The Art of Discharge Planning: Teaching Nursing Students to Address Disparities Through Simulation.

: Discharge planning is crucial to ensuring that patients' care and recovery needs are addressed. A new nurse graduate must be prepared to enter a clinical practice environment in which hospitals face penalties for patient readmissions. : Student nurses were assigned simulated patients with a variety of health disparities and health-care diagnoses to address.

Towards Climate Resilient and Environmentally Sustainable Health Care Facilities.

The aim of building climate resilient and environmentally sustainable health care facilities is: (a) to enhance their capacity to protect and improve the health of their target communities in an unstable and changing climate; and (b) to empower them to optimize the use of resources and minimize the release of pollutants and waste into the environment. Such health care facilities contribute to high quality of care and accessibility of services and, by helping reduce facility costs, also ensure better affordability. They are an important component of universal health coverage.

Implementation of a Standardized Evaluation Tool to Improve Preceptor Confidence.

Preceptors guide the transition of new graduate nurses into practice. Having access to evidence-based tools for evaluation of new graduate nurses promotes preceptor confidence and consistent measures of performance. The Norwegian Nurse Competence Scale was implemented across three acute care organizations for evaluation of new graduate nurse performance.

Cleaning and disinfecting environmental surfaces in health care: Toward an integrated framework for infection and occupational illness prevention.

Background: The Cleaning and Disinfecting in Healthcare Working Group of the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, National Occupational Research Agenda, is a collaboration of infection prevention and occupational health researchers and practitioners with the objective of providing a more integrated approach to effective environmental surface cleaning and disinfection (C&D) while protecting the respiratory health of health care personnel.

Methods: The Working Group, comprised of >40 members from 4 countries, reviewed current knowledge and identified knowledge gaps and future needs for research and practice.

Results: An integrated framework was developed to guide more comprehensive efforts to minimize harmful C&D exposures without reducing the effectiveness of infection prevention.