If you come to the ER and you wait a long time (1-10+ hours) and you are wondering if we’re sorry, we are. Also none of the people one might complain to, from the registration clerk, the tech taking vital signs, the nurses, the docs or APPs, can solve the delay… …or are responsible for it. In fact, they are doing as much as they can in the setting of what the hospital has decided are appropriate spaces, staffed services, rooms, patient:staff ratios etc.

There are a few letters going around in support of Oregon HB 2002, which includes protections of healthcare providers from extreme legislation criminalizing abortion and gender-affirming care. From what I've seen, the signers are overwhelmingly women. I acknowledge that these letters originated from ob/gyn and nursing, fields that are mostly women. However, they have had ample time to disseminate across healthcare fields.

“Those with disabilities are used to molding their lives around the way the cities are built. Here in Laredo, we decided to see what would happen if we mold our city to better meet the needs of those with disabilities.” medpagetoday.com/opinion/second… Laredo found that the overall quality of services for people with autism was rated only 2.24 out of 5 — and is doing something about it. #AutismAwareness

“In Oregon, inpatient pediatric psychiatric care options are incredibly limited: Only two hospitals provide the highest level of care and offer approximately 40 beds. These programs are often at capacity…” oregoncapitalchronicle.com/2023/04/05/ore… “…resulting in youth boarding in the ED for days or weeks. If a youth has co-occurring mental health and substance use problems, the options dwindle even more. For youth and families, having to wait in an ED for days to weeks to access needed care is often crushing…”

Outpatient mental health care is in short supply everywhere, and nationwide, this spills over into a lot of crisis care in the emergency department. Our new study out in @Health_Affairs: healthaffairs.org/doi/10.1377/hl… Study highlights in @EurekAlertAAAS: eurekalert.org/news-releases/…

Amazing, detailed dive into excess deaths in the US and what might explain them, by @dwallacewells

nytimes.com/2023/02/02/opi… It’s quite surprising to see a piece like this in a sea of “oh those Bad Numbers must be overcounting, good day.” I had a moment over the scientific curiosity and depth here.

Health systems are overtaxed. Waits to be seen are long. Health problems pile up. Some times they come to crisis. ERs crowded with complex and delayed care. Needs are high. Follow up with any specialists takes months. So many people are too sick to be home or to carry on without solutions, yet too well for our few hospital beds. It’s beyond frustrating to come to an ER out of sheer desperation and walk away without answers or solutions.

An automated external defibrillator (AED) like the one used on Damar Hamlin is incredibly easy to use.

As an ER doc I compulsively look for an AED whenever I enter a public space.

Here’s a free app with crowdsourced info on publicly accessible AEDs:

pulsepoint.org/pulsepoint-aed When you open it, it auto searches in your area for AEDs. Sample map of AEDs in downtown Portland:

There's this guy at the gym I absolutely love. He does a thousand crunches and talks on the phone very loudly straight through. I know he does a thousand because he has declared it to the person on the other end of the line. Otherwise, the conversation is about his ex, who has done many outrageous things.

I made the mistake of listening to part of Dr. Drew's Twitter spaces commentary on commotio cordis and so this thread is a response to the points made there before I had to leave out of sheer frustration. 1. "This never happens during football. You need the impact of something like a baseball." It has been documented to happen during football and a wide range of sports, even those without projectiles.

Was thinking about this so much yesterday. Cardiac arrest during sports can happen after random, accidental incidents (eg baseball to chest) or an underlying cardiac condition expressing itself during exertion w little relationship to a contact that happened immediately before.

https://twitter.com/coleyharvey/status/1610645129307762689

There is a famous series of photographs showing one young man striking another in the chest during martial arts. The one struck drops to his knees — commotio cordis. How horrible the first athlete must have felt.

"Post-Roe emergency medicine: Policy, clinical, training, and individual implications for emergency clinicians," in @AcademicEmerMed: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/ftr/10.111… [publishers are working on make this open access] Timely discussion by @m_e_s_k @pagrawalmd Giovanni Rodriguez, @Amyjwal Jennifer Love, Derek Monette, @DrMichelleLin Richelle Cooper, @tmadsenem @vdobiesz

My family is now choosing between showing up on time at church, where my son is Joseph in the Christmas pageant, and watching this game in real time. Please send prayers. For those of you who don’t follow Christianity as closely as you are following this game, understand that Joseph is not even the Christmas child’s biological father.

So this kind of "ching chong"ing type of Asian racism has a place on stage? Disturbing, @PurdueNorthwest -- to be clear, not just what the speaker said, but all those around him who seemed to enjoy it and find nothing amiss.

https://twitter.com/RichLeePhD/status/1602744146913288192

I’m used to people dismissing casual /subtle anti-Asian racism, but this I presume meets the minimum threshold for notice and concern.

"Short-term mask requirements, based on clear metrics and targets, & with the provision of high-quality masks to families, can make a big difference. That will keep kids and staff in school and parents at work."
Our op-ed in @TIME on a new @NEJM study
time.com/6231516/univer… 1/3 The @NEJM article is here: nejm.org/doi/full/10.10… It examines a "natural experiment" of Boston schools removing masking requirements at different times (or not at all) early in 2022 to study the impact of these requirements on Covid cases among students and teachers

“Without Filipino nurses, the U.S. health care system would have been paralyzed.” Wonderful piece on how Filipino nurses bore the brunt of COVID, and the history of American colonialism + exploitation that put them in the toughest jobs time.com/6051754/histor… by @PaulinaCachero “Since the 1960s, the U.S. medical system has had a ‘historical pattern’ of turning to Filipino nurses to work at understaffed hospitals, particularly during health crises, says Ceniza Choy.”

Dear Women on Twitter:

Please check your Lists.

A Thread Lists are a way for bad players to do efficient, coordinated harassment. Particularly if you notice an uptick in the volume of trolling, check your lists as one way of interrupting the process.