The first team of registered nurse volunteers from California, Michigan, and Washington State will depart for Haiti Wednesday morning with the Department of Defense’s Continuing Promise, National Nurses United (NNU), the nation’s largest organization of registered nurses, announced. The volunteer RN team will be treating patients in Haiti and Columbia during their month long deployment.

The group is part of a continuous series of assignments of volunteer RNs from NNU’s Registered Nurse Response Network (RNRN) which included working onboard the USNS Comfort, the critical Navy relief effort that cared for the most seriously injured following the disaster, and Hopital Sacre Coeur (HSC), the largest private hospital in northern Haiti.

Teams of RN volunteers will be based aboard the USS Iwo Jima, a Navy amphibious ship, in one-month rotations from July to November. They will be working in makeshift clinics on the shores of Haiti, Colombia, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Panama, Guyana, and Suriname.

“I had been traveling in Haiti with another nurse and we had left the day before the earthquake,” said Brook Casipit, an RN from Seattle, Washington with previous disaster relief experience in Central America who is part of RNRN’s first Continuing Promise team. “We had just arrived in the Dominican Republic when we heard about the disaster and tried desperately to return to volunteer, but were not able to find an organization on the ground to work with. I am delighted to finally be able to volunteer my service through RNRN.”

The first team consists of NP’s and RNs with a background in women’s health, disaster relief experience, and many have recent experience in Haiti including:

Cherie Thurner, an RN from Michigan, who went with RNRN to Sacre Coeur Hospital and has been on 13 medical mission trips to Haiti over the last 13 years. She has been on two medical missions in the country following the January earthquake and worked disaster relief following Hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005.

Amanda Howard, an RN from the San Diego area, who spent six weeks in Haiti after the earthquake and established pre- and post-natal care in an existing clinic.

Jane Ernstthal, a San Francisco Bay Area women’s health nurse practitioner with clinical experience in Malawi, Kenya, Chile, Ecuador, Mexico, and Haiti, where she conducted family planning trainings for local clinicians.

Brooke Casipit, a Seattle, Washington recovery room RN who has trained local midwives in Guatemala, Dominican Republic, Haiti, and Nicaragua. “We have learned from our experience in Hurricane Katrina that the kind of skills needed in the weeks and months following a disaster are nursing skills,” said Bonnie Castillo, RN, director of RNRN. “The kind of care that’s needed is everyday care, and things are exacerbated by the lack of medication and basic first aid. Wounds fester and spread. Something that was preventable ends up a life-threatening situation. Nurses are the heart of a long-term recovery effort.”

Source: California Nurses Association

The number of residents at nursing homes who were kept physically restrained dropped by more than half from 1999 to 2007, according to the latest News and Numbers from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.

According to the federal agency, the percentage of nursing home residents who were kept physically restrained declined from 11 percent in 1999 to 5 percent in 2007. Restraints include belts, vest and wrist ties or bands, or special chairs or bedside rails to keep residents seated or in bed.

The federal agency also found that:

- The percentage of Asian/Pacific Island and Hispanic residents who were restrained physically declined from nearly 16 percent in 1999 to 7 percent in 2007 – the highest rate in both 1999 and 2007. They also saw the great reduction among all racial and ethnic groups.

- In contrast, black residents were the least likely to be physically restrained in both 1999 and 2007 (10 percent and 4 percent, respectively).

- Use of physical restraints among American Indian/Alaska Native and white residents also declined by roughly half (from just over 10 percent to 6 percent and from just over 10 percent to 5 percent, respectively).

Overuse of physical restraints may reflect poor quality of care because residents who are restrained daily can become weak and lose daily functioning abilities. They are also more prone to pressure sores and other problems, such as chronic constipation or incontinence as well as emotional problems.

This AHRQ News and Numbers is based on information in “Long-stay nursing home residents who were physically restrained, United States, 1999 and 2007,” Table 11_1_17.1 appendix to the 2009 National Healthcare Disparities Report, which examines the disparities in Americans’ access to and quality of health care, with breakdowns by race, ethnicity, income, and education.

Source:
Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality