J&J Campaign Promotes Nursing

J&J Campaign Promotes Nursing

The pamphlet is eye catching. A group of young nurses in blue scrubs, rest with stethoscopes around their necks, name badges clipped in place, pens dangling from their pockets and confidently smirking.

They don't look exhausted, crabby or frustrated. Instead, they look like (and actually are) young nurses lured into the profession and happy with their choice.

"Because I'm a nurse," the headline reads, "I have no limits. I live my life on my own terms. I can go anywhere. I make a difference."

Healthcare giant Johnson & Johnson (J&J) has invested more than $20 million on "The Campaign for Nursing's Future." After conducting a study polling Americans about the nursing shortage, J&J researchers found 65 percent think the shortage is a crisis and 93 percent think it jeopardizes the quality of American healthcare.

Officials at the company created the campaign with nursing leaders. It includes recruitment brochures, posters and videos for 20,000 high schools, 1,500 nursing schools and other nursing organizations. Another method of luring high school students into the profession is a campaign scholarship fund. Other aspects include a Web site (www.discovernursing.com) and a series of commercials that began airing during the winter Olympics.

James T. Lenehan, vice chairman of J&J's board, says the campaign brings attention to a worthwhile profession." Nursing professionals are the essential link between high-tech and high-touch and we are determined to help stimulate more interest in this challenging and rewarding field," he says.

Mary Foley, president of the American Nurses Association (ANA), is a campaign adviser. "Nurses are the face, the hands and the heart of healthcare. Their skilled care provides a safety net," she says. "I've been a nurse for many years and this campaign inspires me. I believe it will help attract the talent we need to revitalize the profession."

Keeping the Beat of Endoscopic Technology
Perfecting Endoscopic Heart Bypass

By Kelli M. Donley

TORONTO -- At a meeting of the American Association for Thoracic Surgery, Friedrich Mohr, MD, director of the Heart Center at the University of Leipzig, Germany, reported on the pioneering of endoscopic robotic heart surgery.

Mohr used an endoscopic robot to repair clogged arteries in 15 patients after opening their chests for surgery. When he had a better understanding of the robot's maneuvering, he performed 86 surgeries with the system when the patient was partially opened up for surgery. Now, after several years of testing, he has completed 30 bypass procedures repairing clogged arteries on patients with completely closed chests. His success rate is reportedly 97.5 percent.

Endoscopic robots are not the stereotypical computers that walk and talk on command. Rather, they are machines that perfect the surgical procedure yet require human guidance and control.

Two California companies manufacture such robots, although endoscopic cardiac procedures have yet to be approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Intuitive Surgical Inc., based in Sunnyvale, Calif., developed the da Vinci Surgical System -- a three pronged robotic system approved for other medical procedures.

"The system has three main components," says Lyn Thompson, a marketing communications manager at Intuitive. The surgical console is where the doctor performs the surgery. He or she is at the console and his or her movements are translated into movements on the patient side cart, which is where the surgery instruments are. The da Vinci system, uses two cameras on each endoscope, one relates to a left eye and one to the right eye, for 3-D image of the anatomy to perform surgery."

The da Vinci system has been approved by the FDA for general surgery (any abdominal procedure), thoracic surgery (excluding the heart) and radical prostatectomy. Eighty-nine systems have been sold globally, with 50 in the United States.

"We do not have FDA approval for cardiac procedures at this point," Thompson says. "We are in clinical trials for three cardiac procedures: mitral valve, atrial septal defect (ASD) repair and coronary artery bypass. The first bypass patient procedure was done in January 2002. At least one more year of testing must be completed before they can go before the FDA."

Computer Motion Inc., based in Goleta, Calif., has a similar robotic surgical system. The Zeus system scales the doctor's actions into microscopic movements within the patient. The system reportedly eliminates human hand tremor error and is being tested in coronary bypass procedures.

Making incisions -- about the diameter of a pencil -- the physician uses either a 2-D or 3-D visualization field to operate. Stephen Pedroff, vice president of corporate relations for the company, said Computer Motion robotics are being used globally, even though the Zeus system has several FDA hurdles to clear before being approved for cardiac procedures in the United States.

"The system is being used in other parts of the world to perform every conceivable surgery on patients," he says. "Our products, including AESOP and HERMES (additional robotic systems), have assisted surgeons in more than 250,000 procedures without a single adverse event."

The Computer Motions system was used in a telesurgery procedure Sept. 7, 2001, when physicians in New York used a Zeus TS system to remove the gallbladder of a patient in France. It was also used during the first endoscopic beating heart procedure in Canada two years ago.

Pedroff says the specific information concerning the cardiac tests with the Zeus system are being kept secret, however there are numerous clinical trials underway.

Ralph Damiano, MD, chief of cardiac surgery at Washington University in St. Louis, was the first American physician to perform endoscopic cardiac surgery. Damiano used the machine during a heart bypass in December 1998. Damiano did not return calls for an interview request.

The American Heart Association recently reported that 61million Americans have heart disease, which is now the No. 1 killer in the United States, with more than 950,000 deaths reported annually.

According to a recent University of California at Los Angeles study, 34 percent of American adults aged 20-74 are overweight, while an additional 27 percent are obese. Hearts in need of bypass surgery within the next 10 years is expected to increase significantly with the retiring baby boomer generation.

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