24 June 2008
I alluded recently to the fact that a lot of cardiology trials have word-based names, which makes it fun to listen to cardiologists talk, because they bandy these trial names about throughout any discussion they have. What I didn’t realize is how creative some of the trial names had become: I was becoming comfortable with HOPE, LIFE, ALLHAT, JNC-7, and a few others (for you prehospital types, OPALS), but I didn’t realize that people had gone as far as inventing acronyms to create words like CARPORT, HELVETICA, ESCOBAR, EXACTO, and OXCHECK.
We were making fun of named cardiology trials one day when I was on cardiology service. We were noting our attending’s compulsive hand-washing (not a bad thing, really) when I remarked that there was probably a named trial about handwashing. Without missing a beat, one of the other students said: “Yeah, that was the HANDJOB-2 trial.”
Filed under: Medical Humor
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23 June 2008
Since the famous Dr. Peter Safar did most of his work on resuscitation at the University of Pittsburgh, it was only fitting that Pitt’s center for resuscitation science should be named after him. When Virginia Commonwealth University chose to create a similar hotbed of research, someone apparently noticed that VCU could have a few letters added on to become VCURES.
Then, like many cardiology trials seem to do (think HOPE, LIFE, ALLHAT, CARP, many others), they tasked someone else with figuring out what words would come up with the desired acronym. The unfortunate result is the VCU Reanimation Engineering Shock Center; in my mind, “reanimation engineering” sounds vaguely Disneyesque, with perhaps a Victorian twist. While I very seriously doubt that the actual institute is situated in a castle on a hill with lightning flashing ominously in the background, populated with hunchbacks and people dressed like extras from The Mummy, that’s definitely the image that comes to my mind.
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22 June 2008
Via William Gibson’s blog, a treat that he describes as “as solid an icon of Progress as we’ve seen this year:” the cheeseburger in a can; I must admit I agree with this writer that this is “both the best and worst thing I’ve ever seen.”
Filed under: Sunday Silliness
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18 June 2008
A group out in Seattle did a nice study on the use of needle chest decompression within their patient population. It was not entirely surprising that they found the procedure rare (39 cases out of more than 20,000 searched through). It wasn’t even particularly surprising that they found four “unexpected survivors” (although they couldn’t track those four to hospital discharge, so who knows how well they actually did).
What I found most surprising is that they found one case of intracardiac placement of the needle. They don’t specify whether the medic putting the needle in really screwed up, or the patient had very unusual anatomy, and I would really love to know that answer.
Filed under: EMS Research
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16 June 2008
There have been several attempts to figure out what factors can help predict which students will pass the infamous National Registry exam; hopefully, programs somewhere are using this data to design their classes in such a way as to maximize student success. (Meanwhile, other programs will fail miserably. I’ve heard terrible things about what’s become of the program I attended, which wasn’t spectacular to begin with.)
While we’ve been assuming for many years that patient contact was indeed important for learning, we finally have numbers to show that high patient volumes are as good for test performance as they are for street performance. The number of hours spent, either in the field or in the hospital, had no correlation with passing rates. (I was one of the last classes under the old paramedic curriculum, and our criteria for hospital exposure was based on hours, not patients.)
Here is the graph from the study for total patient contacts, but the graph with “number of ALS runs” on the X-axis is even more impressive.
Filed under: EMS Research
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15 June 2008
Strangely, not only did the Mythbusters not build the world’s first jet-powered beer cooler, the guy who did so managed to pull it off years before that show’s first episode–and, strangely, doesn’t even seem to be an American (which I thought was a prerequisite for something this overwrought). How many dads wouldn’t want something this powerfully impractical?
Filed under: Sunday Silliness
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14 June 2008
I was in the ED today, helping admit Internal Medicine patients, when we came across a patient whose data was contradictory–we weren’t sure if she lived in a nursing home (and if so, which one) or an apartment; she had both an extended-care style medication record and a face sheet from adult day care claiming she lived in an apartment (and gave the complex name, which I couldn’t find online or in the phone book, rather than the address). Even the EMS tripsheet didn’t specify exactly what kind of facility she was at, and the “location of call” field didn’t match the adult day care address.
That was when I noticed a private ambulance company’s crew sitting in the EMS room.
Say what you want about crews that do a lot of interfacility runs–when it comes to knowing places and directions, nobody’s better. (And frankly, given some of the things I’ve seen in the field, I’m not sure the care is automatically any worse than among those providers who do primarily 911 calls.)
Filed under: EMS
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10 June 2008
Every so often, I’ll discover that one of my fellow third-year students is ambivalent about his or her future career in medicine. When asked if they would do it over again, a few will say yes, and many will admit a “no.”
I always ask these people the same question: “Did you come to med school straight from college?” If that answer is “no” as well, I ask what they did between undergraduate and med school.
I have yet to have anyone tell me they held some sort of healthcare job.
There it is, then, in stark relief: the difference between what outsiders think medicine is, and what medicine actually is. Working with patients for pay just seems to give a much more realistic view of medicine than shadowing your family doctor for a few days a month. The latter experience gives you a glimpse, but it doesn’t really burden you with any responsibility for others, and you can always not show up or reschedule if it’s inconvenient for you.
Filed under: Advice for aspiring doctors
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9 June 2008
This is an actual photo of American Legion post offering a Mexican buffet in rural Van Wert, OH. I got to spend last month there as part of our school’s program sending us to rural areas.
Filed under: Random Humor
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8 June 2008
It’s easy to think that this is a creation of Photoshop, but once upon a time, the tobacco industry enlisted the help of physicians to sell its products.
The original place I found this, an eBay listing of all places, is here, at least for a while. The title of this post is something that I am certain used to be a slogan for Swisher Sweets (an Ohio business originally, interestingly), but I can’t actually find any proof of this anywhere on the Internet.
Filed under: Medical Humor, Sunday Silliness
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