Clippings

Poetry returns to New York subway - Yahoo! News

The first offering, which appeared in subway cars Tuesday, is "Graduation," by Dorothea Tanning, an American poet who died this year at the age of 101 in New York:

"He told us, with the years, you will come

to love the world.

And we sat there with our souls in our laps,

and comforted them."

via news.yahoo.com

Just in time for National Poetry Month, too. I used to love the poems I saw on the Washington Metro.

Balls!

They always find new stuff for me to do at rehab. Today I used that large blue ball like a chair—standing up and sitting down, 10 reps, 2 sets. Later in the session I got surprised with a soft wedge I used for sets of squats. The bonus for today was letting my therapist talk me into shelling out-almost-for MLB AtBat for the season.

Doctors Distracted by iPads?

CultofMac calls attention to the adoption and use of iPads by doctors

Since then, Dr. Halamka has been raising awareness about the dangers of distracted doctors. His efforts included an interview with NPR that ran earlier this week. In that story, NPR’s David Greene also interviewed Dr. Henry Feldman (also from Beth Israel in Boston) who is a such a big proponent of mobile technology and iOS devices in medicine that his collegueas have dubbed him the iDoctor. He points out the advantage sof the iPad, including during patient consultations and notes that he can easily switch off distracting devices.

This story  raises the question of whether iPhones and iPads can be too distracting to doctors. A report that coincided with the NPR story from Kaiser Health News cites multiple studies about thedangers of distracted doctoring over the past two years including incidents that occurred during surgery. At the same time, a recent study from the University of Chicago illustrated that iPads made residents more efficient and effective.

I've seen concerns like this raised at least once before, but I've posted before about the advantages of iPads on medicine and my frustration when technology isn't applied to a patient's advantage. I think I like the common-sense solution CultofMac points out.

In the end, as with other distracted driving, the crux of the issue really isn’t about the mobile devices themselves, it’s about how doctors and other healthcare workers choose to use them. As Dr. Feldman points out, anyone can turn a distracting device off – or at least turn off notifications from potentially distracting apps. Setting policies around that idea is actually the approach that Beth Israel Medical Center has adopted to prevent such incidents.

Jay Parkinson, and lots of others I hope, are looking for ways to use technology to serve patients better and make the most of their time.