Background: The institute of Medicine’s (IOM) landmark report, “The Future of Nursing: Leading Change, Advancing Health” outlines recommendations that position nurses to influence the future of health care. Implementation of nurse residency programs is one of the recommendations. In particular the report states “health care organizations should take actions to support nurses’ completion of a [...]

Background: Duplicate as-needed (referred to hereafter as “PRN”) orders for common indications such as pain, nausea, insomnia, and constipation are frequent in hospitalized patients. Without explicit instructions for circumstances or order of administration, therapeutic duplication can cause confusion for nurses and violates both Join Commission and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) guidelines. [...]

Background: Hypertension occurs in up to 75% of hospitalized patients. However, less than 1% have “hypertensive emergency,” defined as severely elevated blood pressure (BP) with end-organ injury. Current guidelines support emergent treatment of hypertensive emergency but recommend against immediate reduction of severely elevated BP in patients without end-organ injury (i.e., asymptomatic hypertension). Recent literature suggests [...]