Towards improving hospital workflows: An evaluation of resources to mobilize patients.

Aim: To characterize resources to safely mobilize different types of hospitalized patients.

Background: Current approaches to determine nurse-patient ratios do not always include information regarding the specific demands of patients who require extra resources to mobilize. Workflows must be designed with knowledge of resource requirements to integrate patient mobility into the daily nursing team care plan.

Comprehensive Unit-based Safety Program (CUSP) to Improve Patient Experience: How a Hospital Enhanced Care Transitions and Discharge Processes.

Objective: To determine whether Comprehensive Unit-based Safety Program (CUSP) teams could be used to enhance patient experience by improving care transitions and discharge processes in a 318-bed community hospital.

Methods: In 2015, CUSP teams produced feasible solutions by participating in a design-thinking initiative, coupled with performance improvement tools involving data analytics and peer-learning communities. Teams completed a 90-day sprint challenge, involving weekly meetings, monthly department leader meetings, and progress trackers.

The modern acute care surgeon: characterization of an evolving surgical niche.

Background: Trauma and emergency surgery continues to evolve as a surgical niche. The simple fact that The Journal of Trauma is now entitled The Journal of Trauma and Acute Care Surgery captures this reality. We sought to characterize the niche that trauma and emergency surgeons have occupied during the maturation of the acute care surgery model.

From heart beats to health recipes: The role of fractal physiology in the Ancestral Health movement.

The human body-an amazing biological system that scales up fractally from its cellular building blocks-exhibits an incredible ability to self heal. Why then, are chronic diseases and degeneration on the rise in the population? Why are we sicker, more obese, and more depressed and stressed than ever before in human history? Why can't we heal? The answers to these questions may lie in our ancestry, and modern departure from the human ecological niche. The ability to heal requires proper spatio-temporal inputs-nutrition, sleep, stress, activity, and socialization-in order for cellular signaling to occur properly across semi-permeable cell membranes.

Regionalization of care for ST-segment elevation myocardial infarction: is it too soon?

Interest in regionalization of the care of acute ST-segment elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI) has gained momentum recently. Optimal treatment of STEMI involves balancing time to treatment and reperfusion options. Primary percutaneous coronary intervention, when performed in a timely fashion, has been shown to be more effective than fibrinolysis.