August 12th, 2009 by Dr. Val Jones in Announcements
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Since 1990, the annual TED conference (Technology, Entertainment, and Design) has been a popular destination for inspirational, invitation-only speakers offering “ideas worth spreading.” Well, that spreading spilled over into healthcare and inspired the creation of TEDMED, a veritable who’s who of innovators in medicine who happen to be outstanding speakers and entertainers. Unfortunately, TEDMED is a bit pricey and exclusive – charging $4000/ticket to attend – and so some creative young folks decided to create a free sister conference at the same venue. They called it “BIL:PIL” as a kind of riff on Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure, and keeping “PIL” for a rhyming medical theme. Pretty funny.
Funnier still is that my friend and Better Health contributor Jonathan Sheffi has lured me into presenting at BIL:PIL. I’ll be joined by some speakers from TEDMED and a gaggle of social media and medical technology innovators. In fact, it’s not too late to register or vote for your favorite speaker at BIL:PIL as programming will not be finalized until September 30th.
The meeting will be held October 30th and 31st at the San Diego State University BioScience Center in San Diego, California.
When an open conference in medicine is named after Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure – you know it’s going to be entertaining. Hope you can join us. Go sign up now… 😉
August 11th, 2009 by Dr. Val Jones in True Stories
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I was coming to the end of my ER shift and realized that a fairly large list of patients still waiting to be seen. I scanned the chief complaints listed on our white triage board to see if there was a straight forward case that I could handle quickly before I went home. Since it was early in the morning, we had the typical extremes of patients – those who were badly injured (drunk driving is more common in the wee hours) and those who were really weird.
ER nurses are amazingly adept at capturing the seriousness of a complaint with their choice of words. Reading between the lines is a bit of an art form – and part of the natural communication in a busy ED. I understood the art fairly well, though this night I missed a big clue. Here were some of the chief complaints that I could choose from:
1. Crushing substernal chest pain x1hour
2. Butt twitching x3 months
3. Head vs. light post
4. Ear pain x2 days
First of all I made sure that a colleague was with patient #1, which left me a choice between patient #2 – clearly weird and doubtful that I’d be able to resolve his problems any time soon, patient #3 – probably going to take a lot of sutures and more time than is left in my shift, and patient #4 – a fairly innocuous-seeming issue, probably otitis media.
Needless to say, I chose patient #4… though I hadn’t recognized the subtle distinction between “ear pain” and “ear ache.” I was about to figure this out the hard way.
As I drew back the curtain to patient #4’s room, I saw a tall, thin man sitting bolt upright in the chair next to the stretcher. He was polite and respectful – but there was something odd about him. A few minutes into our interview about his ear pain, I finally put my finger on it. The guy never blinked.
After several more minutes of what could only be described as fairly straight forward answers to medical history questions – and a fully negative review of systems – I had this sneaking feeling that Patient #4’s pain wasn’t otitis media.
“I’d like to ask you a question that might seem kind of strange…” I said, peering intently at his face.
“Ok,” said the young man.
“Have you ever thought that your pain is related to a transistor radio of some sort in your ear?”
His eyes grew as large as saucers.
“Yes! How did you know?!”
And there it was – a young man with schizophrenia, experiencing his first psychotic break. It took me a few hours to get him a full work up and a discharge plan to the inpatient psych unit… and I was very late getting home from this shift. So much for a straight forward case…
I wonder what would have happened if I’d chosen patient #2?
August 8th, 2009 by Dr. Val Jones in Humor, True Stories
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Well, it’s a summer Saturday on the blog – which means that the Better Health editorial standards are a little more lax. And this week I’m willing to share some highly embarrassing personal details for your amusement.
Over the course of my lifetime, my exposure to baseball has been somewhat limited. In fact, the only games I ever went to were at the demand of an old grad school roommate who had a crush on José Conseco. We lived in Dallas at the time and she forced me to accompany her to the games so that at the end she could stand by the exit gate and catch a glimpse of him as he left the ballpark.
As a long-suffering and supportive friend I endured countless games in the Texas summer heat – sitting in the nosebleeds at Ranger stadium, with no more than a folding seat, napkins to wipe my brow, and a long line to a dirty bathroom. Apparently Nolan Ryan was an amazing pitcher – but it was hard to tell from such a distance.
So that was pretty much the sum total of my experience with baseball, and the reason why I hadn’t been all that interested in taking friends up on more recent invitations to go to a ball game. But yesterday my world changed.
My dear friends Heather and Doug (aka Mr. Heather) convinced me to join them at Nationals stadium yesterday… and I was astonished by the creature comforts of the place. Open air sports bars, restaurants, game tents, air conditioned box seats… food buffets. My goodness. This was not at all what I remembered about baseball – and we got to sit just above home plate.
Now, the only problem was that I really never learned the more complicated rules of the game – like why can the guy on third run home after the outfielder just caught the batter’s ball and he’s out? I know I’m the only person in the world who doesn’t get it, but that’s ok.
The real problem came when I was en route to the game and experienced some brand confusion. I noticed everyone wearing these red hats (on the right below) and I knew that our team was called “The Nats” so… I just didn’t make the association between the W and our team. And quite frankly, the font looks an awful lot like Walgreens doesn’t it?
Yeah, so I did accidentally let slip my confusion about all the “Walgreens hats.” I thought maybe they were a big team sponsor or something.
My friends were at first confused, then horrified, then laughing uncontrollably. I kept protesting that it was an honest mistake (given the branding similarities), and they said, “Oh yeah, like TOTALLY” and did their best blonde Valley Girl impressions.
The other problem was that although I knew the hand movements made when the umpire wanted to indicate that a player was “safe” on base, I didn’t recall that the opposite resulted in a movement very similar to what I do when I’m really psyched about a victory of some sort and say “Yes!” You know, you make a fist with bent arm and bring it quickly down to mid abdomen from shoulder height.
So, in all truth, there was a moment of confusion in my mind when I saw the umpire making the “Yes!” movement – it seemed kind of partisan to me, and I wondered why he didn’t just make the “safe” sign. And then the runner walked away all dejected. I should have kept my mouth shut and let me brain process, but I let it slip to Heather – why does that umpire guy go “Yes!” all the time?
We had a good laugh… some amazing nachos… and our team won 7-6 so it was a really exciting game all the way through. I told Heather the stadium was so nice I’d be happy going there just to hang out – game or not.
Kudos to the Washington Nationals marketing team – even with our team being in last place, the experience was outstanding – causing even a hardened baseball skeptic to rethink her position on game attendance. Now if you could just do something about the Walgreens logo… 😉
August 3rd, 2009 by Dr. Val Jones in Announcements, Medblogger Shout Outs
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Today marks the fourth year anniversary of Emergiblog, a delightful collection of Emergency Medicine musings by nurse Kim McAllister.
Kim doesn’t know this, but I use excerpts from Emergiblog when I teach blogging courses to healthcare execs. Her writing is a favorite with them – and when I ask what kind of person they think she might be (judging from her blog) they say things like:
“An experienced nurse with a heart of gold.”
“Someone who’s seen it all and still kept her marbles.”
“I want her to be my nurse when I show up in the ER.”
I agree with all those sentiments… and I wish you a very happy blogiversary, Kim! I’ll see you in Las Vegas*
*Attention – anyone who reads/writes blogs should join us at Blog World Expo, October 15-17. This is our very first year for a special medblogger track. All are welcome!
Speakers include:
Kevin Pho – KevinMD
Dr. Rob – Musings Of A Distractible Mind
Kim McAllister – Emergiblog
Dr. Val – Better Health
Dr. Mike Sevilla – Doctor Anonymous
Paul Levy – Running A Hospital
Kerri Morrone Sparling – Six Until Me
Gene Ostrovsky – Medgadget
Terri Polick – Nurse Ratched’s Place
Nick Genes – Blogborygmi
Marc Monseau – JNJBTW
