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Liko North America has announced the launch of a new "Toolkit" section of its Safe Lifting Portal Web site. The new portal section is designed to assist hospitals and nursing homes with the start-up, development, and on-going support of safe lifting initiatives. The Liko-sponsored Safe Lifting Portal is a pro bono injury prevention site designed to help nurses avoid musculoskeletal injuries caused by lifting and repositioning patients.

The Safe Lifting Portal cover topics such as how to start and deploy a program, how to achieve caregiver buy-in, tracking legislative activities, and calculating projected savings using an interactive return-on-investment calculator. It also includes a monthly electronic newsletter and a question-and-answer column called "Ask the Lift Doctor."

According to Melissa Nowitz, administrator of the Safe Lifting Portal, "Over the course of the three or more years of our portal's existence, many customers have contacted us and asked for individual items to promote safe lifting in their facilities -- ranging from posters to pamphlets -- and this new section allows us to make them available in one convenient location. Also, we are always looking for additional suggestions on how to improve the efficacy of safe lifting programs, and now we have a more direct means of sharing those ideas among healthcare workers and safe lifting committee members."

To access the Toolkit section of Safe Lifting Portal, visit http://www.safeliftingportal.com/toolkit.

JPS Health Network's Emily Meister, a certified pediatric nurse practitioner, and her husband, Paul, have re-paid Beatrice Kiddo, a shepherd-mixed dog found roaming the war-torn streets of Iraq, with a loving home and safe environment for providing love and companionship to their son and his unit over the last several months. Beatrice was found outside the men's compound in February hungry, pregnant and in dire need of tender loving care. An animal lover by all accounts, Captain John Meister and his unit nursed Beatrice back to health and even took care of her five puppies - growing attached to all of them over the course of several months.

Technically, soldiers are barred from caring for animals found overseas while on active duty as part of military regulations. As such, John and his group began making arrangements with Operation Baghdad Pups, an affiliate of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA) International to have the dogs adopted and shipped to the U.S. The program has been in place since Sept. 2007 when a distraught soldier who rescued a puppy he named Charlie contacted the SPCA asking for help on getting the animal out of Iraq, as the military does not allow animals to be shipped back to the U.S. Since then, Charlie and more than 20 other animals have been adopted, received medical care and sent to the U.S. for a better life thanks to donations on behalf of the program.

Per the SPCA's regulations, animals must be adopted prior to being shipped to the U.S., and while all of Beatrice's puppies had homes waiting for them, Beatrice herself did not.

"I got a panicked call from my son saying no one had adopted Beatrice yet, and without a home she would be left in Iraq," Emily said. "I knew he couldn't bear that thought and he has enough to worry about over there, so I told him we'll take her and she'll be waiting for him when he comes home."

Beatrice is adapting well to her new home in the U.S. For more information on Operation Baghdad Pups, visit www.baghdadpups.com.   

The June issue of Nurses' Lounge-DFW is now available for viewing online!

This month's issue contains our National Nurses Week Round Up, featuring hospitals all over the metroplex and how they celebrated National Nurses Week with award ceremonies, festivals, galas and more.

For those readers looking for CE credit, our CE article, "Impact of Evidence Based Practices on Outcomes for Acute Ischemic Stroke Patients," highlights the essential components of a collaborative effort in the hospital for rapidly identifying and treating patients with an ischemic stroke and leading efforts in preventing stroke reoccurrence using evidence-based guidelines.

This month's career profile explores Medical-Surgical nursing and the movement to change the field's name to Acute Care in an effort to boost its shrinking ranks. We talk with local Med-Surg nurses and nursing leaders about this career as a specialty and the specific demand in DFW for Med-Surg nurses.