Tag: research

Things I Learned This Semester: Three Down

nurse washuI’ve just completed the third semester of nursing school, and I’m back with some more little things I’ve learned, in no particular order.

On Maternity: The nurses in the maternity ward think they have the best job in the whole hospital! And there’s something to their opinion: the overwhelming majority of their patients are fundamentally well. No other part of the hospital can claim that.

On Level of Consciousness: It is not normal to sleep through a blood sugar check.

We All Need the Duhpartment of Research: Yes, sometimes we do need scientific proof of what seems to be perfectly obvious. That’s because sometimes the perfectly obvious gets proven right, and sometimes it gets proven wrong.

On the Passage of Time: It’s just as well I didn’t study back in the 80s or 90s. I might be one of those nurses who say things like “We’ve always done it this way!”

Sometimes Questions are Opportunities: When you can’t easily find that somebody has answered your question, there is room for you to run a study and find the answers for others.

On the NICU: When I arrived in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, I was prepared for a depressing day. Instead, I found the tiniest humans showing fierce fighting spirit and overcoming the odds every day, with help from extremely caring nurses… and of course a lot of equipment. It turned out to be a highly satisfying experience where I felt like I made a difference.

Preemies Need Coffee!: Well, not really. But a bit of caffeine does help them breathe better.

Magnetic: There is such a thing as a Magnet Hospital. Such hospitals are supposed to “promote excellence in nursing and healthcare.” Sounds very buzzword compliant, doesn’t it? However, it turns out that such hospitals do have lower mortality rates and brings in more revenue than it costs to attain. That last bit is why you’re likely to see more of them in the future.

And that just about wraps it up for my third semester of nursing school. Stay tuned for the final edition at the end of June!

 

The Woman in Shorties

I Tell You What: These days, writing anything cogent about torture is, well, you know.

Important Medical Research: Somebody found out why the doctor’s waiting room has mostly out-of-date magazines.

Does it seem like toys are more gender specific these days?: Well, you’re right.

Pope Francis has had a busy week: Brokering international deals, condemning slavery, and he’s still got to work on Christmas.

Just for the record: I am already freaking sick and tired of speculation about the 2016 Presidential Elections. The fact that these guys (and a couple of ladies) are already jockeying for position is disgusting and evidence that the system is terribly broken. Seriously, my calendar still says 2014; Iowa is still over a year away. I still think my simplification plan could work, particularly paired with my campaign finance reform plan…. Here’s some nice candidate trivia for you.

Above the Law: Uber finally condescended to obey a court order and stop working in Portland. Portland being Portland, they’re trying to find some way to work with Uber. In the meantime, some insight into what happened in Nevada, and their business structure. Yeah, maybe they should play by the rules. The big news is an alleged sexual assault by an Uber driver on an Uber rider in Boston. I am not going to link it as an “I told you so” because I think that the whole model has bigger problems than finding Bad Apples.

Wealth, Jobs, and the Economy: Ok, really more like inequity, bad trade deals, bad jobs deals, controlling the media you watch, and being watched.

And Finally: Boobs and Man Soap.

The Shorties in Black

In Plane Sight: I have a soft spot for Boeing. Here’s the latest version of the 747.

True: About the 2012 Elections.

On the Economy: global growth; more than 3 people for every available job in June despite the highest number of job openings in 4 years.

Math: “With regard to mathematics, the problem is not that we are teaching too much of it—but that we are teaching math ineffectively.  The expectations and architecture of the new Common Core State Standards in Mathematics can help to remedy this.  Faithful implementation of those standards will support districts that want to adopt curricula that unfurl mathematics in a rational, coherent program and that jettison approaches that are illogically sequenced and that overuse and abuse manipulatives.”

Perhaps there’s a logical explanation: Kids who eat good food turn out smarter than kids that eat junk food. Is it that good food contributes to intelligence, or that smarter parents feed their kids better stuff? I fail to see that this study accounted for the IQ, educational level, or socio-economic level of the parents.

People stand with the Nuns: and they appreciate it.

Today I learned: apparently, a psychic’s word is enough to get a warrant to search somebody’s property for a mass grave. Local governments are strapped for cash, but somehow they’ve got money for psychics? I do hope the locals find a way to get rid of the sheriff and judge that signed off on this.

The truth about corporate income tax: Many companies don’t pay that much.

Killer Kats: Turns out that outdoor cats kill a lot more than anybody knew. Funny thing about them being predators.

Funny, I have yet to kill anybody: “People without Facebook accounts are suspicious“? Seriously? I don’t have a Facebook account. There are millions of people who don’t. I’d say that relatively few of us are planning violence. Except maybe against idiots who think it means anything that I choose not to participate.

Shorties Night 3D

Ok, I’m all tabbed up so let’s get rolling!

Not sure what to think: Ron Paul wants to make sure kids aren’t subjected to mandatory mental health screenings. On one hand I don’t want to see kids needlessly medicated. On the other hand, I know people who really could have and should have been diagnosed with treatable mental health disorders as kids!

Side Effect: Women are suing cops for tricking them into long term relationships with their undercover alter-egos. Oops.

Never Thought I’d Link Glenn Greenwald: But he’s right about the detention provisions of the National Defense Authorization Act. It’s there in black and white, no matter how people spin it.

Cat Herding: How Occupy Portland outsmarted the cops (without necessarily planning it that way).

Good Grief: 10 things you didn’t know about “A Charlie Brown Christmas.”

I hope they didn’t spend a lot of money on that research: “The more a person drinks the more likely they are to have unprotected sex, according to research.”

This looks good: Dark Chocolate Macadamia Bark with Sea Salt.

Remember this when your Christmas bills arrive: Minimum payments will eat you alive.

Let’s see if that’s more than talk: Most Americans think we need a third party.

Turns out the Military is a way out of a bad neighborhood in more ways than one: Military schools smack around local schools, particularly when it comes to poor and minority kids. Now if only there weren’t the occupational hazard of being shot at!

You’ve seen my musings: Now here’s Anderson Cooper on traveling.

Turning Japanese: 68% of Japanese cars sold in the U.S. were made here in America, in 29 plants that employ 50,000 people. For reference, “American” car manufacturer GM has roughly 68,000 employees in the United States.

About Time!: 6 Fannie/Freddie execs charged with fraud. They might actually go to prison. There’s another big mortgage fraud suit here in Nevada.

Dim Bulb: One idiot thinks those curly light bulbs are so bad, she says she’s giving incandescent bulbs as Christmas presents. Don’t let her kids anywhere near her car with a carton of eggs.

How does that work?: As condition of a plea bargain, a man had to agree to give up a home he didn’t own and never did own.

And Finally: A boy chokes on a meatball in the school cafeteria. The sad part is that rather than make sure all the staff know CPR, they will probably take meatballs off the school menu.

Learning By Osmosis

It took University of Nevada researchers 20 years to figure out that kids who live in homes where they own books — as few as 20 books — have higher academic achievement. The shocking realization was apparently that it had little to do with the parents’ educational level: “Books in the homes of even the barely literate were found to further a child’s education by an average of 3.2 years. In fact, children of parents with less education had more to gain by having books in their homes.”

Well gee whiz.

You don’t suppose it could be that when parents own books, they are showing that reading is a valid activity and education is a valuable thing? Even if those books are all picture books, even if they are all religious books, even if they are all trashy romance novels, the precedent that they are worth having around influences what the kids will think is important by the time Kindergarten rolls around.

Sorry, sending a box of books to the families of “at risk” kids isn’t going to magically make their test scores better.

In closing: Tropical disease hits Sub-Tropical Florida (but no, global climate change is a hoax! All that snow last winter proved it!); the Social Security system is at risk (remember, it has never ever been a savings program so anybody who talks about “returns” on it is an idiot or a thief); just a few miscellaneous oil spill items; miscellaneous medical items; some choice financial “reform” items (Banking index didn’t crash? We’re still screwed then); unemployment and mortgage delinquency (gee, whoda thought those were related??); why we can’t take true libertarians seriously; and help out an animal shelter.

Twist the Facts

Yesterday morning, I wrote a post over at Age Against the Machine on British research showing that oral contraceptives reduce women’s risk of death from cancer and cardiovascular disease. Those happen to be the top two causes of death for American women, so it’s a big deal. And we aren’t talking about some teeny study, but over 46,000 women in a study that went on for 39 years. I think this is good news for the vast majority of women!

Yet I could not help but think that this news might not be welcomed by all. After all, there is a segment of our society that might think this encourages promiscuity. When I ran this past my partner, he thought that was just nuts.

But unfortunately, we live in a society where parents withhold vaccines that could someday save a woman’s life not because of safety concerns with the vaccine itself, but because they think she might think it’s ok to have sex (because good girls don’t like sex, good girls are never sexually assaulted, and good girls certainly never have cheating husbands). We live in a society where pharmacists who should know better are arbitrarily deciding not to dispense oral contraceptives because of “moral objections” and/or the mistaken belief that they can cause “abortion” of an embryo that has not implanted (never mind the other medical indications for oral contraceptives, and never mind that these pills prevent pregnancy rather than end it; arguably they prevent abortions by preventing unwanted pregnancy). We live in a society where the so-called-pro-life crowd thinks abortion causes breast cancer. We live in a society where some people value the lives of embryos more than the lives of full-grown adult women and their families.

So yes, I expect this study to be either ignored, mis-quoted, or mis-used by the Religious Right. They will focus on the small but unexplained increased risk of death by accident or violence — See? The Pill increases your risk of [violent] death! —  if they acknowledge the research at all.

Mere minutes after posting, I found this article at the Christian Science Monitor — hardly a “liberal media” source — with the headline “High divorce rates and teen pregnancy are worse in conservative states than liberal states.” It turns out that educated women and access to contraceptives lead to greater family stability and fewer unwed or teen mothers than “that old time religion.” Yet the Religious Right  has hamstrung both trends by getting the Feds to go along with “abstinence only” sex ed, which not only doesn’t work, fails to teach about contraceptives and disease control, and outright lies to children, but attempt to reinforce very outdated gender roles.

And then I read about how the Texas State Board of Education has decided to re-write history, decreeing what may and may not appear in textbooks. Sure, the Civil War was about “states rights” — specifically the right of states to say it’s ok to own other human beings! Sadly, Texas is a large enough textbook market that students around the country may be subjected to this ultra-conservative, highly Protestant, reinterpretation of reality.

You can say what you like about reality, but you can’t change it.

In Closing: 30! 30 bank failures this year, ah ha ha ha! (reference); fattiest fast foods; mortgage insurance providers say “sorry, we won’t cover this fraudulent claim“; obligatory health insurance reform items (notice I don’t call it health care reform, or worse yet HCR which always makes me think HRC instead) includes Go Grayson Go! Put them on the spot of either saying yes to a real public option, or going on the record as being against Medicare!; oh sure, let’s make it more complicated; what recovery?; Oh No! Obama’s Liberal base is “disengaged!” Could that be because they’ve kicked it in the butt at every opportunity?; most Americans think Wall Street needs better (i.e., more) regulation; for that matter, most Americans would like to see the Government make some progress on anything; don’t take the battery for granted; median wealth, $5; and Blog Against Theocracy weekend is coming.