Simple step saves lives

My husband is the king of to-do lists. When we go camping, he makes a list. When we go grocery shopping, he makes a list. When we go on a trip, he makes a list. In fact, when we drove to the coast last year he made a list of all the towns we would encounter along the way with the number of miles from that town to the coast and how many miles we had driven from our hometown to that town. He said it was for the kids so that when they asked how long we had left he could tell them exactly; I know it was actually for his benefit though.

Well who knew that the little to-do list can be more than the anal-retentive husband's friend? It can actually save lives.

According to a new report, doctors worldwide who followed a simple list during surgery "cut the death rate from surgery almost in half and complications by more than a third in a large international study of how to avoid blatant operating room mistakes."

Okay, time to make lists mandatory in hospitals I think.

Some of the 19-item checklist used in the study included:

• Before the patient is given anesthesia, make sure the part of the body to be operated on is marked, and make sure everyone on the surgical team knows if the patient has an allergy.
• Before the surgeons cut, make sure everyone in the operating room knows one another and what their roles will be during the operation, and confirm that all the needed X-rays and scan images are in the room.
• After surgery, check that all the needles, sponges and instruments are accounted for.

Before the checklist was introduced, 1.5 percent of patients in a comparison group died within 30 days of surgery at the eight hospitals. Afterward, the rate dropped to 0.8 percent — a 47 percent decrease.

Good news, though, the Joint Commission is considering making more lists mandatory.

Whew.

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CDC launches CDC-TV

This is kind of interesting. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has launched CDC-TV which gives videos on a variety of health, safety and preparedness topics. The videos kind of remind me of what I was forced to watch in health class back in high school, but maybe eventually they'll get some interesting ones. Might be a good site to check once in a while.

There's an article here that describes the site.

MT Question and Answer video

A video of questions and answers you may have if you're thinking about MT.

Speech Recognition demonstration gone awry

Not sure when this video was recorded, but it's so funny. Says it was posted July 29, 2006, so it's pretty old. The funny part is, I don't think it works that much better now.

How are your balls today?

Not medical but still funny. Okay, it is for men's self-exam for the Sean Kimerling Testicular Cancer Foundation, so I guess technically it is medical, just not medically helpful for MTs, but we all need a laugh once in a while so enjoy.

Too bad they don't make a funny self-breast exam one, I'd add it right here alongside this one.



Hmm, after a quick YouTube search I found this video for breast self-exam. Funny, not as funny as the ball one above, but still pretty funny.

Another reason to be happy to work at home

You can watch porn in private. Ha ha ha ha.

I sure hope this doesn't catch on

A lot of people have the impression or fear that speech recognition will take over the world of MT, but seriously I don't think it will ever 100% take over. Maybe some day MTs will become obsolete, but I think it may be quite a long while. When I'm actually working and correcting the mess that speech recognition makes I get the feeling it may be a longgggg while before it is proficient enough to be left to it's own productivity.

What does scare me are the click and fill medical records that some doctors are using now. In this Walmart world of more for less it makes me a little nervous to think about doctors who would rather fill in a form with a few clicks of the mouse than dictate and have to pay someone to transcribe the reports.

I'm pretty sure that MT will never go away entirely, or if it does it will be long after I've decided my fingers hurt too much to do it anymore, at least that's what I hope for. I figure the job of medical transcription will just morph into the job of medical editor, that is as long as this (see video below) doesn't take over the world.

MT 101 - Text References

Another MT 101, this time about some of the books you might find helpful. You can also find the books I have on my own desk in my Amazon store on the right hand side of the screen.

Arthroscopic shoulder surgery video

I'm not sure if the patient is awake for this or if the doctor is just telling him/her on the video so that he/she can know what's going on once they wake up and watch the video.

How do you remove a nail from someone's head?

So how do you remove a nail from someone's head? How about by using a claw hammer. Don't try this at home kids.

In Shawnee, Kansas, George Chandler, 60, and his friend were working on a ladder when a nailgun hose became tangled and caused the gun to fire a nail deep into George's head.

George told his friend he didn't know where the nail had gone but felt stinging on his head. When his friend checked his head he could see that the 2.5 inch nail was driven deep into Chandler's head. Probably a good thing they didn't try and pull it out themselves. They called an ambulance and he was rushed to a hospital.

At the hospital nothing fancy was done, the doc drug out the trusty toolbox and used a common claw hammer to pull the nail out. Paging Tim Taylor.

I wonder how this will show up on poor George's hospital bill. Will they call it some special procedure or will they just bill him for the claw hammer and charge him the $5.99 you can buy one for at Home Depot.

{Whole report here}

Holy crap, it's an MT sweat shop

I love YouTube which probably explains why so many of my posts are videos rather than being creative myself, it's so much easier.

Anyway, there are a lot of videos on there about medical transcription in the Philippines and India which is annoying, but whatever. I must say though, I watched this video and was amazed at the MT sweat shop. It's not in English but really doesn't need to be.

A male MT speaks

Physican bloopers video.

The future of medical transcription

Pretty interesting video done by the AHDI. I love the horrible quality of the MTs dictation.

MT 101 - how to quiet the kids

Sheesh, wish I had thought of this, especially for my husband, he's actually far worse than my kids.

Preop videos

Here's another interesting video site. This one has preop videos that explain what your surgery will entail. Visit here

Example:

Interesting video website

Came across this physician video site while searching for some University of Washington docs this morning.

Pretty interesting site. It has videos that are mainly geared towards physicians, but still might be of interest to MTs.

MT 101 - the day off

From the ongoing saga of Chris the at-home MT. She has the day off and I know exactly how she feels being scared of the sun since I'm often feel trapped in the house too. It's the reason I love the snow, it makes me feel happy about being cooped up in the house. Sunny days are killers because I so want to be out in the sunshine.

Anyway, enjoy the video. If you like Chris' videos you can visit her YouTube page here

MT 101, video 5.5

MT 101, video 5

A new MT 101 video. Usually the days aren't quite this slow, but since it's the day after a holiday, sometimes that's the way it goes, at least that's how mine go.

MT 101

Came across these vids on YouTube (no, it's not me). Anyway, they're kind of interesting to see and hear from another MT (what can I say, I'm nosy). There are four of them so far, I will keep checking back for more.

If you like these videos you can subscribe to Cheer2u's channel on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/user/cheerz2u