November 7th, 2009 by MotherJonesRN in Better Health Network, True Stories
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My iPhone started ringing just as my nursing colleagues and I were getting ready to report off to the next shift at Undisclosed Government Hospital. The frantic caller was one of our nurses. She cried, “Are you on lockdown? Don’t leave the unit!” I signaled everyone in the room to cut the chatter. Then we heard the patients in the television room gearing up. I’m not going to replay everything that happened last night. I can’t do it. Suffice to say that things got tense at the nurses station when the name of the Fort Hood triggerman was released. We knew him. He was a former psychiatrist at UGH.
People are asking me what it was like to work with Dr. Hasan. They want to know if there were any signs that he was going off the deep end. No, he didn’t come across as a Unabomber in scrubs. He was just one of the guys, and that’s what made him so dangerous. He could make me laugh. I use to banter with him about his bachelorhood. He told me it was too bad that I was already married and then he would ask me if I could line up a nurse who wanted to marry a doctor. We never talked about religion or politics on the unit. He was always polite and respectful. He was an officer and a gentleman. Read more »
November 6th, 2009 by Emergiblog in Better Health Network, Opinion
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The story of the nursing student who was expelled for blogging got me thinking.
(If you haven’t heard the story, check out What Can Nursing Students Blog About? at Code Blog, with an update at Kevin, MD)
Just what can you write about on your blog?
Well, you can write on just about any topic.
It’s not a case of what you say, it’s how you say it. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Emergiblog*
November 6th, 2009 by Jonathan Foulds, Ph.D. in Better Health Network, Health Tips
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Every now and again I like to pick one of the classic research studies on smoking cessation in order to highlight some of the key findings. Today I’m going to focus on the part of the Lung Health Study.
The Lung Health Study is certainly one of the best smoking cessation studies ever carried out, partly because of the comprehensive nature of the assessment and follow-up of its 5,887 participants and partly because it was way ahead of its time in delivering a truly “state-of-the-art” intensive smoking cessation intervention which was compared in a randomized manner to the effects of “usual care”. The Lung Health Study (LHS) was a randomized clinical trial of smoking cessation and inhaled bronchodilator therapy in smokers 35 to 60 years of age who did not consider themselves ill but had evidence of mild to moderate airway obstruction. Read more »
This post, Classic Smoking Cessation Study Suggests You Can Save A Life For $2000, was originally published on
Healthine.com by Jonathan Foulds, Ph.D..
November 6th, 2009 by GruntDoc in Better Health Network, Opinion
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Kevin, MD linked to this, and I really must comment.
Here’s the abstract, and I hope you’ll read it all:
For years I’ve heard friends describe experiences of being caught in a web of excessive and unnecessary medical testing. Their doctors ordered test Z to investigate a seemingly incidental finding on test Y, which had come about because of a borderline abnormality on test X.
I often wondered why test X was done in the first place. As a primary care physician, I would have treated them for the likely diagnosis and done diagnostic tests — especially a series of diagnostic tests — only if they didn’t respond as expected…. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at GruntDoc*
November 6th, 2009 by Bongi in Better Health Network, True Stories
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Recently I had a moment to reflect on adrenaline and adrenaline inducing sports. It was a bloody moment. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
Bleeding peptic ulcers occasionally cross the path of general surgeons. Usually they stop bleeding with conservative treatment. But sometimes they don’t. Then you need to whip out the trusty knife. Even then usually the operation is little more than routine. This case, however was exceptional.
He was white as a sheet. He had been bleeding for three days but only decided to come to the hospital when he started falling over. It seemed he could at least recognise falling over as not normal. The initial gastroscopy showed a penetrating duodenal ulcer with no active bleeding. the body had managed to curtail the bleeding, partially because of vasoconstriction, but mainly due to a low blood pressure which in itself was due to loss of blood. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at other things amanzi*
