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Healthstyles December 18: Global Nurse Leaders & Innovators

Healthstyles on Thursday, December 18th is hosted by Barbara Glickstein and features interviews with two global nurse leaders innovating with new technologies that are having an impact in managing conditions, saving lives and reducing the health care costs. Read more about them and listen to the interviews.

Suellen Miller,PhD, RN, CNM, MHA is a nurse midwife, researcher and innovator. Dr. Miller is Director of the Safe Motherhood Program at the Bixby Center for Global Reproductive Health, and Professor, Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology and Reproductive Sciences at University of California San Francisco. Hear how she adapted a piece of ambulance equipment to be something useful to women dying of childbirth-related hemorrhage in developing countries. The Lifewrap, is a low-cost, low technology, first-aid device to treat postpartum hemorrhaging saving women’s lives in remote towns and villages globally.

“The Non-pneumatic Anti-shock Garment (NASG) is a first-aid device used to stabilize women who are suffering from obstetric hemorrhage and shock. It is made of neoprene and Velcro^TM and looks like the lower half of a wetsuit, cut into segments. This simple device helps women survive delays in getting to a hospital and getting the treatment that they need. It can be applied by anyone after a short, simple training. To date, it has been used on over 6000 women in 6 countries.”

You can hear the interview with Dr. Miller here

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Increasingly, health care involves technology. Tech companies are venturing into the diagnostics and treatment market. People can use their smart phones to monitor their condition and there are 1000s of apps available for people to choose from to support their health needs.

Jane Jeffrie Seley, DNP, MSN, MPH, BC-ADM, CDE, CDTC, is the inpatient diabetes nurse practitioner in the Division of Endocrinology at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center in New York City. She is an adjunct assistant professor in the Hunter-Bellevue School of Nursing’s Doctor of Nursing Practice program and a contributing editor for the American Journal of Nursing “Diabetes Under Control” column. She shares the latest innovations in health technologies for diabetes and how they are changing the lives of people living with this chronic disease. It’s also changing the way health care providers in partnership with their patients are working together to maximize the impact of these new tools.

You can hear the interview with Dr. Seley here

Healthstyles airs every Thursday at 1 PM on WBAI Pacifica Radio 99.5 FM and streamed live at wbai.org. Healthstyles is produced by the Center for Health, Media and Policy.

December 17, 2014

author: Barbara Glickstein

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Healthstyles on Thursday, December 18th is hosted

Health, HealthCetera, Media Engagement, Policy

Healthstyles on December 11: Choosing Wisely and Women’s Economic Development

There’s an old saying that “women hold up half the sky”. But around the world, women–and thus their families–are living in poverty with little access to the education that can help them to make a decent living and promote the health of their families. A longstanding international development practice has targeted investments in women’s enterprises, particularly in small businesses and agriculture. These investments have involved partnerships among public, private and philanthropic sectors. But one nurse is advocating that its time to invest in the education and work of female nurses and midwives in low income countries–and that doing so would not only be a wise investment in women’s education and economic development, but could also strengthen local health systems and reduce maternal and infant mortality.

This week’s Healthstyles program opens with producer and co-host Diana Mason, PhD, RN, FAAN, talking this nurse about her new approach to women’s economic development in low resource countries. The nurse is Marla Salmon, ScD, RN, FAAN, Professor of Nursing and Global Public health, and Senior Visiting Fellow at the Evans School of Public Affairs at the University of Washington. She is also a member of the Institute of Medicine where she has worked on developing this idea and building multi-sector support for it. You can listen to the interview here:

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The second half of Healthstyles focuses on unnecessary care. The United States spent between $158 billion and $226 billion on overtreatment in 2011. This overtreatment includes unnecessary tests and procedures that can be harmful and costly. For example, pregnant women who deliver in a hospital are often put on continuous electronic monitoring of fetal heart rate ostensibly to ensure that the soon-to-be-born baby is not in distress. But the monitoring means that the laboring woman is unable to move around, which can slow down the labor, and misinterpretation of the monitoring can lead to unnecessary inducement of labor or Caesarean sections that can jeopardize the health and outcomes for both the mother and the infant.

So why do we do these unnecessary tests and procedures and how do we know what is unnecessary? Choosing Wisely is designed to help the public identify which tests and procedures should be questioned if recommended by a provider. On the second half of Healthstyles, Diana Mason discusses the problem of unnecessary care and the Choosing Wisely initiative with Daniel Wolfson, MHSA, Executive Vice President of the ABIM Foundation that developed Choosing Wisely; Karen Cox, RN, PhD, FAAN, Chief Operating Officer of Mercy Children’s Hosptial in Kansas City, MO, and the chair of the American Academy of Nursing’s Task Force for selecting nursing’s list of Choosing Wisely recommendations; and Lisa Woodward, Vice President of Nursing Education at Doctors Hospital at Rennaisance in Edinburg, Texas, and Co-leader of the South Region for the Texas Action Coalition that is involved in promoting the use of the Choosing Wisely list throughout the state.

You can listen to the segment on unnecessary care and Choosing Wisely here: