scanman’s posterous

i wonder if it was an instrument or a body part that was dropped! o.O

I've seen a similar cartoon about the 5 second rule in the OT before. forget where. do any of my medtweep / medblogger buddies remember?

i'm following more eminent medical bloggers* & tweeps who have already posted/tweeted this, not just because this is funny and i agree with it, but mainly because i wanted it to reach a broader audience in india, a country where "alternative medicine" has been vying for primacy with allopathy.

Ó Briain on the commonly seen phenomenon of "expert opinion" by pseudoscientists on television panels…

"It happens all the time in the medical stuff on television. You have a doctor on… and the doctor will be talking something with all the benefit of research and evidence…Then they’ll turn away from the doctor. In the name of “balance,” and turn to some crack witch-doctor, homeopath, horse-shit peddler on the other side of the studio."

“You never see this “balance” in the really really hard stuff. You never see this balance in physics. … Ah, Mr. NASA guy, you’re talking about the space station, that’s very interesting. Now for the sake of “balance,” we must now turn to Barry, who believes the sky is a carpet painted by God.”

more memorable lines…

“Science knows it doesn’t know anything, otherwise it would stop … That doesn’t mean you can fill in the gaps with whatever fairytale most appeals to you”

“Homeopathy is water… You can’t overdose on us, but you can fucking drown in it”

“Herbal medicine has been around for thousands of years. Indeed it has, and we’ve tested it all and the stuff that works became “medicine.” And the rest of it is just a nice bowl of soup and some potpourri.”   

“A dietitian is to a nutritionist as a dentist is to a toothiologist”

if you are wondering how a comedian could be this wise, like i did, check this out - "He attended college in University College, Dublin, where he studied maths and theoretical physics."

*other medbloggers who have posted this…

• Dr Shock
• Laika
• Orac
• Shadowfax

In the book “Complications,” the surgeon Atul Gawande described the difficulties inherent in medicine being learned on the job: “The moral burden of practicing on people is always with us, but for the most part unspoken.” He explained that part of what blunts that moral burden is the supervision interns and residents get from more senior residents and attending physicians, who guide and instruct as needed. What Dr. Gawande did not say, and in my experience what also remains unspoken among nurses and doctors, is that floor nurses do some of that guiding and instructing, too. It’s an ad hoc, unsystematic part of medical education, but it can make a difference in patient care.

We all get emails, read journals and take classes, but still sometimes, in the hurly-burly of the modern hospital, crucial information can fall through individual mental cracks. At those times information gets passed on person to person: doctor to doctor, nurse to nurse, doctor to nurse, and sometimes even nurse to doctor.

Having doctors who are willing to educate nurses makes a difference, too. The fellow who took my suggestion about the fentanyl patch seriously enough to tell me it was a “terrible idea” cemented the information in my brain. When the issue came up again, I could raise it as a question for the intern, who then went to the pharmacy to complete his education.

There’s always more to learn, and no matter how hard any of us try, there’s rarely enough time for one person to learn it all.

another great essay by Nurse Brown.