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Health care personnel (HCP) are at increased risk for infection with SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), as a result of their exposure to patients or community contacts with COVID-19 (1,2). Since the first confirmed case of COVID-19 in Minnesota was reported on March 6, 2020, the Minnesota Department of Health (MDH) has required health care facilities* to report HCP † exposures to persons with confirmed COVID-19 for exposure risk assessment and to enroll HCP with higher-risk exposures into quarantine and symptom monitoring. During March 6-July 11, MDH and 1,217 partnering health care facilities assessed 21,406 HCP exposures; among these, 5,374 (25%) were classified as higher-risk § (3). Higher-risk exposures involved direct patient care (66%) and nonpatient care interactions (e.g., with coworkers and social and household contacts) (34%). Within 14 days following a higher-risk exposure, nearly one third (31%) of HCP who were enrolled in monitoring reported COVID-19-like symptoms, ¶ and more than one half (52%) of enrolled HCP with symptoms received positive * Health care facilities as defined by MDH include acute care hospitals, critical access hospitals, long-term acute care hospitals, skilled nursing facilities, assisted living facilities, group homes, adult foster care, treatment facilities, dialysis centers, outpatient clinics, dental clinics, home health care, and hospice. † HCP as defined by MDH include, but are not limited to, emergency medical service personnel, nurses, nursing assistants, physicians, technicians, therapists, phlebotomists, pharmacists, students and trainees, contractual staff members not employed by the health care facility, and persons not directly involved in patient care, but who could be exposed to infectious agents that can be transmitted in the health care setting (e.g., clerical, dietary, environmental services, laundry, security, engineering and facilities management, administrative, billing, and volunteer personnel). HCP does not include clinical laboratory personnel. § During February 8-May 18, 2020, CDC exposure risk assessment guidance included medium-and high-risk categories, with risk level based on PPE worn and type of potential contact with a person with confirmed COVID-19. On May 19, CDC's risk assessment was updated to include a single higher-risk exposure category to include close (within 6 feet), prolonged (≥15 minutes or of any duration during an aerosol-generating procedure) contact with a person with confirmed COVID

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With the recent regulations limiting resident work hours, it has become more important to understand how residents spend their time. The volume and content of the pages they receive provide a valuable source of information that give insight into their workload and help identify inefficiencies in hospital communication. We hypothesized that above a certain workload threshold, paging data would suggest breakdowns in communication and implications for quality of care. All pages sent to six general surgery interns at the University of Michigan over the course of one academic year (7/1/2008-6/30/2009) were retrospectively categorized by sender type, message type, message modifier, and message quality. Census, discharge, and admission information for each intern service were also collected, and intern duties were further analyzed with respect to schedule. "On-call" days were defined as days on which the intern bore responsibility for care of all admitted floor patients. The interns received a total of 9,843 pages during the study period. During on-call shifts, each intern was paged an average of 57 ± 3 times, and those on non-call shifts received an average of 12 ± 3 pages. Floor/intensive care unit (ICU) nurses represented 32% of the page volume received by interns. Interestingly, as patient volume increased, there was a decrease in the number of pages received per patient. By contrast, at higher patient volumes, there was a trend toward an increasing percentage of urgent pages per patient. At high intern workloads, our data suggest no major communication breakdowns but reveal the potential for inferior quality of care.

In-hospital newborn falls are arguably one of the most underresearched and underreported issues for organizations that care for newborn patients. From the few published statistics of in-hospital fall rates, we know that perhaps 600 to 1,600 newborn falls occur annually. Many of these falls can result in injury or even death of the newborn, legal issues for the institution, and severe emotional stress to the caregiver(s) and parents. Therefore, we searched the literature to ascertain causation and associated risks associated with in-hospital newborn falls. This is an important issue for nurses to understand because not only can the newborn be harmed due to a fall, but the actual newborn fall can also elicit strong feelings of guilt and culpability in the caregiver(s). This article reviews the literature to examine what is known about the factors associated with in-hospital newborn falls, to explore prevention measures, and to present best practices for how to adopt safe-sleep policy to prevent newborn falls.