Enhancing effectiveness in assessing forensic nursing staff competency.

Assessing the competency of forensic nurses is an evolving area of management practice. This article presents a performance-based model for the assessment process. Examples of competency assessment activities that can measure psychomotor skills, critical thinking, and interpersonal skills are discussed, along with a sample competency for a selected skill.

Solving the mystery: the role of competency assessment in OASIS documentation.

Having an effective ongoing competency assessment program allows regulatory compliance for competency assessment, OASIS data collection, and information management, while enhancing existing quality management efforts. This article provides an overview of the competency assessment process, its regulatory underpinnings, and describes how this process fits into the existing performance and quality measurements within a home care organization.

An outbreak of neonatal deaths in Brazil associated with contaminated intravenous fluids.

A nursery outbreak of fever and clinical sepsis resulted in the deaths of 36 neonates in Roraima, Brazil. To determine the cause, epidemiologic studies were performed, along with culture and endotoxin analysis of intravenous (iv) fluids. Affected neonates were more likely to have lower birth weight (2.