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Community blood drives provide a significant quantity of the donated blood needed in the U.S. annually. The American Red Cross collaborates with thousands of blood drive sponsors to make donating easier for individuals. Faith community nurses (FCNs) can promote blood donation by involving churches as sponsors for blood drives. This article shares details on the partnership of the Red Cross and a host church; church member statements about motivation to donate, as well as inability to participate, further inform FCNs.

Throughout the world, healthcare is increasingly being provided in home and community-based settings. There is a growing awareness that the most effective, least costly, patient-preferred setting is patients' home. Thus, home healthcare nursing is a growing nursing specialty, requiring a unique set of nursing knowledge and skills. Unlike many other nursing specialties, home healthcare nursing has few professional organizations to develop or support its practice. This article describes how an international network of home healthcare nurses developed international guidelines for home healthcare nurses throughout the world. It outlines how the guidelines for home healthcare nursing practice were developed, how an international panel of reviewers was recruited, and the process they used for reaching a consensus. It also describes the plan for nurses to contribute to future updates to the guidelines.

The physician is a vital member of the home healthcare team. Based on the Medicare legislation and regulations. The physician's participation is required for patient care and agency reimbursement. The home health care nurse is the important link between the patient and the physician. The compliance with, and sharing of, information related to the clinical, administrative, legislative and regulatory aspects of care benefits the patient, family, physician, nurse and the home health agency.

The PRO process is just one of the many reviews that HHAs are subjected to at any given time. On a practical level, HHA should incorporate PRO criteria and GQSs into its QA program. At present, there is no mechanism in place for denial of payment for substandard care, although proposed regulations were published in the January 18, 1989 Federal Register. Medicare certification, and therefore payment, could be lost if the facility or HHA were sanctioned. The Medicare law requires PROs to coordinate their activities with other review organizations. HCFA, however, has not established procedures for providing reports from fiscal intermediaries and PROs to the state survey agencies or coordinating state surveys with PRO reviews. HHAs should have structure and process criteria in place (either manual or computerized) to identify selected records for review. This enables the agency to monitor its internal quality assurance activities so that it has confidence that the GQSs will be met when reviewed by external agencies, including the PRO. This internal monitoring will also enable the agency to document patient outcomes. This is an important aspect of the evaluation process, since the emphasis of certification and accreditation programs and site visits will be focused on patient outcomes in the 1990s.