I know this short/music video by Lovett was criticized by some for being essentially plotless and shallow, but for me anyway, creating a backstory to the nth detail indicates the creator thinks the audience has no imagination: trust me, there are plenty of hints and unanswered questions — and ambiguity
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Those Emergency Blues: Out of Sorts
Don’t know if it’s the crazy weather, but just feeling a little whacked today. Got up this morning, all burstin’ to write an epic post about the RNAO’s new best practice guidelines on restraints, wrote about three paragraphs and went bleh. Didn’t care as much as I thought. So maybe
Continue readingThose Emergency Blues: Nursing Makes Nurses Less Empathetic
Irony alert! The best way to decrease empathy in nurses, apparently, is to actually practice nursing. A new study of nursing students found that as students gained more clinical exposure, they demonstrated a much greater decline in empathy scores over the year than did those with limited clinical experience during
Continue readingThose Emergency Blues: Observations and Assessments
NOTIONS TO SMALL FOR A BLOG POST, ALL IN ONE PLACE, A.K.A. THE PERIODIC LINK DUMP. Further to my post “Sleepy Sleepy Nurse”: Sleep or Die. Really. My job: Registered Nurse. We don’t know as much about infection control as we think we do. “Less than a quarter of the Clostridium difficile cases
Continue readingThose Emergency Blues: The Guy in the Next Bed
Code Blue on the floor: a lot like a Code Blue in the Emergency Department, except we have to run to the elevators, take a ponderously slow ride up to whatever floor they’re doing compressions, and then run some more down some endlessly long corridors till we find a room
Continue readingThose Emergency Blues: Feelings of Confusion and Disorientation
A unique ad campaign in Israeli movie theatres drew attention to Alzheimer’s Awareness Week. Watching people freak out — over nothing, really — is pretty funny too. [Via Osocio] Filed under: Shock and Awe Advertising Tagged: advertising, Advertising campaign
Continue readingThose Emergency Blues: Favourite Poems XLIX
Eight haiku by Matsuo Bashō, translated by R. K. Blyth. Wikipedia tells us the Shinto priesthood deified Basho in 1793, a sort of minor god of poetry, and for a time critical evaluation of his work was literally considered blasphemous. 1 Moonlight slants through The vast bamboo grove: A cuckoo cries 2 Ah, summer
Continue readingThose Emergency Blues: Portraits of Nurses at War
A small selection of photographs from the National Archives of Canada. Nurses have served with the Canadian military since Northwest Rebellion in 1885 and small contingents were sent to the South African War — the Boer War — at the turn of the last century. Nurses became an official part of
Continue readingThose Emergency Blues: Sleepy Sleepy Nurse
MY EMERGENCY DEPARTMENT COLLEAGUES are a youngish group as a whole, compared to me, that is, and most of them have school-aged children. A subset of this group of have traded shifts so they’re substantially working a straight night shift line,* in order to attend to family obligations. Almost all
Continue readingThose Emergency Blues: Those Emergency Blahs
I’ve worked as an Emergency Department nurse for something like thirteen years now, and at my present position more or less for ten years. It’s probably safe to say I’ve seen just about everything from the incredible tragic to the incredible funny, the good, the bizarre and the ugly. As
Continue readingThose Emergency Blues: Taking Love Where We Can Get It
A very sweet little tweet. Filed under: Uncategorized
Continue readingThose Emergency Blues: Why Physicians Should Care about Amanda Trujillo
[This post appeared last week, in slightly modified form, at KevinMd.com. Nice to see it’s generating a huge response and vigorous debate there. TE.] For the past month, the case of Amanda Trujillo has resonated deeply among nurses, triggering an avalanche of postings on Facebook, Twitter and in the nursing blogosphere.
Continue readingThose Emergency Blues: Insert Snark Here
What this patient did not have Mr. CD, 88, took a little tumble at the nursing home when he slipped on a loose rug (or something, the details are a little vague here), obtained for his trouble a scalp laceration the length of Q-tip on his temple, bled like a
Continue readingThose Emergency Blues: Your Man Reminder
Anti-pink ribbon breast cancer awareness from Rethink Breast Cancer. The charity bills itself as the “first-ever, Canadian breast cancer charity to bring bold, relevant awareness to the under-40 crowd; foster a new generation of young and influential breast cancer supporters; infuse sass and style into the cause; and, most importantly, respond
Continue readingThose Emergency Blues: In Which TorontoEmerg is Famous
OK, not really famous, but published on Kevin Pho’s site, KevinMD.com. Check it out, and Retweet/Like/comment as you will — it’s all in a good cause. I’ll repost it here sometime next week. I am this morning getting an uptick in visitors from KevinMD.com. Welcome, and free to poke around.
Continue readingThose Emergency Blues: Friday Night Flicks: Bottle
Lovely and not quite what you expect. [Couch mode here.] Filed under: Friday Night Flicks Tagged: short films
Continue readingThose Emergency Blues: TV Series Hot
Gob-smacklingly stupid or hip advertising? I’m leaning towards the former. Via CBC: A Stockholm hospital that published an online ad looking to fill a summer position with a nurse who is “TV-series hot” says it was “written to catch people’s attention.” “We want people to be curious and have a
Continue readingThose Emergency Blues: Just Lie Back and Think of Florence — Or Not
Nurse K, possibly the doyenne of nurse bloggers, gives her two cents on Amanda Trujillo. Her advice is to surrender: Yes, I’m going to say it: Forget advocating. Be humble. Be honest and consistent. Go through the process. Listen to your attorney. Your most important asset as a terminated person is an
Continue readingThose Emergency Blues: Doctors Are From Mars, Nurses Are From — Oh, To Hell With It
News flash! From Fierce Medical News, here’s the shocking headline: Docs, nurses miscommunicate on respect, job role When you guys pick yourselves off the floor from laughing, here’s the money quote: In particular, the survey found differing views of how doctors treat nurses. According to 42 percent of nurse leaders,
Continue readingThose Emergency Blues: “What’s Wrong With Our Bodies, Anyway?”
Um, nothing. Just that runway models — and expectations — are getting skinnier. From Plus Model Magazine. On the left is a “straight-size” runway model, on the right, “plus” size model Katya Zharkova (size 12-14). A stunning contrast between the near-anorexic “norm” and healthy reality, wouldn’t you say? According to the
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