ReachMD has a fascinating offering over at their site on addressing language access. It’s actually a practice assessment for healthcare professionals, and the objectives include:

1. Identify three reasons why we should work to bridge language barriers when communicating with our patients
2. List five ways to improve our ability to communicate with limited English speaking patients including how to work with trained or untrained interpreters, and
3. Identify available resources to make our practices more friendly for limited English speaking patients

Many of you have probably followed the case of the 2 Texas nurses who reported an emergency department physician’s negligent practice to the state medical board and were ultimately prosecuted for doing so. Now Medscape has a follow-up article on the story with some excellent points for us to consider about our professional and ethical obligations to speak up in the face of substandard care delivery. It also provides some updates on the status of the case.

Congratulations, Laura Maguire! Random.org picked you out of the bunch (a fact I will you all to trust me on as I am posting mobile-ly today and can’t capture the screenshot of the randomizer). Laura, give me a shout through the Contact form so I can get a mailing address for you.

Stay tuned for our next giveaway announcement. Might just be mixing things up a bit…

I’m on my last day of a {much needed} vacation, but don’t forget: you have until Wednesday, March 3rd to enter our newest giveaway. Just leave your response to the question in the Comment section to be eligible.
It looks like a great text and it’s brand new, so don’t miss this opportunity to add a new resource to your library!

Forgive me, my friends, because it’s been a hell of a day with the Army and I am bleary-eyed and incapable of stringing much more than a couple sentences together. So I’ll be forgoing a post tonight if that’s okay with you all. Promise me you’ll come back tomorrow, though, okay? Because we have a new giveaway from our friends at GW Medical–a brand new book that I think you’re going to want to check out.

Good night!

Lots of focus on training this week over at the sustainability site this week:

*A sampling of some of the excellent training events and conferences coming up in the next two months. March and April are always packed, and this year’s no exception. If you have money to spend on live events, there’s plenty to choose from. I hope to see some of you at several of them.

*Even if you can’t afford to travel right now, there’s an interesting web forum being sponsored by OVC on strategic planning for victim service providers. Definitely worth checking out, and free.

I’m heading out to DC this weekend for a week of training with the Army (and some of my very favorite people). And then, if you can believe it–I’m taking a vacation. A short one, but a vacation nonetheless, with the Girls’ Vacation Club. We’re heading to Key West and it’s entirely possible I won’t even have my computer with me. If there’s no post next Friday you will know that I have completely committed to the whole relaxation thing…

Have a great weekend!