Washington's Senate Committee on Labor and Commerce held a public hearing on Jan. 17 for a bill that would create minimum staffing standards across the state's hospitals. Senate Bill 5236 has garnered strong support from nurses and opposition from the Washington State Hospital Association. 

Thirty-eight percent of Americans said they put off medical treatment in 2022 because of the cost, according to a Gallup poll published Jan. 17. This marks a 12 percentage point increase from those who said the same a year earlier, and the highest since Gallup began tracking the question in 2001. 

Jennifer Nestor, BSN, RN, chief nursing officer at Kingwood, W.Va.-based Mon Health Preston Memorial Hospital, was appointed president-elect of the West Virginia Organization of Nursing Leadership.

St. Joseph Medical Center in Houston has named Michelle Ziakas, MSN, RN, chief nursing officer, the hospital said Jan. 17.

An international analysis found pregnant people with COVID-19 have a seven times higher risk of dying and greater risk of being admitted to an intensive care unit, needing a ventilator or developing pneumonia, The Washington Post reported Jan. 16.

Although the highly transmissible omicron subvariant XBB.1.5 is gaining prevalence nationwide, COVID-19 cases are flat and hospitalizations have dipped. The data suggests the U.S. will see more of a COVID-19 "bump" this winter versus a full-fledged surge, according to The New York Times.

Silverdale, Wash.-based St. Michael Medical Center — which gained media attention after a nurse called 911 from its overcrowded, short-staffed emergency department — has been accredited by The Joint Commission after a preliminary denial.

Of more than 96,000 specimens tested for influenza at U.S. clinical laboratories for the week ending Jan. 7, 8.6 percent were positive, the CDC's latest FluView report shows. This figure hovered around 25 percent for several consecutive weeks in December. 

Here are six organizations opening or expanding nursing programs: 

In about a week, the prevalence of omicron subvariant XBB.1.5 grew more than 50 percent, according to the latest CDC variant proportion estimates.

Fannie Gaston-Johansson, PhD, RN, pioneering nurse educator and researcher, died Jan. 7 at 84.

Most long COVID-19 symptoms among people who had a mild infection ease within a year, according to findings published Jan. 11 in The BMJ. 

Routine childhood vaccinations fell nationwide during the 2021-22 school year and sat below target levels for the second consecutive year, the CDC reported Jan. 12.

In a recent study, St. Louis-based Washington University School of Medicine researchers found Acinetobacter baumannii, an antibiotic-resistant bacterium responsible for many hospital-associated infections, can resurge after a catheter insertion.

Nearly 1 in 4 study participants admitted filling their respiratory devices with tap water, which can be unsterile, according to a CDC study. 

The XBB.1.5 omicron subvariant does not warrant its own Greek letter name — at least not yet — because data suggests it is behaving similarly to other omicron sublineages in terms of transmissibility, severity, immune escape and its effect on interventions, according to the World Health Organization. 

A new study led by researchers at Baltimore-based Johns Hopkins University suggests the rise in home healthcare services could come with dangerous consequences: an increase in central line-associated bloodstream infections, or CLABSIs. 

Despite decades of safety work, adverse events are still common in Massachusetts hospitals and may occur in about one-fourth of admissions, according to a study published Jan. 12 in The New England Journal of Medicine.

A record 42,887 organ transplants were performed in the U.S. last year, up 3.7 percent from 2021, according to preliminary data the United Network for Organ Sharing shared Jan. 10. 

After 40 years of service, a nurse at Pen Bay Medical Center, part of Portland-based MaineHealth, retired Jan. 6, the Courier-Gazette reported.