I’m embarrassed to say this, but the nursing profession is making a mockery of healthcare education by downgrading the post-graduate degree process. The nursing education requirements in the advertisement seen here are an embarrassment to the nursing profession.
Mrs. Happy pointed out an advertisement from her nursing magazine offering advanced nursing education opportunities. This advertisement for the doctor nurse practitioner (DNP) training track at Creighton University is a mockery of the rigorous educational requirements necessary to care for patients independently. Check out the nursing education requirements on their advertisement: No entrance exam required? No clinical experience? No thesis required? What has this world come to?
These are professionals who are going to be taking care of patients in less than two years. Some states allow NPs to manage patients independently with no physician oversight. That is just plain scary. This is an embarrassment to the foundation of anatomy, physiology, pathophysiology, neuroanatomy, microbiology, pharmacology, genetics — and on and on — required to care for patients independently. Read more »
Medical Pastiche blogger Peter Zavislak, whom I can always count on to point out the unusual and interesting sides of medicine, sent me to a website that has nothing but pictures and videos of food in an MRI scanner.
Here’s a series of images from their site of a cantaloupe as viewed from an MRI:
I just find myself thinking that these MRI machines aren’t cheap to run and maintain. Doctors and nurses used to be able to get “freebies” by buddying up with the X-ray, CT or MRI technologist and running a scan for free.
Some hospitals allow their employees to test the machines after being set up or maintained to get images for testing purposes. I’m sure more than a technologist or radiologist or two have found incidentalomas from this practice. Read more »
I’m at work the other day when I saw this great-looking motorcycle with a sidecar parked on the street. It looked like something out of one of those old James Bond movies. I thought it was pretty cool.
Upon closer inspection, Mrs. Happy noticed the sidecar was equipped with a babyseat inside. I don’t know about that. What do you think? Should a baby be carted around the city streets and countryside in the sidecar of a motorcycle while Mom and Pop bond with Mother Nature?
So I’m calling a referring physician’s office the other day when their telephone answering message puts me on hold. And wouldn’t you know it — Kelly Clarkson was blasting in my ears. When the doc came on the phone, I asked him if he was a Kelly Clarkson fan. He had no idea what I was talking about.
But it got me thinking. So I asked him how their office chose their telephone answering message. He said he didn’t know. He figured the music was being fed from a local radio station.
You may not realize it, but having a well-thought-out telephone answering message can be a vitally important part of a doctor’s business. It’s the first contact patients and colleagues have with an office. It sets the first impression.
I’m sure there are consultants out there who get paid a lot of money to teach this stuff. Should you have hip hop music? Big band music? Perhaps a little disco? Maybe some talk radio? How do you decide what type of telephone answering message to set up in your office?
Check out this darkly humorous advertising campaign from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. How do you convince men to go to the doctor and get the preventive healthcare that’s known to save lives? You make it all about television. Men + HD TV = “Yes.” This video is funny on so many levels.
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