December 2011
3 posts
November 2011
4 posts
3 tags
a lot to learn
I’m doing a rotation in the Emergency Department at the moment. And mostly I’m really enjoying it.
Like every rotation there’s a mixture of senior clinicians, some who are excellent mentors and colleagues and others who really don’t seem to care much at all. But that’s another post.
I’ve had some great clinical learning moments, but also some important...
4 tags
advocacy in crisis situations
we had a teaching session this week on clinical aggression that primarily focussed on patient-clinician aggression. we have a co-ordinator for the Management of Clinical Aggression whose job it is to oversee protocols, edcuation, management and assessment for any aggression and violence in the workplace.
whenever there is the potential for aggression and/or violence involving a patient Code Grey...
Doctors Without Borders: What it costs to prevent... →
doctorswithoutborders:
• It costs less than US$1 for the vaccine to protect one child from measles for life. • It will cost $212 million to reach the Measles Initiative’s target of reducing measles deaths by 95% by 2015. • The funding shortfall: There is a present funding shortfall of $43.4 million to reach this…
it’s all about the dollars…
October 2011
1 post
1 tag
July 2011
3 posts
2 tags
June 2011
2 posts
2 tags
May 2011
5 posts
2 tags
amongst the few
I had been working for 12 and a half hours straight.
With only half an hour to go the scrap of paper with patient names and numbers was wearing thin along the fold lines. But, to my relief, each task that had been assigned had been dutifully scratched through.
Bar one.
A simple procedure to assess the levels of oxygen and carbon dioxide in the blood was all that was left. I had minimal...
3 tags
Edwin Kruys: Why Twitter Can Be Useful In Travel... →
kruys:
Twitter is a great source of medical and health information. Yes I know, this may sound obvious but many medical professionals are unfamiliar with the benefits of social media and I still hear lots of misconceptions - like “Twitter is just for chitchat”.
Twitter has proven itself as the go-to…
4 tags
more on monitoring
so a quick, and non-exhaustive, search didn’t find much in the area of monitoring social media status feeds for changes in mood/behavior. there has been quite a lot published on social media and health though.
further to my initial idea i’ve mused a bit more. read on.
It seems there’s not much research out there in terms of mental state and correlations with social media...
5 tags
monitoring
while riding to work i was musing on twitter and mental health.
i’ll have to go and search to see if it already exists, but i was thinking about the possibilities for people with bipolar or mood/affective diagnoses in terms of monitoring twitter streams. i was thinking that moving into a more manic phase may show more frequent tweets with any of the various elements of being in such a...
2 tags
“…as a basic focus, the dancers remain in physical touch, mutually...”
– Steve Paxton talking about Contact Improvisation.
He also said
When an apple fell on his head, Isaac Newton was inspired to describe his three laws of motion. These became the foundation of our ideas about physics. Being essentially objective, Newton ignored what it feels like to be the apple
April 2011
1 post
Waste
Yesterday I spent about 6 hours sitting in front of a computer typing up discharge summaries for a number of patients on the ward I’m covering. They were all new admissions to my ward but most had been in hospital for a few weeks.
Because of the way departments are funded, the job of recording all the complications, procedures, treatments and outcomes onto the discharge summary is vital...
March 2011
8 posts
WatchA recent post on the KevinMD blog discussed the Wired call to redesign pathology results, and the resulting work from informationisbeautiful.com. This happened back in November last year and is the first in hopefully many changes to the way we visualise health data.
There is a competition under way at the moment from the US Department of Health to develop a SMART (Substitutable Medical Apps,...
3 tags
promotional
i spend a fair bit of time on twitter. not quite a power user, but enough that it’s my regular social media platform of choice.
i’m also interested in the use of social media in healthcare, and participate in a weekly chat (when i’m not working!) on Sunday evenings that uses the #hcsmanz tag. join in if you’re interested.
i just stumbled - actually i think it was via...
4 tags
seesaw
last year i had an interview in Panacea, the Australian Medical Students’ Association magazine, it was for being awarded the inaugural National Student Award.
they emailed me a set of questions and i wrote answers then they sent me an edit for final corrections. very nice really. but some of it didn’t get in - probably because i waffle too much.
i thought i’d post some of the...
3 tags
tim and maddie
Madeleine Flynn and Tim Humphrey are Melbourne based musician/composers working in installation, theatre, dance and academia.
quite simply, they rock.
but not literally… although i’m sure if they really wanted to they could.
anyway, they’ve got an installation work on as part of Dance Massive in Melbourne these next two weeks. it’s an installation work called Music...
4 tags
keep on learning
I’m not sure I’ve written here before about Life in the Fast Lane.
But I should have.
Such a great resource for junior doctors. And not so junior doctors as well.
Tonight, while on night shift, I’ve been reading a post about the 6 true emergencies, which is gold for new docs. Of course we get taught about approaches to MET calls and following the ACLS guidelines in an...
3 tags
Watchadelinalarsson:
For Force Majeure, Kate Champion Cultivate
by performer: Adelina Larsson
adelina. lovely.
but what’s with the balding guy with the moustache at the end of the clip? you don’t need him ;)
2 tags
Crowdsourcing your study →
hughstephens:
I’m planning a bit of a study about medical students’ use of Social Media within Australia. I’ve written a couple of posts about social media in medicine in the past, sit on the Mayo…
this is a great approach. engaging with social media to help define the research question - crowdsourced research methodology. excellent.
5 tags
happy IWD
i’ve just got off night shift.
and it’s International Women’s Day.
time for celebration.
this has reminded me about a few writers that had a big impact on me some time ago. bell hooks, Adrienne Rich, Helen Garner, Margret Atwood and Jeanette Winterson (amongst others).
Adrienne Rich in particular had a collection of poetry, essay and shorts called On Lies, Secrets and...
February 2011
8 posts
3 tags
An Open Letter to my Students «Ideas and Thoughts →
Dear Students,
Because of institutional requirements and societal norms, I’m required to give you a grade. This grade falls between 0-100 and in some way is intended to inform you and others how well you did in this course. The importance that number is given is appalling. While I do my best to provide you with some outcomes, indicators, rubrics and feedback I still feel my assessment of...
2 tags
2 tags
search by calories
i just went to try the new google recipe search, as reported in their blog: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/02/slice-and-dice-your-recipe-search.html
but of course, it’s only available in the US (and Japan… not sure why just Japan got a guernsey) at the moment.
it doesn’t really make sense to me why they don’t just roll it out internationally. they have the...
3 tags
1 tag
Think you can't dance? →
Choreographer Lucy Guerin is looking for untrained male dancers to be part of her latest show.
If you think you can’t dance, then ‘Untrained’ is for you!
It’s a professional, contemporary dance show featuring two entirely untrained dancers, and they’re holding auditions in Bendigo for you to be part of it.
Acclaimed choreographer Lucy Guerin is behind this intriguing production, and as she...
democracy
i am not a fan of Tony Abbott MP.
and i look forward to the next spill that sees a change in leaders of the Liberal party. it can’t be too long to wait for that to happen.
the latest shameful thing he’s done is request donations from liberal supporters to help fight the proposed Flood Levy (which aims to support the QLD people in rebuilding their communities). clearly it would be...
January 2011
16 posts
3 tags
options for documentation
like a lot of people (currently 6 million users), i’ve been using Evernote regularly for the last year or so. and it has improved in leaps and bounds over that time by introducing support for more platforms, creating shareable and editable notebooks, and plenty more.
so far though, it’s been useful for my study purposes. but now i’m working in the hospital setting i can see...
“When I was a student at Cambridge I remember an anthropology professor holding...”
– Sandi Toksvig
(clingtomymouth)
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Makes you think a lot.
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Are temporal concepts embodied? A challenge for... →
psydoctor8:
Because I am guilty of attaching emotion to psychological constructs like time, “I’ll be glad when I finish my goddamn doctorate”… which is a good way to actually loose awareness of (perceived?) moments, in lieu of keeping track of linear time related goals.
Is time an embodied concept? People often talk and think about temporal concepts in terms of space. This observation, along...
4 tags
Book Review: The Pen & the Stethoscope
Edited by Leah Kaminsky, Scribe Publications 2010.
I recently received this book as a graduation present from some old friends, and just on reading the cover jacket I was pleasantly surprised to see such an exciting collection of authors, ranging from the multi-award winning Atul Gawande (surgeon and writer for the New Yorker), through household name neurologist Oliver Sacks (author of...
1 tag
“You have to begin to lose your memory, if only in bits and pieces, to realise...”
– Luis Buñel
4 tags
2 tags
3 tags
the app store
so, i dutifully upgraded my OS so I could have a look at the new Apple App Store.
and restarted.
and was a little underwhelmed.
I can see the sense in having the same model for iOS and desktop OS devices - it’s been so successful for the iOS why wouldn’t they do it? and the centralisation of purchases and updates is a good feature too. i guess the real benefit will be in seeing...
2 tags
1 tag
“Another [contact improvisation partner] told me that often I wasn’t giving my...”
–
- Jonathan Sinatra «pouring : a contact skill to explore»
i don’t always give my weight fully, but thats a choice i make whilst dancing CI. usually the early part of a duet with someone new involves me revealing this choice (or option), to my partner. i don’t want to come across as...
3 tags
into the body
i’ve just been playing with google’s new body browser.
head over to http://bodybrowser.googlelabs.com/ to have a play yourself. you need a recent browser that supports WebGL and the first page will let you know of some options. i downloaded the Chrome beta as i figured it’d be optimised to work with another google product.
after a relatively short loading time you’re...
