Bill Levinson

I am not a health care professional and I don't know if this would work, but would there be circumstances under which people who have recovered from coronavirus be hired by hospitals to assist health care workers? The idea is that, if they are immune...

I am an engineer and not a health care professional, so I'd appreciate some feedback from people on the medical side. There is widespread concern about the shortage of ventilators, and also an observation that the ventilators themselves can cause dam...

That makes sense to me too, then. There is obviously a difference between polio patients and COVID-19 patients. It sounds like negative pressure will not expand the aveoli, then.

If hospital administrators are demanding that health care professionals work without adequate PPE, then perhaps they should set an example by accompanying doctors and nurses, while wearing whatever PPE is available to the doctors and nurses, while vi...

I am not in management but I think very poorly of a management team that forced you to use your vacation time to recover from an illness you apparently got while on the job. Also, it is conceivable that you could have a worker's compensation claim fo...

My opinion (not legal advice, or formal engineering or OH&S advice) is that medical personnel who choose to work in a COVID-19 environment are going above and beyond the call of duty. With regard to employers who tell health care workers they can...

I think Oscar the Cat can tell by odor when somebody is going to die.

They ought to be able to train dogs to detect C-diff. Dogs can even detect certain forms of cancer (due to the trace odors exhaled by the patient) as well as diabetes. Well trained dogs could conceivably screen for some conditions, although of course...

The initial decision to give CPR was correct because a living will takes effect only if the person is terminally ill. In other words, if somebody with a living will but no terminal illness collapses from a heart attack, CPR is given. The living will ...

I am sorry to hear this; it comes as an unpleasant surprise.

Maybe this is what Oscar the Cat smells.

I have heard that dogs can smell certain kinds of cancer. The cells doubtlessly emit a chemical that is not found in healthy tissue. I have never heard of a person being able to do it, though.

A Day in the Life of Oscar the Cat

Oscar the Cat is famous for being able to predict when somebody is going to die. It is quite possible that he smells some kind of biological change.

A nurse told me that she wore a pedometer and discovered that she had to walk eight miles every day. At three miles an hour, that would come to 2.67 hours out of every eight that she works. Henry Ford said that pedestrianism is not a highly paying li...

Ford would indeed have done this so fewer nurses could care for more patients--but without reducing quality by reducing the time that the nurses could spend with the patients. Suppose, for example, that proper care for a group of patients requires 30...

I am an industrial quality professional, and I am currently involved in a panel on health care reform. (I previously was part of Governor Rendell's health care reform panel, where he brought in doctors, business professionals, and so on to comment on...

"Carrying" (transportation) is actually defined as a non-value-adding activity (waste) in lean manufacturing, e.g. if parts have to be moved from one part of the factory to another. The parts must obviously be moved to the work station, and the medic...

This is all excellent information, and I can use it in some articles I am writing about GENUINE health care reform. It confirms that the story I heard from a nurse a couple of weeks ago is not an isolated situation, and that the way nurses' jobs are ...

Re: As far as I know, the initial decision to perform CPR was correct. A living will applies only if the patient is terminally ill or permanently unconscious. Some states prescribe a period of time in which death is expected to allow invocation of ...

Furthermore, a culture of blame discourages health care workers from reporting near-miss situations, while the identification of a person to blame deflects attention from the underlying problems that caused the incident to happen. Considerable t...

This is interesting http://www.ismp.org/Newsletters/acutecare/articles/20071115.asp "Errors with injectable medications: Unlabeled syringes are surprisingly common!" Anyone who has worked in a factory knows that you NEVER use anything from an unlab...

This is why I have ZERO sympathy for health care providers that want legislative caps on malpractice damages. The financial consequences of cutting corners (e.g. by understaffing) have to be far worse than the cost of maintaining adequate staffing. T...

The people for whom I have no respect are hospital administrators and executives who create bad systems and then discipline the nurses when inevitable problems result. If a nurse (or medical intern/resident) makes a "mistake" because she has been for...

i would never dream of telling a md, rn, or lpn how to do his or her job. since i have considerable experience and several professional certifications in the quality management field, however, i am probably more qualified than most medical profession...