Nurses Achieving the Sustainable Development Goals: The United Nations and Sigma.

This article is one in a series in which contributing authors discuss how the United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are linked to everyday clinical issues; national public health emergencies; and other nursing issues, such as leadership, shared governance, and advocacy. The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, a 15-year plan of action to achieve the goals, was unanimously adopted by all UN member states in September 2015 and took effect on January 1, 2016. The Agenda consists of 17 SDGs addressing social, economic, and environmental determinants of health and 169 associated targets focused on five themes: people, planet, peace, prosperity, and partnership.

Let Their Voices Be Seen.

Study Objective: The mutual distrust, in part caused by misunderstanding and bias, between sickle cell disease (SCD) patients and their emergency department (ED) providers has been widely documented in the SCD literature. This study seeks to illustrate the perceptions and experiences of adult sickle cell patients who have had at least 1 ED experience in the last 2 years.

Methods: Qsource, a nonprofit health care consultancy based in Tennessee, used photovoice, a qualitative research method, to facilitate the representation of patients' experiences in living with SCD.

The state of diabetes care provided to Medicare beneficiaries living in rural America.

Context: Diabetes poses a growing health burden in the United States, but much of the research to date has been at the state and local level.

Purpose: To present a national profile of diabetes care provided to Medicare beneficiaries living in urban, semirural, and rural communities.

Methods: Medicare beneficiaries with diabetes aged 18-75 were identified from Part A and Part B claims data from 1999 to 2001.

Hospital quality improvement activities and the effects of interventions on pneumonia: a multistate study of Medicare beneficiaries.

This article evaluates the relative effectiveness of quality improvement interventions on increasing the time to antibiotic administration after a diagnosis of pneumonia. Clinical data were abstracted from the medical records of 17,040 Medicare beneficiaries discharged from one of 215 acute-care hospitals across 15 states. Thirteen Quality Improvement Organizations collected data on hospital quality improvement interventions from each hospital in this study.

Health care disparities in disadvantaged Medicare beneficiaries: a national project review.

The wealth of literature documenting differences in health care utilization by race and ethnicity underscores the need to develop a system to effectively measure health care related disparities. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services has taken the first steps toward detailing the quality of care for fee-for-service (FFS) Medicare beneficiaries. Using data collected for the two-period 1997-1999 on a cross-section of beneficiaries from all states and territories of the U.

The effect of external feedback on the management of medicare inpatients with congestive heart failure.

The purpose of this study was to compare the effect of 2 feedback strategies on the adherence to congestive heart failure (CHF) guidelines. Thirty-two hospitals in 4 states were randomized to receive either a written feedback intervention (low-intensity intervention [LII]) or an intervention involving feedback, a physician liaison, and quality improvement tools (high-intensity intervention [HII]). CHF quality indicators were assessed, and quality managers were interviewed at baseline and remeasurement.

Mortality associated with the quality of care of patients hospitalized with congestive heart failure.

Objective: This study examined the association between use of angiotensin converting enzyme inhibitors (ACEIs) and risk of death in elderly patients hospitalized with left ventricular systolic dysfunction (LVSD).

Design: Retrospective cohort study.

Setting: Despite evidence showing the benefit of treating LVSD with ACEI, elderly patients with LVSD are often not treated with an ACEI.