Every doctor makes mistakes. But, says physician Brian Goldman, medicine’s culture of denial (and shame) keeps doctors from ever talking about those mistakes, or using them to learn and improve. Telling stories from his own long practice, he calls on doctors to start talking about being wrong.
Popularity: 1% [?]
Today, Your Life on USA Today is guest-hosting Grand Rounds, the best of the medical blogosphere. We asked medical bloggers to send us the finest posts from the past few months, and were thrilled to receive more than 100 entries. I, Dr. Val Jones, have prepared a summary of my favorites.
They will publish the Grand Rounds in 4 posts – one at 10am, one at 1pm, one at 5pm and one at 8pm tomorrow. There are 4 sections (to be released throughout the day). Please check back.
Popularity: 1% [?]
Research shows you can improve your self-representation through faceboook and other social media with several techniques:
Presenting yourself in a more positive way on Facebook is a way to manage other’s impressions of you. According to a recent publication on research with undergraduates to the impact of Facebook on users’ perceptions toward others, it found a relationship with duration of Facebook use and time spent on Facebook.
The multivariate analysis indicated that those who have used Facebook longer agreed more that others were happier, and agreed less that life is fair, and those spending more time on Facebook each week agreed more that others were happier and had better lives. Furthermore, those that included more people whom they did not personally know as their Facebook ‘‘friends’’ agreed more that others had better lives.
Proof of shallow contact distorting perception of others and a plea for face to face interaction. This research had also shown that the more time people spent going out with their friends, the less they agreed that others have better lives and are happier. What do you think?
Chou, H., & Edge, N. (2011). “They Are Happier and Having Better Lives than I Am”: The Impact of Using Facebook on Perceptions of Others’ Lives Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking DOI: 10.1089/cyber.2011.0324
Popularity: 1% [?]
Interesting video with an important message, the same goes for internet addiction….
a parallel between the industrialization of food, which at once allowed for ever-greater efficiency and reined in an obesity epidemic, and the industrialization of information, arguing that blaming the abundance of information itself is as absurd as blaming the abundance of food for obesity.
Thanks Brain Pickings
Popularity: 1% [?]
Impressive and explanatory graphics and videos
We have no ways to directly observe molecules and what they do — Drew Berry wants to change that. At TEDxSydney he shows his scientifically accurate (and entertaining!) animations that help researchers see unseeable processes within our own cells.
Popularity: 1% [?]
This thoughtful and enlightening ten minute programme, edited and narrated by consultant psychiatrist Dr Mark Salter, explores the causes and consequences of stigma against mental illness and challenges us to rethink our attitudes towards people with mental health problems. The style is a montage of still images with music and commentary. Powerful and thought-provoking.
Stigma because we don’t understand mental illness…..
Popularity: 1% [?]
The two approaches to patient safety are the person approach and the system approach. The personal approach is the most encountered and outdated kind of approach in medicine. In short, errors are seen as shortcomings of medical personnel such as forgetfulness, inattention, poor motivation negligence and recklessness. The response is mostly naming, blaming, and shaming. Errors are treated as moral issues assuming that bad things happen to bad people.
Seeking as far as possible to uncouple a person’s unsafe acts from any institutional responsibility is clearly in the interests of managers. It is also legally more convenient, at least in Britain.
It’s shortcoming are the lack of a reporting culture. In aviation about 90% of quality lapses are judged as blameless. Without reporting the errors, near misses and such due to the blaming culture most error traps are undiscovered. The personal approach also isolates errors from their system context. This causes errors to fall into recurrent patterns.
The personal approach is not the right practice in such complex organizations as most medical institutes are.
The system approach views humans as fallible and errors are to be expected especially in these complex organizations and professions.
Errors are seen as consequences rather than causes having their origins not so much in the perversity of human nature as in “upstream” systemic factors.
An important aspect of errors are failures in latent conditions. They result from decisions made on a different level such as the construction of procedures, the making of protocols. These decisions are usually made by designers, builders and top level management. These decisions can be at fault using the procedures, building and protocols.
To use another analogy: active failures are like mosquitoes. They can be swatted one by one, but they still keep coming. The best remedies are to create more effective defences and to drain the swamps in which they breed. The swamps, in this case, are the ever present latent conditions.
This is a summary of an important publication on patient safety. It goes into more detail about the differences between these two approaches especially with examples of other high reliability organizations such as nuclear aircraft carriers, air traffic control centers and nuclear power plants. The most important difference with medicine is the collective preoccupation with the possibility of failure.
Instead of isolating failures, they generalise them. Instead of making local repairs, they look for system reforms.
A lot of work to be done before patient safety is fully implemented in medicine.
Reason, J. (2000). Human error: models and management BMJ, 320 (7237), 768-770 DOI: 10.1136/bmj.320.7237.768
Popularity: 2% [?]
This was the coolest thing on display at the recent Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, from Geekologie
It’s a smart window from Samsung — basically a one-way window (people on the other side can’t see in) with a full-pane electronic touchscreen display where you can display info, roam the internet, watch adult films, etc., etc. It can even turn into virtual blinds!!!!!1 Just watch the video. The future, ladies and gentlemen — it’s really almost here!
Popularity: 1% [?]
What’s harder than Living Biblically? Try following every bit of the latest health advice. A.J. Jacobs, author and human guinea pig, shares the results of his latest yearlong quest to become “the healthiest man alive.”
Funny video on healthy living, putting it in some perspective……..
Popularity: 2% [?]
Read an interesting article about this subject. Interesting not in the sense of costs or efficacy but mostly on how they did it. It’s done for an epidemiological study on a mother child cohort. They wanted to include pregnant women for their study with facebook beside other forms of recruitment such as: active collaboration with health personnel involved in pregnancy and childbirth who distribute leaflets or introduce the study to pregnant women, a website, links to the website on other websites dedicated to pregnant women and participation in online pregnancy related forums.
What they did with facebook was creating a weekly updated facebook page and an advertising campaign on facebook. The advertisement was displayed on personal facebook pages of women aged 18 to 45 with an IP address in Italy whom were selected by 2 keywords pregnancy and delivery )in Italian). The page got a lot of fans (167-450) and during the campaign of 5 weeks 8 participants came to the study through facebook.
Compared to their other forms of recruitment it was not cheap but than again more spin off from the facebook page could not be measured. Talking money, the advertisement costs were 200 euros.
Richiardi, L., Pivetta, E., & Merletti, F. (2012). Recruiting Study Participants Through Facebook Epidemiology, 23 (1) DOI: 10.1097/EDE.0b013e31823b5ee4
Popularity: 3% [?]
