Shout Outs

Updated 3/2017 -- photos and all links (except to my own posts) removed as many no longer active. and it was easier than checking each one.

ChronicBabe is the host for this week’s Grand Rounds.   You can read this week’s edition here.

Hey laaaaadeeeeez! It's time again for Grand Rounds, ChronicBabe style, which means we've curated a collection of posts that are completely babelicious. We hope you enjoy this gathering of doctors, nurses, patients and just regular folk who like to write about medicine. And women.

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If you don’t have access to Discovery CME channel, you can still watch Dennis Quaid’s Chasing Zero: Winning The War On Healthcare Harm  online here. 

A made-for-TV documentary, 55 minutes long and entitled Chasing Zero: Winning the War on Healthcare Harm, is being shown four times globally beginning April 2010 on the main Discovery Channel. After it has aired, a commercial-free DVD will be produced and distributed for free to all U.S. hospitals by TMIT, and will be sent to the chairmen of the governance boards and their CEOs. A second hour of content composed of digital short stories and concept messages will be added to the DVD.

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Drew, Pallimed, writes about Surgical 'Buy-In' and the Surgical Contract 

Critical Care Medicine has a fascinating qualitative study about surgeons and end of life care which speaks directly to this, and similar, situation.  It's an excellent paper for the teaching file, particularly for fellows who don't have surgical backgrounds (which I assume is most, but thankfully not all, HPM fellows these days). 

The paper presents a small qualitative study of 10 physicians (mostly surgeons; a few non-surgeons who do extensive work in SICUs) …. and attitudes towards advance directives, ……..

This paragraph of Drew’s post struck a chord with me:

I have a distinct memory of one of my attendings, early on in my palliative fellowship, talking with me about surgeons.  …….  My attending told me something like 'Surgeons have a bond with their patients that is much stronger than internists. If you cut someone open, it changes your relationship with the patient in a way that internists just don't have.'  I thought to myself at the time that that was really weird.  Surgeons are cold heartless scalpel jockeys - how could they have a bond deeper than my patient-centered, humanistic, whole-person approach?  Well like a good fellow I remembered what he said, and slowly came to realize he was right…..

Perhaps it was because I had just read Bongi’s post significant moments or because I am a surgeon who felt sorrow for my mother’s surgeon last May even while grieving for her.

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The world’s first FULL face transplant has been done by surgeons in Spain.  Helen Briggs, BBC News writes about it:  Full face transplant 'success'

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Nice interview in the May 2010 issue of Reader’s Digest by Amy Wallace:  Michael J. Fox’s Recipe for Happiness.  The following is from the related RD article An Accidental Education: Exclusive Excerpt from Michael J. Fox's New Book 

At first I went into denial. …..

I realized that the only choice not available to me was whether or not I had Parkinson's.  Everything else was up to me. By choosing to learn more about the disease, I made better choices about how to treat it. This slowed the progress and made me feel better physically. …...

So let me make this suggestion. Don't spend a lot of time imagining the worst-case scenario. It rarely goes down as you imagine it will, and if by some fluke it does, you will have lived it twice. When things do go bad, don't run, don't hide. It will take time, but you'll find that even the gravest problems are finite, and your choices are infinite.

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My friend Gizabeth Shyder, Methodical Madness, wrote a lovely post Basketball in which she tells a patient to put him at ease during a needle biopsy:

I could tell it hurt by the expression on his face….

I prepared the second needle,... Decided to tell a story while I was doing the fine needle aspirate …..

"I was recruited hard by my high school basketball coach, because of my height. I was pretty shy in high school, so I resisted him for a long time. I realize in retrospect he probably looked at me and had big dreams of making a star."………….

As I pulled the needle out of his skin I noticed his eyes were all crinkled up and there were tears forming at the corners. I worried that I had hurt him, but he started laughing uncontrollably.
"That is the funniest basketball story I have heard in a long time."
I smiled, pleased I was able to entertain him.

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Sophie, Blocks & Swaps & Pattern Tips, gives a tutorial on this marvelous bag:   Summer Tote from Orphan Blocks

Do you have orphan blocks–blocks you made and loved but for which you have no project in mind? Then you might consider making a useful, beautiful tote bag of your own.

This bag is approximately 12 inches high and 16 inches wide (at the top edge). The bottom is 8 inches square. It is constructed from 6-inch pieced quilt blocks and squares of fabric.   It is based on Gay's So Sew Easy Schlep Bag pattern, which you can download from the linked page on her Sentimental Stitches site. My  Summer Tote differs in the following ways:………….

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There is no guest listed for this week’s  Dr Anonymous’ BTR show as of this morning.  

Upcoming shows

5/6: Dr. Daniel Lewis, Family Physician, Talking about recent mission trip to Central America
5/13: Medical Student and Video Blogger, Bryan McColgan
5/20: Larry Bauer from the Family Medicine Education Consortium