Newsroom

Herston Infectious Diseases Institute (HeIDI) clinician research fellow and RBWH clinical nurse consultant Karen is making our medication processes safer! 🥼 💊

Each day we administer thousands of medications across our hospitals, with Karen`s research through HeIDI and UQ dedicated to improving medication administration processes.

The tool she has created has been so effective, it`s been picked up in Canada and America!

"When I started in safe medication practice 22 years ago, we didn`t have a tool to assess our practice - my push from the start has been to design and validate a rigorous but simple and effective tool for nurses to make medication administration even safer," Karen said.

"It`s shown a statistically significant improvement in safer medication practice, and it`s a simple reminder and prompt for nurses when at the patient bedside, rather than adding another step to their busy day.

"It`s been designed with consumers too, as patients are our final safety check - it`s so important that we are engaging directly with our patients to make sure the medication is right and they are part of the process, keeping them safe in hospital and also when they go home."

#ShoutoutSaturday to Karen for her innovation to improve the way we work! 🙌 ...

Has cortisol been ruling your social media feed recently? You may be surprised to know that not all cortisol is bad. 📈📉

Take it from Metro North Endocrinologist Dr Shanal, who says that peaks and troughs in this stress hormone are essential to daily function, and that a natural spike in the morning can help prepare your body for the day.

"You may experience something that triggers your fight, flight or freeze response and that might activate your sympathetic nervous system which prompts physical responses like a racing heart and sweating. This would be followed by a cortisol surge" Dr Shanal explains.

"In the healthy state, shortly after cortisol returns to baseline levels. There is evidence to suggest that trying to flip into the counteracting system (the parasympathetic nervous system) can reduce cortisol. Breathwork, meditation and sleep are very important, so if you are sleep deprived, you might be experiencing high cortisol levels.

"Those with persistently high cortisol, without the natural ups and downs and clinical symptoms such as rapid weight gain, new diabetes, headaches or visual disturbances might have Cushing`s and this requires investigation with your doctor to first screen then confirm excess cortisol. On the flip side, persistently low cortisol presents a medical emergency called Addison`s disease and can be diagnosed with a blood and stimulation (synacthen) test." ...