their calcium taste.

Ironically, while milk and other dairy products are loaded with calcium, the mineral tends to bind to fats and proteins, which prevents you from tasting it in these foods.

Read the rest of this story at http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26315648/

Interesting article

New studies suggest sugarless gum can help post-op patients recover

Can you chew gum and recover from surgery at the same time? British researchers say it’s a great idea for some patients.

Chewing gum may speed the return of normal bowel function after colon surgery, a new analysis of five studies suggests. Some patients have trouble moving their bowels after colon surgery but chewing gum may fool the body into good digestion.

Gum gets the juices flowing, literally. Besides saliva, it may stimulate gut hormones and pancreatic secretions, according to the study’s authors, researchers at Imperial College London.

The findings, in the August issue of Archives of Surgery, come from an analysis of five studies with a total of 158 patients. As the patients recovered from colon surgery, some chewed sugarless gum three times a day for five to 45 minutes. Others did not chew gum.

Read the rest of this story at http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26270852/