Ontario Spends $2.1 Million on eHealth

Today, the Ontario goverment announced that it would spent $2.1 million to provide every diabetic patient with an electronic health record by 2012.

The program, called eHealth Ontario, will connect health care professionals, pharmacists and patients to better manage the efficiency and safety of prescriptions and medications as well as reduce wait times.

“eHealth Ontario is a new organization that will play the leading role in harnessing information technology and innovation to improve patient care, safety and access in support of the government’s health strategy,” states the agency on its web site. “We will provide a single, harmonized, coherent province-wide eHealth Strategy and align it through a single point of accountability.”

The overall goal of the program is to have 65 per cent of doctors and their patients using e-health by 2012.

Elizabeth Witmer, Ontario’s conservative health critic, said that Ontario hasn’t been doing a very good job when it comes to eHealth.

However, leaders of the new program are optimistic that they can successfully improve Ontario’s eHealth initiative.

One of the key areas of the plan is to involve diabetic patients in a close electronic monitoring system that will allow health care workers to follow patients’ health status and alert them to any concerns, ideally reducing hospital visits.

The program also hopes to reduce wait times by making access to health easier and increasingly preventative.

Nurses’ Blogs

With some great referrals from a friend, I’ve kept up to date on nursing blogs around the web.

Some of them can be a raw…but, to borrow a line from nursing theory, they are truly the “lived experiences” of nursing. Worth a read.

Here are my top 5:

1. Crass Pollination: An ER Blog
2. Ten out of Ten
3. At Your Cervix
4. ERNursey – An ER Nurse’s Blog
5. EDNurseasauras, Still in the Trenches

EMR: The New Future of Portable Health

Last year, more than 60 doctors from the Barrie, Ont. area started an electronic medical record system (EMR) in their practices.

Investing their own money they updated their paper records to an integrated electronic system, one of the first and largest in Ontario.

Today, Ontario is laying the groundwork for EMR system integration into doctors offices throughout Ontario.

Although, I discovered a lot of information on EMR’s benefit to physicians there wasn’t a whole lot of discussion on how e-medicine will help patients.

Portability is the main one. Patients are able to travel to different care providers and have their health record (tests, physicians’ notes, nursing notes, medication record) essentially travel with them and be accessible to a range of primary care providers.

Doctors are better able to treat patients with comprehensive and immediate access to information and there is less duplication of things like diagnostic tests and assessments.

Due presumably to reduced workload, some docs say they are also able to see more patients due to EMR.

Of course, the future potential of EMR holds the largest promise. Imagine accessing your own health records through the Internet one day and being able to update your own health record. Far fetched? In 2006, plans were already underway to allow Sunnybrook patients to access and change their personal records.

Ontario MD is in charge of promoting and the integration of the Ontario’s transition to EMR. According to Ontario MD, A Clinical Management System (CMS) is a software application that combines the clinical and administrative aspects of practice management into an integrated electronic record.

Security and privacy is maintained through password access and regular audits of who and when access the network occurs.

Similar EMR systems have been arround for some time in Ontario hospitals and movement into the community is fast becomming the norm.

Hiring Freeze for New Nursing Grads at UHN

The University Health Network is taking steps to avoid layoffs by instituting a hiring freeze that includes new graduate nurses, according to an email a colleague of mine received from UHN.

This is a big blow to soon to be new nursing grads, especially if other hospitals follow suit.

“I am very sorry to inform you that the decision at this time has been made to not hire any new graduates”, the email states. “This was a very difficult decision to make. In these challenging economic times, UHN is committed to its staff and has promised to not have any involuntary staff layoffs. In order to keep this promise, UHN is not able to hire any new nurses for the foreseeable future.”

I wrote to Velta A. Vikmanis Coordinator of Nursing Transitions & Commitment at UHN.

“We believe that this is only a moment in time, but because we are unable to tell you if and when the hiring process will begin you need to explore other avenues for employment,” Ms. Vikmanis said.

Classmates have noticed that UHN has recently taken down many of their nurse related job postings.

I hope only that this is indeed a moment in time and the McGuinty goverment takes steps to ensure new nurses will find jobs in Ontario in the near future.

The University Health Newtwork is made up of the Toronto Western Hospital, Toronto General Hospital and Princess Margaret Hospital.

Nursing The Future

I’ve been searching around for resources for new nurses, but only had a little luck.

I recently discovered Nursing The Future (NTF) organization on the web. NTF is a not for profit, federally funded group based in Saskatchewan with the goal of helping new graduates at the stage of entry-to-practice.

“A unique set of challenges faces newly graduated nurses as they enter the intense, complex, and dynamic healthcare system that exists today,” posts NTF on their web site.

NTF is membership based, and benefits are generally information oriented.  Although the group is growing, there is currently no Ontario chapter that I’m aware of.

What I’d like to see with this site is more web based resources and networking but it is clearly growing, so I hope to see more in the near future.

NTF also has an annual conference called the Workplace Integration for New Nurses (WINN).

The WINN initiative brings together managers, educators, mentors, preceptors, faculty, human resources, new graduates, government, professional associations and unions is aimed at successful integration of new nurses into practice.

The next WINN conference in 2009 will be in Winnipeg.

Nurse Author Shares Honest Insights Into Nursing Care

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Tilda Shalof was at the York University School of Nursing today speaking to nursing students about her insights into practice. Tilda is author of A Nurse’s Story and The Making of a Nurse.

Tilda writes about her experiences as an ICU nurse in Toronto. I’ve only read a little of her work but was impressed my her realistic, honest perspective of what it means to be a nurse

One of the issues raised during the talk was the idea that the reality of nursing is quite different from the percieved view of nursing. Writers like Tilda go a long way to address public misconception of nursing care.

A must read for any nursing student.

Nurses Innovate Urgent Long Term Care

A nursing focused program targeted at reducing ER wait times has just completed its first successful year.

The Long-Term Care Mobile Emergency Program was developed by a group of nurses at Toronto Western and has made an impact by reducing elderly ER visits.

Three nurse specialists routinely visit and assess patients at 12 participating long-term-care homes. The nurses also make urgent visits that would normally be directed to 911.

An estimated 77 per cent of elderly patients were diverted from ER waiting rooms. The specific needs of this population make ER visits trying for the patient and costly for health care.

It’s great to see preventative, holistic nursing practices and concepts begin to take hold in the health care system.

The Globe news article I drew my information from does not consider the patient’s view on the new model. It would be interesting to see how they found the extended nursing treatment.

I also wonder if the concept could potentially be extended to the elderly population living in their own homes.

Stem Cell Research

President Obama recently lifted restrictions on stem cell research funding.

There are great hopes that stem cell research will lead to therapy for problems such as Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, diabetes and paralysis.

Partly, the controversy around stem cell research lies in the fact that embryos, only days old, have to be destroyed. Normally, the cells are gathered from unneeded fertility clinic embryos.

Stem cells can also be gathered from the placenta and umbilical cord blood.

During my labour and delivery placement, it was common for umbilical cord blood to be drawn and kept with the mother’s consent. At times, the placenta was kept for the same reason and frozen for potential later use.

One of the general fears about stem cell research is the potential for human cloning. This is a little x-file, but in one of my first year science courses my prof, a biochemist, was quite prepared to admit to the class that he was quite certain a human fetus had already been cloned…that was early 90’s.

So does risk outweigh the benefit? In this case, does the potential for science creating outside what is known (i.e., cloning) outweigh the benefit of potentially curing a devastating disease or injury? Is it ethical to destroy days old embryos in the name of research?

I worked in an Alzheimer’s clinic. Families watched as their loved ones slowly deteriorated over time. Stem cells may well lead to therapy or even a cure for this disease. One would be hard put to refuse a future treatment to these victims.

Canadian Nurse Freed

Update: As of 8:24 last night, positive reports are coming out of Sudan that Laura Archer and her colleagues have now been freed.

This story below hits close to home as fellow classmates are interested in entering humanitarian based nursing, but these days the risks are much higher.

In the past, it would seem that humanitarian missions were protected from politically motivated actions.

Abductions are made of nightmares: taken from friends and family; not able to communicate with the outside world; and not knowing your own fate.

I am glad Ms. Archer and her colleagues have been returned safely and quickly.

Canadian Nurse Abducted

Laura Archer treating children in Africa

iA frightening story coming out of Sudan yesterday as a Canadian nurse was kidnapped with 2 other people working for Médicins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Boarders).

Laura Archer, 31, from Montreal, was kidnapped with her colleagues in the war torn region of Darfur.

Seven gunmen abducted the aid workers from the Doctor Without Boarder’s base camp in Serif Umra.

Current reports say that the group was alive and being treated well. A ransom has been issued by the kidnappers.

Ms. Archer worked with the country’s inhabitants on basic health, nutrition, maternal and pediatric care and taught other health care personnel.

There are indications that the abductions were part of a backlash triggered by an arrest warrant issued for Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir after he was accused by an international court of crimes against humanity.

Doctors Without Boarders was targeted as one of 13 international aid groups ordered to leave the region in reaction to the court ruling.

Ms. Archer graduated from the University of Prince Edward Island nursing program in 2001. She then spent time in San Francisco with cardiac transplant patient recovery.

After experiencing a road accident in 2004, she made a decision to change her life path. She traveled in Asia and helped in Bangkok after a tsunami hit the region. In 2006, she joined Doctors Without Boarders.