Think using checklists is a low hanging fruit type of change that can be instituted in almost all hospitals in our country, given the sheer number of nursing students who are having their ojt’s its actually quite sad that such simple techniques is not as widespread as it can be.

In my field of surgery, there are some unforgivable errors. Although some of us may disagree on the exact identity of some of them, most surgeons would agree on a handful of them. Certainly one of them would be to amputate the wrong limb or remove the wrong organ. This happens far more often than any of us would like to admit. Over the last couple of decades, checklists meant to prevent such occurrences have risen to the fore and become standard practice at most hopsitals. We surgeons ridicule them (myself included, at least until recently), but they work, as an increasing amount of scientific and clinical literature is showing. Another unforgivable error is to leave a sponge or surgical instrument behind during an uncomplicated elective case. I qualify that because it’s understandable that occasionally a sponge will be left behind in a trauma case or when an elective case goes bad. In both cases, things get crazy, and everyone is frantically trying to save the patient. But in the elective case, leaving a sponge or surgical instrument behind should in essence never happen. The tedious ritual of counting the sponges, needles, and instruments before and after the case is highly effective in preventing it–when surgeons listen to the nurse telling them that the counts aren’t correct. The third unforgivable error is to operate on the wrong patient, which has occasionally happened in the past. Again, checklists make such a spectacular mistake much less likely. At my own hospital, for instance, the nurses are required to ask each patient who he or she is, what operation she is having, who the surgeon is, and, if it’s appropriate for the operation, which side is being operated on. The surgeon is required to mark the body part and the side with his or her initials. Sure it sounds silly and pointless, but it’s clear that such systems reduce wrong site surgery markedly.

via Unforgivable medical errors : Respectful Insolence.

Haiti allows the the donor countries to try different things like the the idea below.  Think of Haiti as a clean slate albeit with all the poverty and death. To waste this opportunity to create a more efficient and effective educational program, better systems of government etc. The converse is true this maybe an opportunity for criminals to finally control a whole country not just most of its institutions.

There is more here. I am less sure about this one, largely for reasons of maintenance:

Instead of waiting for someone to build an expensive, centralized power grid, donors could think more flexibly on a smaller scale, using solar panels and LEDs to provide electricity and light cheaply, portably and quickly.

via Marginal Revolution: Another idea for Haiti.

Go to the linked post to get to the report!!!

Sex…in….spaaaaaaaaaace

Category: Friday Weird Science

Posted on: January 28, 2010 12:30 PM, by Scicurious

Happy Thursday Weird Science.

Apparently NASA astronauts have undergone secret testing (very secret, I can't get the report, too bad, too) for the examination of sex in space! This could be important for the survival of people in 0G for long periods of time, gotta propagate the species somehow. And Sci thinks it's long past time, I mean, what have all the astronauts been DOING in space all this time?! Playing cards (ok, maybe)?!

You can see the report here. But sadly, it doesn't say WHAT the 10 top positions turned out to be, except that missionary was simply “not possible”.

via Sex…in….spaaaaaaaaaace : Neurotopia.

Updates on dotPH vs. Versomina

By Rico, 9:09 am Thu Jan 28 2010 – Announcements, Featured – 2 Opinions

dotph-logoHere’s an update written by a friend of mine working for dotPH. It details what’s happened so far with the company’s legal battle against Versomina, and made me reconsider my stance on blogging and libel.

Everyone is a champion of the sacred right to free speech – but how many of these well-meaning souls will still do it when faced with a harrowing, expensive lawsuit? Not to mention the fact that they will get a grand total of nothing for the effort?

Very few, I imagine. dotPH is one of them. It fought for the right to free speech – it is still fighting for somebody else’s right to free speech against a company that will sue a pair of shoes if it knew that it could get something out of the case.

Forgot it? Let me jog your memory. An anonymous person set up a blog called Alimuom using dotPH’s blogging platform, I.ph. The blogger aired his grievances against a company, Versomina, claiming that it abused its employees and sued them if they tried to leave. Joel Aquino (lawsuit-happy owner of Versomina, also charged with a criminal case by the NBI) got wind of this and asked dotPH to take down the blog. Valuing the inherent right to free speech, Joel Disini (dotPH CEO) refused.

via Updates on dotPH vs. Versomina.

I always wondered why Howard Zinn was considered a radical. (He called himself a radical.) He was an unbelievably decent man who felt obliged to challenge injustice and unfairness wherever he found it. What was so radical about believing that workers should get a fair shake on the job, that corporations have too much power over our lives and much too much influence with the government, that wars are so murderously destructive that alternatives to warfare should be found, that blacks and other racial and ethnic minorities should have the same rights as whites, that the interests of powerful political leaders and corporate elites are not the same as those of ordinary people who are struggling from week to week to make ends meet?

…..

Mr. Zinn was in Santa Monica this week, resting up after a grueling year of work and travel, when he suffered a heart attack and died on Wednesday. He was a treasure and an inspiration. That he was considered radical says way more about this society than it does about him.

via Howard Zinn…not in our high schools either | Angry Bear.

Howard Zinn wrote this to Henry Giroux a few days before his death, hope you can read the whole write up of henry about Howard Zinn. I’ve always been a fairly level headed chap, I caution against over reaction, and trying to appear too radical. I’m slowly coming to the conclusion that I’ve been wrong in this stance. Once again read the linked article.

“Henry, we are in a situation where mild rebuke, even critiques we consider ‘radical’ are not sufficient. (Frederick Douglass’ speech on the Fourth of July in 1852, thunderously angry, comes close to what is needed). Raising the temperature of our language, our indignation, is what you are doing and what is needed. I recall that Sartre, close to death, was asked: ‘What do you regret?’ He answered: ‘I wasn’t radical enough.’”

via Howard Zinn…not in our high schools either | Angry Bear.

Ewan. I’d like to do the legwork on this problem but I don’t know where to get the data for it. Let’s just say that I’m feeling that the developments going in and around the Metro (GMA, Metro Cebu, Metro Davao, Some Parts of Luzon) are the beginnings of a housing bubble Japan style, only we don’t have a government flush with cash and a household savings of more than 3 Trillion dollars. I pray I’m wrong because this may not be good.

As the dual forces of technology and globalization progressed over the past decade, I suspect it became pretty clear to most average workers that holding a job at the prevailing wage offered little hope for getting ahead. Recognition of that reality certainly played an important role in the politics that led to the creation of subprime lending programs. You can make a pretty strong case that the housing bubble was caused not simply by low interest rates but by widespread recognition that investing in a home represented perhaps the only viable hope for a typical American family to achieve any measure of prosperity.

via An Alternate Theory about the Root Cause of the Current Economic Crisis | Angry Bear.

Dedicated to great/good/caring teachers everywhere!!! (Note the qualification)

“At least you know there won’t be any goddam ulterior motives in this madhouse,” Zooey tells Franny. “Whatever we are, we’re not fishy, buddy.” “Close on the heels of kindness, originality is one of the most thrilling things in the world, also the most rare!” Seymour writes in “Hapworth.” What is thrilling about that sentence is, of course, the order in which kindness and originality are put. And what makes reading Salinger such a consistently bracing experience is our sense of always being in the presence of something that—whatever it is—isn’t fishy.

via Justice to J.D. Salinger – The New York Review of Books.