Bad Versus Good, What Matters More on the Treatment Floor? Relationships of Positive and Negative Events With Nurses' Burnout and Engagement.

Many investigators have reported the stressful aspects of nursing; fewer have focused on nurses' positive work experiences. For this study, we developed a 2 × 2 typology of positive and negative events related to the tasks of nursing work and the social and organizational context of that work: successes, supports, constraints, and conflicts. We hypothesized that positive events would predict engagement, negative events would predict burnout, and negative events would be more strongly related to both burnout and engagement.

Potential Medicare savings through prevention and risk reduction.

Medicare is challenged to maintain solvency as enrollment climbs because of the aging baby boomers and costs increase as a result of the substantial disease burden present among seniors. In the present study, an actuarial model was developed to determine the present cost (2008) of Medicare-covered benefits for elderly individuals, and to test the impact on cost of health risk reduction that may be possible through population health and wellness interventions. In the model, beneficiaries were categorized by risk according to health status using 3 different indices, and baseline per month and lifetime expenditures were estimated.

The impact of postdischarge telephonic follow-up on hospital readmissions.

Abstract Recurrent hospitalizations are responsible for considerable health care spending, although prior studies have shown that a substantial proportion of readmissions are preventable through effective discharge planning and patient follow-up after the initial hospital visit. This retrospective cohort study was undertaken to determine whether telephonic outreach to ensure patient understanding of and adherence to discharge orders following a hospitalization is effective at reducing hospital readmissions within 30 days after discharge. Claims data were analyzed from 30,272 members of a commercial health plan who were discharged from a hospital in 2008 to determine the impact of telephonic intervention on the reduction of 30-day readmissions.