Easy steps limit antibiotic-resistant infections in hospitals

A low-tech approach that deters antibiotic-resistant bacteria from infesting hospital patients appears to prevent infection better than screening them for the troublesome microbes and isolating those patients, scientists report May 29 in the New England Journal of Medicine

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Nurses offered deal on premium pay rates

Working week would increase from 37.5 to 39 hours, with less pay for new nurses

Health service management have offered nurses a deal which would restore double-time premium rates for Sundays and public holidays in return for a longer working week. Under the deal the working week would increase from 37.5 to 39 hours.

New nurse graduates would be offered 85 per cent of the staff nurse pay rate in their first year and 90 per cent in the second year, under the proposal emerging from talks at the Labour Relations Commission. However, this would be on the basis of a 39-hour week.

Source: Irish Times 14th May 2013

Research Beyond Google: 119 Authoritative, Invisible, and Comprehensive Resources

Google, the largest search database on the planet, currently has around 50 billion web pages indexed. That’s a lot of information. But it’s nothing compared to what else is out there. Google can only index the visible web, or searchable web. But the invisible web, or deep web, is estimated to be 500 times bigger than the searchable web. The invisible web comprises databases and results of specialty search engines that the popular search engines simply are not able to index.

Link to resources

Discover biomedical research of interest to you

Biomedical literature search and recommendation tool: Pubchase 

As the user saves articles to his or her library, PubChase recommends newly-published articles that are relevant to the individual. This is a free service, available on the web, iOS, or Android devices.


The heart of PubChase is not simply a pretty mobile interface to the published literature. With over 100,000 biomedical articles published each month, our hope is to enable scientists to discover new research important to them, no matter where it is published (as opposed to simply scanning tables of contents of high-impact journals, as many of us commonly do now).

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Gene Therapy Could Treat Cancer, Study Finds

A clinical trial using a patient's own immune system to produce remissions in adults with acute leukemia could be a major breakthrough in the fight against all different kinds of cancer.
The new study, published Wednesday in the journal Science Translational Medicine, took five patients with untreatable cancer, and using their own immune systems, injected genetic material into the patient's white cells to turn them into cancer fighters. The modified white cells then went out in the body and destroyed all the cancer cells, causing the patients to go into remission, according to the study
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Mental-health guide accused of overreach

Dispute grows over revisions to diagnostic handbook.

Psychologist David Elkins had modest ambitions for his petition. He and his colleagues were worried that proposed changes to an influential handbook of mental disorders could classify normal behaviours as psychological conditions, potentially leading to inappropriate treatments. So they laid out their concerns in an open letter, co-sponsored by five divisions of the American Psychological Association in Washington DC. "I thought, 'Well, maybe we'll get a couple or maybe 30 signatures'," says Elkins, an emeritus professor at Pepperdine University in Malibu, California.

But the letter, posted online on 22 October (go.nature.com/uhmvqq), touched a nerve. Within 10 days more than 2,800 people had signed it, many identifying themselves as mental-health professionals
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http://www.nature.com/news/2011/111102/full/479014a.html?s=news_rss

NPIRS - HSE West Bulletin 2011

This bulletin is a synopsis of data for HSE West from the NPIRS for 2011 and that reported in the Activities of Irish Psychiatric Units and Hospitals 2011 (Daly and Walsh 2012). 

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Is this the 'tobacco moment' for cannabis?

Henry Cockburn was diagnosed with schizophrenia in 2002 at the age of 20. Before that he was a heavy cannabis user. His father, Patrick Cockburn, The Independent's award-winning foreign correspondent, has long wondered whether the two were linked and spent months speaking to the world's leading experts in the field. In a four-part series prompted by his son's condition, he will examine the medical evidence linking sustained cannabis use with schizophrenia, before going on to look at the way the mentally ill have been let down by the health service and stigmatised by public opinion, and concluding on Thursday with his manifesto for a more humane and effective system – accompanied each day by Henry's account of his journey from pyschosis to a normal life.

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A vision for Psychiatric/Mental Health Nursing

The new report 'A vision for Psychiatric/Mental Health Nursing: a shared journey for mental health care in Ireland' is now in AIT Health Science Library Reference section:
Link to record and online resource

Nurses' Kindness

The Gift of Kindness
There is no way of knowing the true value of the kindness nurses and social workers are giving freely while doing the work they are paid to do. The kindness so many of them give has healed many people after everything else had failed.

There are many nurses and doctors who have a gift of being able to make you feel better, yet they don't even know they have a special gift. This gift of kindness and respect towards others can make people feel so uplifted that is often all that's needed to strengthen the immune system so they can overcome their own problems.

Launch of the SHELLI report

http://www.libraryassociation.ie/2012/01/30/launch-of-the-shelli-report/

HSLG members and guests attended the official launch of Irish health libraries: new directions. Report of the status of health librarianship and libraries in Ireland (SHELLI) on Thursday 26th January, hosted by the Dublin Dental Hospital.

Audiology services 'are substandard' - irishhealth.com

Audiology services 'are substandard' - irishhealth.com