Shout Outs

Updated 3/2017-- photos and all links (except to my own posts) removed as many no longer active. 

Hank Stern, Insure Blog, is the host for this week’s Grand Rounds. You can read the “It’s Up to Us” edition here (photo credit).

Our theme this week is "Personal Responsibility" - only posts that address this issue have been included. I was quite impressed with the creativity that potential contributors brought to the table to make sure their posts fit the bill.

We like outside-the-bun thinkers.

The concept of personal responsibility (or accountability, if you prefer) has been a consistent meme here at IB since our earliest days some 6+ years ago. So it seemed appropriate to use that as the theme for this edition of the venerable Grand Rounds:  ……….

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It’s been very hot here in Arkansas lately.  Here is a great sheet put together and tweeted by the Arkansas Children’s Hosp (@archildrens): “This handy sheet on kids and heat illness is a good primer. Put it on the fridge or leave for a babysitter”

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A NY Times article by Andrew Revkin:  On Strokes and (Personal) Sustainability (photo credit)

I have a long list of backlogged posts but am taking a brief break from tracking global sustainability to check my personal operating systems.* A stroke will do that to you.

I summarized one moral of the story below in this Tweet:

Don’t stress your carotid arteries if you like your brain & the things it does for you.

There are other lessons here, one being that stroke is not restricted to what you might call “the usual suspects.” Here’s what happened. …..

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H/T to @EllenRichter for the link to the NY Times article by  @theresabrown:  When Nurses Make Mistakes 

This year, a Seattle nurse named Kim Hiatt committed suicide. Ms. Hiatt’s death came nearly seven months after she had given an unintended overdose to an infant heart patient, a medical error that was said to have contributed to the child’s death days later. ….

This story makes me feel sick — sick for that dead baby and her parents, and sick for Kim, who must have felt so alone with her pain.

It’s a pain that I, and every nurse and doctor, can relate to on some level. We’ve all made mistakes, most of them small and inconsequential to the patient’s health, but sometimes the mistakes are serious……….

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H/T to @hrana for the link to the Columbia Journalism Review article by Trudy Lieberman: Keeping an Eye on Patient Safety, Part III

Slowly the public is coming to realize that hospitals are not always safe places. …. The series is archived here.

I have just returned from England, where as a Fulbright Senior Specialist I attended a conference of European health journos and participated in meetings with health care academics and government officials. …. At the NHS Institute for Innovation and Improvement I learned about some pretty cool stuff that has found its way into UK hospitals and improved care for patients. ….

One practice that intrigued me was a way to cut down on errors made by nurses when they give patients their meds. Taylor told me that medication errors are a problem in the UK as they are in the US. Any reporter who has spent time examining hospital or nursing home inspection reports knows how frequent they are. Taylor explained that nurses administering medications too often are interrupted, causing them to lose focus and increasing the chance for a deadly mistake. To solve this problem nurses started wearing red pinafores over their uniforms when they gave patients their medicines. That signaled to others not to bother them. “It’s so simple,” said Taylor…….

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H/T to @sterileeye who tweeted the link to this “beautiful photo project about aging”:  Timeless Memories (photo credit)

A personal journey to find the oldest person in the city of Barcelona.  After weeks of taking photos I thought the search was over after meeting Matilde who is 101. However, the next day I visited another retirement home and after taking a couple of photos I was ready to leave when one of the care takers told me ¨There is a person you should meet before you go, her name is Ana Maria, she is 108 years old and will be 109 in July¨…

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An interesting Star Tribune article (H/T @garyschwitzer)  by Michael Nesset: Masterpieces, but only if unmedicated

We could diagnose and heal the human frailties found in literature. But why?

Not long ago, members of my American lit survey class decided that the disturbing behaviors of Herman Melville's Bartleby the Scrivener -- staring out the window at a blank brick wall, preferring not to do pretty much whatever he's asked to do -- were symptoms of clinical depression.

Paxil or Prozac, along with some good counseling, maybe group therapy to help with his peer interactions, was what the poor fellow needed. …..

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Justine Abbitt, BurdaStyle blog, has written a nice article: Madeleine Vionnet and the Bias Cut  (photo credit)

Madeleine Vionnet was a revolutionary designer for her time; not as universally well known as Coco Chanel but just as influential to the world of fashion. She is credited with creating the bias cut, a technique of cutting on the diagonal grain of the fabric which creates a sinuous and slightly clingy silhouette. The designer regularly had fabric custom made for her as wide as 180 inches to cut her dresses from. …..

If you want to read more on Madeleine Vionnet and her influence in fashion, Betty Kirke wrote a wonderfully comprehensive article for Threads magazine which you can check out here.