Who is to blame when patients die in overcrowded and understaffed emergency rooms?

The story of the death of a psychiatric patient in a large Brooklyn, New York hospital got my attention, both as a nurse and as a human being. These stories are, thankfully, rare but still happen too frequently. In this case, lack of a bed for the patient was cited as the reason the patient was in the ER for almost 24 hours. The patient was reportedly suffering from a psychiatric condition, but deaths of patients have occurred in emergency rooms among patients with medical conditions as well. Read more →

The eighth leading cause of death in the U.S. is medication error. This statistic may surprise you. Other frightening statistics include the following:

* 7,000 deaths occur each year that are directly attributable to medication errors.
* Errors occur around 1 in 5 times that medication is administered.
* The FDA estimates 1 death per day due to medication errors.

The three most common errors are giving an improper dose, giving the wrong drug, and giving the drug by the wrong route (for example, intravenous instead of oral). Read more →

A new report by Policy Exchange reveals over a third of spending on mental health services in prison is wasted and calls for a drastic overhaul in treating mental health in prisons, including mandatory training for prison officers.

Mental healthcare in prisons is widely overlooked as being a problem in the justice system, with overcrowding and high costs trumping mental health for column inches. Yet experts agree that there in a link between mental illness and reoffending in the community. In the latest Policy Exchange report, Out of Sight, Out of Mind, leading experts say that it is time policy makers woke up to the realities of mental healthcare in prisons, and the report authors suggest that only a small reduction in re-offending rates would make a tripling of the prison mental healthcare budget cost effective. Read more →

In the public news I’ve recently seen some stories about physicians having guns in their offices. This is in response to incidents where disgruntled or disturbed patients have come into physician offices and assaulted staff or physicians. In one instance, a pain and palliative care physician suffered a blow to his shoulder that continues to cause significant impairment and disability. Another incident involved staff being pushed to the floor by a patient. This has led some physicians to store firearms in the workplace. Read more →

To our readers: As a new editor and as an activist for public awareness, I shall be promoting knowledge in this field to its fullest extent for all to enjoy.

Currently, I am studying psychology at Baruch College in New York City. Psychology has long been an area of passionate intrigue for me; with its palette of varying concepts it piqued my curiosity last year. As a result it sparked an unquenchable desire to learn more about this area and the developing field of neuroscience, weighing with particular emphasis on the latter. Read more →