Bridget Duffy at Gel 2008 from Gel Conference on Vimeo. Creating a good patient experience is the focus and mandate of the Chief Experience Officer at the Cleveland Clinic, one of the world's top-rated medical facilities. In this talk, Bridget Duffy shows the theory and practice of patient-centered care, including an on-stage demo of an innovative patient gown. Gel Health will explore the patient experience in a variety of organizations and companies. They're having a conference Gel Health. It will be held on Thursday and Friday, October 22 and 23, 2009 at Scandinavia House, Park Avenue and 38th Street in Manhattan, New .....read more »

Surveys indicate a growth of nearly 9 million Americans creating blogs between 2004 and 2005, a shift from 1.1 million to 10 million bloggers. In 2006, 39% of all U.S. Internet users were accessing blogs. More than 70% of blogs were classified as personal journals, recording the individuals’ daily life events, thoughts, and feelings. Bloggers present accurate portrayals of themselves in their blogs. Studies indicate that young adults and adolescents are more likely than other age groups to create blogs. Men are somewhat more likely than women to create blogs. Age and sex are said to have little bearing on the content of blogs. Men create .....read more »

MEDLIB’s ’spooktacular’ round 1.7 is up at Alisha764’s Blog: A solo medical librarian’s ramblings. A blog carnival of “excellent posts in the field of medical librarianship.” Amongst excellent topics also the long awaited PubMed redesign was previewed this week. Another highly anticipated preview was Google Wave. You could argue both previews have brought to light issues with the new products; however, each holds promise for changing the medical library field. The discussion about H1N1 flu and vaccination is another topic leading to several excellent posts. Check it out at Alisha764’s Blog: A solo medical librarian’s ramblingsRelated posts: MedLib’s Round First Edition MedLib’s .....read more »

Scientific presentations for persuading smaller audiences (details, interaction, no distractions) requires a Conference Room style presentation. Conference Room style presentations tend to contain lots of details on each slide, the slides are mostly printed, not projected, and every slide must pass the squint test. The squint test is ensuring that your slide or hand out reinforces its main message. This can result in overcrowded but useful slides. So sciencetific presentations make mostly use of slideuments or documents, hand outs. This video with Garr Reynolds form Presentation Zen and Nancy Duarte from slide:ology demonstrates the differences between ballroom presentations and scientific presentations. .....read more »

Not only in the medical academic workforce are women underrepresented this also counts for science in general. Women earned 31.3% of chemistry PhD degrees between 1993 and 2003 but in 2002 were hired for only 21.5% of assistant professorships. Similar disparities exist for new faculty appointments in physics, engineering, and mathematics. As far as mathematics are concerned women continue to lag behind on math related careers. This gender gap has been tried to explain from a biological point of view but this ingrained prejudice has never been proven. Results from a wide range of studies shows contradictory results and remains inconclusive. From .....read more »

[poll id="2"] E-mail is an inexpensive, efficient and fast way of communication. It can enhance communication between departments and communication across continents. Nevertheless a lot of posts and especially blogs write about email overload: Lifehacker.com, Email Overloaded, Harvard Business School. They advice you to check your email at certain time points in the day, usually twice a day somewhere around 11 a.m and 4 pm. The scientific background for this solution to these loathsome distractions is based on Reducing the Effect of Email Interruptions on Employees. In this research 15 people of the Danwood company in the UK were monitored over 28 .....read more »

arttubePlayer({ containerId:'arttube-kvd', sd:'mp4:Poly_VanDongen_kl_EN_16-9.m4v', hd:'mp4:Poly_VanDongen_gr_EN_16-9.m4v', bg:'/media/uploads/video_groot/SS_Poly_VanDongen.jpg', width:520, height:310 }) Opening exhibition Kees van Dongen in 1967 Moving images of artists from the generation of painter Kees van Dongen (1877-1968) are rare. This fragment from the Polygoon Journaal [Newsreel] contains images of Van Dongen during the opening of an exhibition in 1937. He speaks, as he describes it himself, with a whisky voice, thanks to an excessive use of Dutch coffee. This Polygoon Journaal is about the opening of a retrospective exhibition of Kees van Dongen in Boijmans Van Beuningen Museum in 1967. Van Dongen was a familiar face in the museum. Works by .....read more »

All that glitters may at least be cold. This 40x magnification is of a small snowflake, taken by Yanping Wang at the Beijing Planetarium in China using reflected and transmitted light. Even though it seems no two are alike, snowflakes are indeed symmetrical. From Petite Pictures: The 20 Microscopic Photo Competition Prizewinners at Scientific American, go see the other 19 pictures, amazingRelated posts: More Photo Fun More Photo Fun Photo Fun ..read more »

Sometimes I use a hand written letter or card to write to someone. This usually concerns live events such as the birth of a child or the loss of a loved one, the death of a patient or spouse. To me a hand written letter or card seems more personal. Patients increasingly use email to contact me. In the case of requests for medication or a change of appointment I readily answer their questions and requests. Sometimes patients write long emails with questions related to the treatment or advise on difficult issues. I usually respond by asking them if they would .....read more »

From recent research based on secondary analysis of data obtained from telephone interviews from a sample of 1003 email users the answer is not conclusive. e-mail supports work performance, but at the same time contributes to negative effects that in the long run may affect motivation and satisfaction In this research in which they also looked at the effect of e-mail on work performance, work related e-mails received and sent are positively related to work performance, indicating that e-mail communication in organizations carries important information that is critical for the completion of jobs. Personal e-mails neither contributes nor hampers work performance. Nevertheless, .....read more »