Disparities in Pain Management.

Health disparities in pain management remain a pervasive public health crisis. Racial and ethnic disparities have been identified in all aspects of pain management from acute, chronic, pediatric, obstetric, and advanced pain procedures. Disparities in pain management are not limited to race and ethnicity, and have been identified in multiple other vulnerable populations.

Healthcare students interprofessional critical event/disaster response course.

Objective: Numerous disasters confirm the need for critical event training in healthcare professions. However, no single discipline works in isolation and interprofessional learning is recognized as a necessary component. An interprofessional faculty group designed a learning curriculum crossing professional schools.

An antimicrobial stewardship program with a focus on reducing fluoroquinolone overuse.

The fluoroquinolones have become the leading class of antimicrobial agents prescribed to adults in the United States. Resistance of key pathogens to fluoroquinolones has developed rapidly in parallel with increased prescribing of these drugs. We describe our pharmacist-led antimicrobial stewardship program that focused on reducing inappropriate prescribing of fluoroquinolones, with the goals of limiting the development of resistance and improving patient outcomes.

Reducing empirical use of fluoroquinolones for Pseudomonas aeruginosa infections improves outcome.

Background: We previously reported ciprofloxacin resistance (CR) and empirical use of fluoroquinolones as predictors of mortality in patients infected with Pseudomonas aeruginosa in a case-control study. Here, we assessed the clinical impact of reducing empirical fluoroquinolone use for P. aeruginosa infections in hospitalized patients by performing a follow-up study in 2005-06 [period 2 (P2)] and comparing this with prior data from 2001-02 [period 1 (P1)].