Friday 5 September 2008
Catheter-Related Blood Stream Infections To Be Focus Of AVA Meeting
The conference comes on the eve of major changes in Medicare that testament eliminate payments to hospitals that run out to prevent certain hospital-acquired infections.
AVA will hold its 22nd Annual Scientific Meeting Sept. 11-14 in Savannah, Ga. AVA is the nation's leading organization dedicated to the emerging medical field of vascular access code.
Among group discussion presentations on preventing vascular catheter-related infections:
- Allan Morrison, Jr. M.D. will depict the vision of an infection control program that can amend clinical outcomes and reduction infection rates, high-risk antibiotic drug use, infirmary lengths of stay, and mortality. Dr. Morrison is Hospital Epidemiologist of the Inova Health System, Professor and Distinguished Senior Fellow at George Mason University's Graduate School of Public Policy, and Assistant Clinical Professor at Georgetown University School of Medicine.
- Another general session presentation will vexation the infection danger associated with semipermanent central vein catheters. The presenters, Stephen Ash, M.D., FACP and Deb Richardson, R.N., M.S., CNS, will review electric current data about the core of catheter locks or coatings on the infection rates. The speakers will also see the potential difference for these technologies to significantly scale down catheter-related infections in the future. Dr. Ash is Chairman and Director of Research at HemoCleanse and Ash Access Technology. Ms. Richardson heads Deb Richardson & Associates.
- A poster presentment by Kari Love R.N., B.S., testament show how use of a unsympathetic luer entree, split-septum device has eliminated catheter-related bloodstream infections for eight months in an adult medical-ICU population. The device replaced a positive-pressure mechanical valve. Ms. Love is a clinician at Jennie Edmundson Memorial Hospital in Council Bluffs, Iowa.
- An interactive panel and audience discussion, featuring vascular access and contagion control experts and highborn "Building a Better Bundle" will be aimed at devising a maximally efficient vascular access bundle victimization evidence-based products and practices.
"Our conference will spotlight the latest trends and changing landscape in vascular memory access," said AVA's CEO, Kathy McHugh, RN, BSN. "Infections that once were seen as inevitable are now seen as entirely preventable, and this is triggering enormous consequences for institutions with high infection rates. Those consequences include everything from dear lawsuits to lost reimbursements from payers, to patients shifting their patronage to hospitals that do the best job of prevention.
"Our conference's focus on these issues -- including exciting news around how to completely pass many infections -- comes at a crucial meter in the vascular approach field."
Vascular catheter-related infections ar the depicted object of increasing public attention on several fronts:
- Starting future month, the federal Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) will give up reimbursing hospitals for certain hospital-associated conditions. These conditions include vascular catheter-related infections. Many individual insurers are also cut reimbursements for these infections.
- The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates the rate of hospital-acquired infections (HAIs), including vascular catheter-related infections, to be five per centum to 19 percent of all infirmary inpatient girdle. A total of 2 million patients per twelvemonth contract HAIs, and more than 90,000 of them die.
- To date, 24 states - including New York, Illinois, Florida, New Jersey, and Ohio -- have passed laws requiring that hospitals in their state let out their rate of HAIs. Several more states ar considering standardized action.
- Because they are now viewed as preventable, HAIs are expected to star to a massive wave of class-action suit lawsuits.
AVA CEO Kathy McHugh will also be presenting at the conference. Her lecture, "Business Strategies for Vascular Access Services," makes the financial sheath for healthcare institutions contracting with external vascular access services. The talk is designed to aid AVA members in marketing services to administrative leaders of their institutions as a strategy to eliminate CR-BSI and other complications.
In addition to its focus of vascular catheter-related infections, the AVA conference volition explore the increased use of ultrasonography guidance in vascular access code and will offer a certification program in echography usage.
This year's AVA conference will as well feature the first yearly Wise Foundation Gala, to raise monetary resource for the foundation. AVA launched the Wise Foundation for Vascular Access Education & Research in 2008, to avail fund vascular access educational activity and research.
An AVA webinar called "Building a Better Bundle," originally held Aug. 13, is archived on the AVA website and available for free. The webinar demonstrates that it is possible to acutely reduce or eliminate CRBSI by adding evidence-based practices and technologies to primal line bundles developed by clinical organizations such as IHI. A link to the webinar can be found on the home page at hTTP://www.avainfo.org.
About AVA
The Association for Vascular Access is a multidisciplinary organization composed of clinicians, educators, regulators and manufacturers from the field of vascular admission. AVA provides an chance for these individuals to improve practice and patient role outcomes by focusing on education, research, and new product innovations. AVA is the premier professional organization for those individuals in vascular access who ar leading the thoughts and actions of others in the playing field.
Association for Vascular Access
More info
Saturday 16 August 2008
Girls Aloud To Release New Album In November?
Girls Aloud will departure their new album as soon as this November, say reports.
The Sun claims the girls will release their fifth untitled album a month after the first single in October. "The girls are genuinely excited about this one. They think it's their best album yet." An insider tells the paper.
"The last [album Tangled Up] was their most successful so far and that has apt them the drive to keep departure. They have spent more time recording this one than they have in the past because they want to get it right."
It's thought the rush-release of the album - just one year after 2007's 'Tangled Up' came out - is to coincide with band member Chery Cole starring as a Judge on X Factor. The show returns to our screens side by side Saturday, August 16th.
More information
Thursday 7 August 2008
Nikki Blonsky & Dad Arrested
Hairspray cutie Nikki Blonsky and her father were arrested on assault charges on Friday after a dustup with the household of former America's Next Top Model contestant Bianca Golden at the Providenciales International Airport in Turks and Caicos.
"They were involved in an altercation at the aerodrome in the departure sofa," Sgt. Chase of the Turks and Caicos Islands Police Department tells E! News, adding that the fight was over some saved seats.
Blonsky's rep declined to
Monday 30 June 2008
'WALL-E' Outshines 'Wanted' For Box-Office #1 Debut
The Box-Office Top Five
#1 "WALL-E" ($62.5 million)
#2 "Wanted" ($51.1 million)
#3 "Get Smart" ($20 million)
#4 "Kung Fu Panda" ($11.7 million)
#5 "The Incredible Hulk" ($9.23 million)
Little boys like Pixar; big boys like Angelina Jolie. This weekend, both segments of the male population made their voices heard, and their mothers, wives and girlfriends seemed to have no qualms about going along for the ride.
"WALL-E," the latest film from the computer-animation superstars behind "Finding Nemo," "The Incredibles" and so many other instant classics, grossed $62.5 million to debut in first place. The tale of a Waste Allocation Load Lifter Earth-Class robot in the year 2700 that may just hold the key to Earth's future, the film features the vocal talents of Ben Burtt, Jeff Garlin, Sigourney Weaver, Fred Willard and Pixar veteran John Ratzenberger.
According to $51.1 million worth of theatergoers, however, it was Angelina and James McAvoy who were the most "Wanted." The movie about professional assassins jumped off the comic book page to average $500 more per screen than the sparsely worded robot flick, and it achieved the feat on some 800 fewer screens, causing speculation that "Wanted" would have won the weekend if it had only opened bigger. Marking the American debut of Russian visionary Timur Bekmambetov, the film represents a rare box-office smash for tabloid target Jolie, opening larger than either of her "Lara Croft" clunkers ever did. Appropriately enough, a sequel is already in the planning stages.
In third place, Steve Carell's hit spy spoof "Get Smart" proved itself as well-built as Hymie the robot, taking in $20 million more in its march towards the $100 million plateau. The film also managed the rare task of falling less than 50 percent in its second weekend.
"Kung Fu Panda" continues to kick butt this summer, as the animated film hung tough against its robotic competition for the family dollar. The Jack Black comedy is now approaching $200 million. Meanwhile, Mike Myers' "The Love Guru" limped toward the far-less-holy $30 million mark, dropping to sixth place in its second weekend behind Edward Norton and "The Incredible Hulk."
Rounding out the top 10 this week were "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull," M. Night Shyamalan's "The Happening," the lovely ladies of "Sex and the City" and Adam Sandler's "You Don't Mess With the Zohan." In its second week of limited release, "Kit Kittredge: An American Girl" continued Abigail Breslin's success story; the film once again did strong business, ensuring that the makers of the period film won't be suffering from any great depressions of their own.
Check out everything we've got on "WALL-E," "Wanted" and"Get Smart."
For breaking news, celebrity columns, humor and more — updated around the clock — visit MTVMoviesBlog.com.
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Tuesday 24 June 2008
Baby Dee
Artist: Baby Dee
Genre(s):
Rock
Discography:
Little Window
Year: 2002
Tracks: 8
Performance creative person, ballad maker, classically trained harper, circus sideshow vet, and transgender street legend Baby Dee was born in 1953 in Cleveland, OH. She spent ten-spot days as medicine director and organist for a Catholic christian church in the Bronx before connexion the circus as the two-sided androgyne at Coney Island. This landed her a spear as the bandleader for operation nontextual matter group the Bindlestiff Family Circus and a circuit with the Kamikaze Freak Show in Europe. After moving back to New York City, she became a fixture in lower Manhattan with a street do on a high-rise tricycle with a concert harp. She recorded her number 1 record, Little Window, on the Durtro pronounce in 2000, a four-track EP in 2001, and her second full-length, the double-disc Love's Small Song, in 2002. Dee returned to Ohio during the latter record's recording, pickings vows as a novice of the Little Sisters of Crabby Doom (a Cleveland-based order dedicated to the fear of fetid older men), vows that she has since forsaken. For her one-third full-length recording, Dee recruited a typically eclectic uS Army of fellow musicians, including Will Oldham, Andrew W.K., Robbie Lee, Max Moston (Mark Anthony and the Johnsons), Bill Breeze (Psychical TV), John Contreras (Electric current 93), James Lo (Carlos Chavez), and Lia Kessel. The resulting Safe Inside the Day arrived in January 2008 on Drag City Records.
‘The Dark Knight’ Fake Newscast Gives Anthony Michael Hall a Job
Sunday 15 June 2008
Miley Sends Shout-out to "Amazing" Fans
Performing onstage for the first time since last week's Vanity Fair photo flap, the Hannah Montana star...
Tuesday 3 June 2008
Shine a Light - movie review
Gimme Shelter this is not. The disillusions and stabbings of the 1969 concert have been
replaced by the Clinton Foundation's benefit for the Natural Resource Defense Council
and snapping camera phones. But Shine a Light is helmed by Martin Scorsese -- the man
behind Goodfellas and Raging Bull -- shouldn't it push the boundaries set by Charlotte
Zwerin and the Maysles brothers nearly 40 years ago? It should, but Scorsese has
always had a cinematic hard-on for the Rolling Stones, and the result is a personal,
biased love letter to the Stones signed with love by Marty.
When the Stones take the stage at New York City's Beacon Theater, it's frightening
-- their age truly shows on film. As giants on the silver screen, we have a front
row seat for an exhibition of frail bodies moving in ways that only young men should
move. As Mick Jagger belts out songs of youthful rebellion and sexual frustration, he
still does the same androgynous dances of yesteryear. Yet, this off-putting display
of aged youth is clearly a place of sentiment for Scorsese, whose camera lingers
with love.
That's not to say that the film is entirely a concert video, it is broken up by archival
footage of the band -- comprised mostly old interviews. When Jagger, Richards and
the crew aren't on stage shaking the skin hanging off their bones, their younger
selves are making fools of themselves off stage -- displaying their na�vet� at the end
of a journalist's camera. While this might have been a point to show some sort of
retrospective contrast to the geriatric Stones still rocking today, it merely perpetuates th
e idea that nothing has changed other than the Stones' bodies -- they are the oldest
bunch of lovable 16-year-olds rock and roll has ever seen.
But there is one clear area where both the Stones and Scorsese have changed. Not
only do the Stones alter their lyrics, taking out the more risqu� lines of "Some
Girls" and "Sympathy for the Devil," but, for whatever reason, Scorsese takes it
upon himself to censor Jagger by removing several of his dropped F-bombs. The fact that
several swears still slip through is even more maddening, as if Scorsese is putting
his PG-13 rating on stage with the Stones. Rock and roll isn't rated PG-13. But
Shine a Light provides a truncated, Wal-Mart version of the Rolling Stones that's as acceptable
as the Pirates of the Caribbean pin on Keith Richard's jacket.
Sentimentality and nostalgia might fill the gaps for aging Stones fans, but for the
rest of us, it's a missed opportunity for a reflection on the times and the unstoppable
Stones. Gimme Shelter defined a change in a generation, but Shine a Light inadvertently defines
our time of political correctness and accessibility through censorship. Perhaps the
only insight we have into the post-2000 Rolling Stones is when Scorsese's camera
swings into the drum set -- focused on drummer Charlie Watts -- and he unleashes a tiring
sigh not more than three songs into the set. It's the only moment of weakness, of
age, of reality. The rest is rock and roll that's sanitized for the whole family.
Keith Richards shows off his striking new look.
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