STATUS REPORT
'The FDA left me'
Alex Hogan/STAT
If you haven’t read Lizzy Lawrence’s phenomenal piece about what the FDA has lost during the second Trump administration, Alex Hogan devoted his weekly video to the saga. Alex and Lizzy drove around DC and sat down with six former FDA officials to discuss their love for the agency — and why months of turmoil ultimately spurred their exits.
RESEARCH
Kids in poorer countries are six times more likely to die during emergency surgery
The global stratification of health is real: Kids in poorer countries with severe abdominal injuries were six times more likely to die after receiving emergency surgery than their counterparts in richer countries.
The findings, published Thursday in The Lancet Child & Adolescent Health, tracked outcomes from 237 pediatric patients who underwent a trauma laparotomy, recruited from 85 hospitals across 32 countries. The majority of patients were male (82.3%) and had sustained a blunt injury (57.0%) like being hit by a car or other forms of violence. Thirty days after the operation, kids’ mortality globally was 8%, but the risk was more acute for patients in lower resource settings.
Traffic accidents are a big cause of death and disability worldwide, so while the study’s sample size was small and quite diverse in origin, it is still worrisome.
FIRST OPINION
We need more men in nursing
The demand for qualified nurses is rising, with nearly 200,000 annual job openings expected due to the mass exodus of nurses reaching retirement age. Who should fill this gap?
Men, writes Nicholas A. Giordano, a nurse and assistant professor at Emory University’s Nell Hodgson Woodruff School of Nursing in Atlanta.
Men currently account for 12% of nurses nationally, even though the profession can often bring stability and median salaries for registered nurses routinely approach six figures. But the proportion of men in the industry has remained stagnant for years.
To close the gender gap, Giordano writes, health leaders must expand outreach to men and continue recruiting and positioning more male faculty to teach male students early on in their training. Read more.
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