Monday, December 31, 2007
Saturday, November 24, 2007
Catalogs Clogging Your Mailbox?
I am convinced that the fact that two of our letter carriers have gone on disability is in large part due to the number of mail order catalogs we receive each day at home. For a while I was actually calling companies to ask we be taken off their list. Now I've found something better--Catalogchoice.org.
"The mission of Catalog Choice is to reduce the number of repeat and unsolicited catalog mailings, and to promote the adoption of sustainable industry best practices. We aim to accomplish this by freely providing the Catalog Choice services to both consumers and businesses. Consumers can indicate which catalogs they no longer wish to receive, and businesses can receive a list of consumers no longer wanting to receive their catalogs."
I've declined twenty catalogs so far and can't wait for today's mail to arrive so I can decline some more!
Friday, June 29, 2007
MedlinePlus Works Well on Small Device Browsers like N95
My Nokia N95 runs the Symbian OS. Epocrates only runs on Palm and PocketPC devices. Epocrates online seems not to know what to do when a small device browser accesses it. I can log in, but the site is really unusable on a small screen (I've written to Epocrates to suggest they consider adding support for small devices/screen). So where do I get drug information? From the government!I just discovered that the National Library of Medicine's Medline Plus does play well with small screens/browsers. Below is a screenshot of the Medline Plus page on Opera for Handheld Devices:
Makes the $29 for Opera worth it, don't you think?
Thursday, June 28, 2007
The Ether Way on the Preop Interview
- Categories: Anesthesia practice, Web Sites
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Right on, brother:
"Long ago, my preop interview became less pre-flight check-list and more gut-check and sniffing for smoke. (I'll write more about sniffing for smoke in another post) Paradoxically perhaps, the most important thing to me is to bond to the patient; it's the second part of that WCW observation. I might do eight or ten cases in a day; the consequence of treating my work as a technical exercise is the risk of inattention and the sort of boredom that drives the desperate discontent that I see in so many of my colleagues."
[The Ether Way]
Sermo: Finally a good online forum for physicians
I just stumbled upon Sermo, a web community for physicians only:
"Here, physicians aggregate observations from their daily practice and then - rapidly and in large numbers - challenge or corroborate each others opinions, accelerating the emergence of trends and new insights on medications, devices and treatments. You can then apply the collective knowledge to achieve better outcomes for your patients."
Now, if they'd only have RSS feeds....
Tuesday, October 17, 2006
Status Report on Google Modules
- Categories: Anesthesia practice, Web Sites
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A while ago Seth Dillingham wrote two Google modules for me: Allowable Blood Loss and BMI Calculator. Well, I still have a hard time finding them on Googles own module site, but I can find them both on googlemodules.com--the 'Unofficial Google Modules Site'.
I wanted to pass along another use for the allowable blood loss calculator--estimating surgical blood loss. Anesthetists are asked to estimate the volume of surgical blood loss that occurs during a procedure on their anesthetic record. Surgeons will often attempt to influence that figure downward by volunteering their own estimate of blood loss (often not grounded in reality) in the hope of getting me to go along with it.
In large blood loss cases where I've been following the hematocrit I use the formula to calculate the actual blood loss. For example, if a 100 kg male started with a hematocrit of 0.40 and wound up with a hematocrit of 0.32 I calculate their blood loss as 1600 cc. No arguments.
Saturday, February 18, 2006
Inside the Brain
"What happens in the brain of a person with Alzheimerâs disease? This tour explains how the brain works and how Alzheimer's affects it."
Friday, June 17, 2005
Medical Simulation Weblog
I found a neat new weblog called SimBlog. Associated with the Society for Medical Simulation, it appears to be edited by Jeff Taekman, formerly of Penn State and the person I came to Hershey to work with. Jeff had moved to Duke by the time I arrived, and is now the Associate Dean for Technology in Education there.
Wednesday, April 6, 2005
Dear Journal Editor
Orac has written a public letter to scientific journal editors that is a must read for anyone who has ever published (or tried to publish and been rejected--me!). The post is part of Tangled Bank XXV (Like Grand Rounds, but with an emphasis on science):
"We have again rewritten the entire manuscript from start to finish. We even changed the goddamned running head! Hopefully we have suffered enough by now to satisfy even you and your bloodthirsty reviewers. Besides the fact that we included five new figures of brand new data (with six panels each, yet), we still cannot believe that you were unable to see the merit of our work..."
Tuesday, March 15, 2005
Four Drug Rep Tricks Plus One Of My Own
Polite Dissent is a blog I just discovered thanks to Grand Rounds. He/she has the same take on some of the techniques used by drug detail people as I do:
- False agreements
- Fake Thanks
- Bring the Boss
- Appeal to Authority
I'll just add my own to this very good list: use the people around you as billboards. It seems the people who make a paralytic called rocuronium have dropped off a thousand or so yellow operating room caps that say "Roc Solid" (Roc is our abbreviation for rocuronium, aka Zemuron). Many OR nurses and techs are now wearing these caps. My reaction? Even if I was planning on using rocuronium for the case, I'll draw up some tasty vecuronium or cis-atracurium instead. And besides, the vecuronium people gave me a nice nerve stimulator once...
Grand Rounds XXV: Respectful Insolence
Grand Rounds XXV is up at Respectful Insolence. Just don't have a mouth full of coffee when you read it.
Saturday, February 19, 2005
MayoClinic.com Anesthesia Information
James T. Li, M.D. has written two 'Ask a Specialist' pieces at MayoClinic.com that are relevant to patients having anesthesia. I've read them both and do hereby confer upon them the WakingUpCosts seal of approval:
- Anesthesia: Options and considerations
- Anesthesia: Safe for people with asthma?
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