At sites across the region, you will be able to hand in unwanted, unused prescription drugs.

During the last Drug Take-Back-Day, Americans dropped off more than 118 tons of unwanted and expired medications for safe disposal.

The drop-off centers will be open from 10:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m.

To find a drop-off center located near to you go here.

Check back frequently as collection sites are continuously being added

Today, parents need to address serious issues like bullying and gun safety.

During National Safe Kids Week, April 21 – 28 (www.safekids.org), Polyclinic pediatrician Dr. Melissa Hathaway is offering tips for keeping kids safe from both every day threats to health and safety, and the life threatening issues of the day.

Review Safety Often

As a pediatrician, Dr. Hathaway reminds parents to review safety issues often to keep up with their growing and changing child.  “Make it a habit,” advises Dr. Hathaway.  “One of the reasons children have accidents is because they develop so fast that caregivers have a hard time keeping up.”

She recommends that parents and caregivers think about safety in terms of age and by situation – “at home, at play, as school, and on the go.”

Dr. Hathaway points out that as a community, we all have a duty to protect children from two of the biggest dangers: guns and bullying.

Gun Safety

“Sadly, there have been several recent gun-related tragic events in the Northwest, says Dr. Hathaway.  “The best way to keep your children safe from injury or death from guns is to never have a gun in the home, car, or anywhere your child has access to.

Talk to your children about the dangers of guns and what to do if they find themselves in a situation involving a gun.”

While parents may take every precaution at home, they should not forget to find out if there are guns in the homes where their children play.

“It can be hard for a parent or caregiver to ask about guns,” she points out.  “One way to ask is, ‘My child is very curious.  Do you have guns or anything dangerous that he might get into?’”

She suggests that for those who do choose to keep a gun in the home, always keep the gun unloaded and locked.  “Also lock up bullets and store them in a separate place, and make sure to hide the keys to the locked boxes.  Children are naturally curious, and their innate urge to discover new things can overcome any parent’s warnings.”

Bullying

Bullying is becoming increasingly common and can be a deadly problem.  Bullying is defined as unwanted, aggressive behavior that involves a real or perceived power imbalance.  The behavior is repeated, or has the potential to be repeated over time.

“Anyone and everyone can help prevent bullying by talking about it, promoting a safe environment, modeling respectful behavior and treating others with kindness,” says Dr. Hathaway.  “Talk to kids about what bullying is, what they should do if they see it happening, and how to stand up to kids who bully. Know the warning signs, talk about it, and intervene immediately if you see bullying behavior.”

Resources

It can be overwhelming for a parent or caregiver to keep track of all the risks inside and outside the home.  “Enlist the help of your family, friends and community to endure your child is safe wherever they go,” says Dr. Hathaway.

There are a variety of websites dedicated to education and awareness regarding safety in childhood and beyond.

Dr. Hathaway recommends:

• The American Academy of Pediatrics HealthyChildren.Org website.

• Washington State Medical Association webpage on bullying: www.wsma.org/patient_resources/bullying.cfm

Dr. Hathaway earned her medical degree from the University of Washington School of Medicine after receiving a bachelor of science in neurobiology.

She completed an internship and residency in pediatrics at Primary Children’s Hospital, University of Utah in Salt Lake City, Utah, and she is  is certified by the American Board of Pediatrics.

She joined The Polyclinic Pediatrics from Seattle Children’s Hospitals Emergency Department and Urgent Care Clinics.

She previously worked as a medical assistant at the Seattle Cancer Treatment and Wellness Center.

In addition to providing general pediatric care from birth through adolescence, Dr. Hathaway has a special interest in preventative care through health promotion, disease prevention, and safety advocacy.

She is accepting new patients and may be reached at: 206-292-2249.

Consumers should not to use skin creams, beauty and antiseptic soaps, or lotions that might contain mercury, U.S. Food and Drug Administration officials warn

The products are marketed as skin lighteners and anti-aging treatments that remove age spots, freckles, blemishes and wrinkles, says Gary Coody, national health fraud coordinator in the Food and Drug Administration’s Office of Regulatory Affairs.

Adolescents also may use these products as acne treatments, adds Coody. Products with this toxic metal have been found in at least seven states.

Click on image for photos of more products

The products are manufactured abroad and sold illegally in the United States—often in shops in Latino, Asian, African or Middle Eastern neighborhoods and online.

Consumers may also have bought them in another country and brought them back to the U.S. for personal use.

“If you have a product that matches these descriptions (and others listed below), stop using it immediately,” says Coody.

Signs and Symptoms of Mercury Poisoning

• irritability
• shyness
• tremors
• changes in vision or hearing
• memory problems
• depression
• numbness and tingling in hands, feet or around mouth

Source: Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry

“Even though these products are promoted as cosmetics, they also may be unapproved new drugs under the law,” says Linda Katz, M.D., director of FDA’s Office of Cosmetics and Colors. FDA does not allow mercury in drugs or in cosmetics, except under very specific conditions, which these products do not meet.

“Sellers and distributors should not market these illegal products and may be subject to enforcement action, which could include seizure of the products and other legal sanctions,” says attorney Brad Pace, J.D., of the Heath Fraud and Consumer Outreach Branch within FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research.

Dangers of Mercury

“Exposure to mercury can have serious health consequences,” says Charles Lee, M.D., a senior medical advisor at FDA. “It can damage the kidneys and the nervous system, and interfere with the development of the brain in unborn children and very young children.”

You don’t have to use the product yourself to be affected, says FDA toxicologist Mike Bolger, Ph.D. “People—particularly children—can get mercury in their bodies from breathing in mercury vapors if a member of the household uses a skin cream containing mercury.” Infants and small children can ingest mercury if they touch their parents who have used these products, get cream on their hands and then put their hands and fingers into their mouth, which they are prone to do, adds Bolger.

How to Protect Yourself

• Check the label of any skin lightening, anti-aging or other skin product you use. If you see the words “mercurous chloride,” “calomel,” “mercuric,” “mercurio,” or “mercury,” stop using the product immediately.

• If there is no label or no ingredients are listed, do not use the product. Federal law requires that ingredients be listed on the label of any cosmetic or drug.

• Don’t use products labeled in languages other than English unless English labeling is also provided.

• If you suspect you have been using a product with mercury, stop using it immediately. Thoroughly wash your hands and any other parts of your body that have come in contact with the product. Contact your health care professional or a medical care clinic for advice.

• If you have questions, call your health care professional or the Poison Center  at 1-800-222-1222; it is open 24 hours a day.

• Before throwing out a product that may contain mercury, seal it in a plastic bag or leak-proof container. Check with your local environmental, health or solid waste agency for disposal instructions. Some communities have special collections or other options for disposing of household hazardous waste.

Tracking Skin Products Containing Mercury

Investigations in the past few years by FDA and state health officials have turned up more than 35 products that contain unacceptable levels of mercury.

FDA continues to add mercury-containing skin products to its import alerts, which authorize the agency’s field staff to refuse admission of shipments of these products.

But this is only a partial solution, says Coody. “Many of these products are coming into the country through channels we can’t easily track, such as international mail and personal baggage.

That’s why it’s so important for consumers and sellers to know about the dangers of possible mercury poisoning associated with the use of these skin products.”

Texas health officials say samples of face cream they tested contained mercury up to 131,000 times the allowable level. And a teenager in southern Texas who used a mercury-containing skin cream was recently hospitalized for mercury poisoning.

In Northern California, a 39-year old woman had more than 100 times the average amount of mercury in her urine and had symptoms of mercury poisoning, according to the California Department of Public Health.

For three years, the woman and her husband had been using an unlabeled mercury-containing face cream that was brought into the U.S. from Mexico by a relative.

Several other family members who did not use the cream, including a four-year-old child, also had elevated levels of mercury in their bodies.

Virginia, Maryland, and New York have also seen cases of elevated mercury levels in people exposed to skin products containing mercury.

In Minnesota, 11 of 27 imported skin products taken from store shelves contained mercury . Photos of some illegal mercury-containing products are shown here:

• Minnesota Department of Health 
• Maryland Department of Health and Mental Hygiene

This article appears on FDA’s Consumer Update page, which features the latest on all FDA-regulated products.

March 6, 2012

By Debi Quirk, MSN, RNC

This week is National Patient Safety Week. Patient advocate Debi Quirk writes that although there has been some progress in reducing medical errors, mistakes are still far too common.

In 1999, the Institute of Medicine in its now-famous report, “To Err is Human,” found that as many as 98,000 Americans die in U.S. hospitals every year due to medical errors. Some experts argue the number is considerably higher.

The IOM report made patient safety a national concern and sparked efforts across the country to reduce medical errors.

Progress, however, has been slow and, now, more than ten years later, it is likely the situation is no better and probably worse.

A 2010 report, for example, found that 13.5 percent of hospitalized Medicare beneficiaries experienced adverse events during their hospital stays that resulted in prolonged hospitalization, required life-sustaining intervention, caused permanent disability, or resulted in death.

The report, issued by the Office of the Inspector General at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, also found that an additional 13.5 percent experienced temporary harm events that required treatment.

The OIG investigators concluded that 44 percent of occurrences were preventable.

Some progress has been made. Many hospitals have adopted the practice of having “safety pauses” before a surgical procedure to make sure safety protocols that reduce errors are followed. And the adoption of checklist-driven protocols has been shown to drastically reduce central-line infections

But, at the same time, acceptance of such simple, commonsense practices as hand washing has been slow. The adoption of strict hand-washing guidelines and the installation of hand sanitizers in every room, for instance, prompt only about 60 percent of care providers to wash their hands prior to touching a patient or a patient’s surroundings.

And doctors have been known to be the least compliant in several studies.

But what can you do to protect yourself now?

• First, research the facility that you plan to use. Information can be found at hospitalcompare.hhs.gov about a facilities infection rates. Here, you can read surveys of patient experiences and look at what patient safety measures they have put into place.
• Take along a family member, friend, or a private advocate. When you are trying to heal, you’ll need someone else to write down the fine details of your procedure and recovery as well as ask the questions that will get you the answers you deserve. Find a reputable patient advocate through professional patient advocate associations such as www.advoconnection.com, and www.nahac.com.
• If you are having surgery, review the instructions completely with the nursing and medical staff; do not hesitate to call your advocate with any questions prior, during, and after.
• Learn about hospital-acquired infections and how to avoid them. Do not hesitate to ask your caretakers to wash their hands if you did not observe this.
• Read “A hospital survival guide” published by Consumers Report and available online for free.
• Know how to avoid prescription drug errors. Read “What You Can Do to Avoid Medication Errors” on AARP’s My Medical Manager page.
• Learn more from the National Patient Safety Foundation.

Reporting Errors

Despite the lip service given to making patient safety a priority, hospital staff does not report 86 percent of errors, according to report released in January by U.S. Department of Health and Human Service’s Office of the Inspector General,

Some of the most serious problems, including those that caused patient deaths, were not reported, the researchers found.

And even when employees report harm to patients, the investigators found that “hospitals made few changes to policies or practices.” In many cases, hospital executives told federal investigators that the events did not reveal any “systemic quality problems.”

Pressure on hospitals to get serious about protecting patients from harm is growing. To date, 27 states have passed laws requiring them to report their hospital-acquired infections rates. These and other statistics on quality of care are now being posted online at such national websites as HospitalCompare and  LeapFrogGroup.org and, locally, on the Puget Sound Health Alliance’s Community Checkup website.

And next year a provision of the new health-care reform law goes into effect that will punish hospitals that fail to meet quality standards. The provision establishes a new “value-based purchasing” program that will cut Medicare reimbursement to hospitals that don’t measure up to a set of performance standards that will include patient-safety measures.

Hospitals delivering low-quality care stand to lose up to 2 percent of their reimbursement—a substantial amount of money to most hospitals, which depend on Medicare to survive.

Many health-care providers are making a serious effort to improve patient safety, but clearly we have a long way to go. In the meantime, you can protect yourself by taking some simple precautions (see panel) and by insisting your providers deliver the level of care they promise.

Debi Quirk has a Masters of Science in Nursing and is a nationally certified Registered Nurse who has worked for 34 years in hospital and home health care and has also taught future nurses at the university level. She currently is a private patient advocate in Seattle, Washington. She started RN Patient Advocates of Puget Sound because her passion is to empower patients to get the best health care possible.