A Simple Solution to Improve Your Lifestyle

Along with food and shelter, sleep is quickly becoming widely recognized as one of the most crucial commodities, a necessity rather than a luxury. Forced sleep deprivation has been used for decades in the interrogation of prisoners, sparking debates over whether the technique qualifies as torture or not. Navy SEAL trainees must endure, as part of their infamous Hell Week, days of little to no sleep, putting their bodies and minds under extreme duress. And approximately four ordinary people like you and me are fatally injured in vehicular accidents related to tired drivers falling asleep at the wheel or unable to avoid a crash due to slowed reflexes and focusing skills.

Warning Sign in Utah

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration asserts that drowsy driving is a leading cause of accidents, injuries, and deaths, accounting for at least 100,000 crashes, 40,000 injuries, and 1,550 deaths yearly; they also proclaim these numbers should realistically be higher due to the underreporting of fatigue as a cause of an accident. [1] Drowsy driving accidents characteristically involve a single car with a lone driver and occur during the late night, early morning, or mid-afternoon hours, when exhaustion is most likely to set in. The three population groups who are considered to be at the highest risk of fatigue-related accidents are teenagers and young adults, night-shift workers and those with long or irregular hours, and people of all ages suffering from untreated sleep disorders, namely sleep apnea and narcolepsy.[2]

Do I Need an EMR or EHR System?

It seems almost futuristic: a patient arrives at the hospital and checks in using an airport-style kiosk. His full medical record, including multiple diagnostic test results and doctors’ notes, is accessible on his bedside screen and on connected computers throughout the hospital. A nurse administers medication and checks his vital signs; the information is automatically included in his file and conveyed to all involved medical personnel. When his hospital stay concludes, all information regarding his updated history is relayed to his doctors with a few keystrokes – no printing, faxing, or mailing necessary – where it will be incorporated into his chart and fully updated before the next time he visits the office. Seems too good to be true? It may be…

CardioPerfect Workstation

The introduction of electronic health record (EHR) and electronic medical record (EMR) systems into our healthcare structure has been met with mixed reviews. While the use of EHR and EMR systems are becoming widespread in private practices, clinics, hospitals, and nursing facilities, some users express dissatisfaction with their systems for various reasons, such as inefficiency, technological dependency, and high costs. Others appreciate the EHR/EMR’s performance as it delivers the results they expect – improved workflow, decreased human error, and better staff communication and patient tracking. Read on for a comprehensive review of electronic medical and health record systems to help you decide whether implementing an EHR/EMR would help or hinder your facility.

Road Rash

For avid cyclers and skaters, there is nothing that can compare to the adrenaline rush, to the wind in their hair and faces, to the thrill of the sport… or to the pain and consequences of an untimely injury. While cycling is an excellent, low-cost and low-impact fitness activity, it carries plenty of risks for unpleasant mishaps. One of the most commonly occurring injuries is the shallow but painful skin abrasion referred to in the cycling world as “road rash.”

Road Rash & Scarring

When a cyclist or skater falls off of his or her bike, board, or skates, he or she makes damaging and often prolonged contact with the road as he or she lands on the ground and/or slides due to continuing momentum. While most abrasions are not deep or serious, they often remove several layers of skin and can be inordinately painful without excessive bleeding. If road rash is not treated promptly and properly, however, the seemingly harmless scrape can lead to more acute conditions.

Outfitting Your New Office (Part III)

Lab Coat

Your office is nearly ready to open! The waiting room, front desk, offices, exam rooms, and lab are furnished and equipped with diagnostic and other necessary tools. The last category of materials needed to get the office running is medical supplies – disposables, lab supplies, cleaning agents, and apparel.

Outfitting Your New Office (Part II)

Autoclave

Last week we guided you through the crucial challenge of furnishing an office. However tastefully designed and furnished, though, the office is worthless without the medical gear and provisions that are essential to the main purpose of the office: to diagnose and treat medical conditions. Now that your office is set up with cabinetry, filing systems, desks, and other fittings, you can begin filling it with the supplies and equipment required to get it running.

Outfitting Your New Office (Part I)

Exam Table

Congratulations! You’ve made the career-altering decision to open your own practice. With this significant change comes countless new responsibilities; one of the most pressing concerns is the purchase or lease of an office and the furnishing and setup of said office for optimal workflow, patient comfort, and staff efficiency. With a dizzying array of options in every area of office arrangement and organization – furniture! equipment! supplies! filing! – the process may seem insurmountable. Our guide to setting up your office is designed to help you find exactly what you need to suit your individual needs, preferences, tastes, and budget.

Mobility with Style

For thousands of years, people with disabilities were viewed as inferior, damaged, even evil. The ancient Greeks believed that those with physical imperfections were substandard, corroborated by Plato’s philosophy that the “deformed” ought to have been put away in “mysterious unknown places.” Later, theologians Martin Luther and John Calvin asserted that people with mental and physical limitations were possessed by evil spirits that necessitated painful and cruel exorcisms. As time went on, tolerance for disabilities did not increase; rather, Darwinists and similar evolutionists lobbied against aid for people with impairments, rationalizing that the continuity of an “inferior species” would interfere with survival of the fittest and a superior race. In a similar vein, Hitler and his Nazi party sought to eliminate all people with disabilities, claiming that their very existence tainted their pure-blooded nation. Historically, people with physical, emotional, and/or mental challenges have not been treated well and remained stigmatized until fairly recently.

Today, people with impairments are more fortunate than they ever have been. They are protected by laws such as the Americans with Disabilities Act, which ensure that they are awarded equal rights in the workforce and educational systems and are granted accessibility to public places. They are not only tolerated, however; people with disabilities are fully accepted and embraced as being just like everyone else. This is evidenced in countless respects: in the sports world, with the Paralympics, International Wheelchair Basketball Federation, and organized wheelchair-bound participants in dance competitions; in popular culture, demonstrated by actors such as Christopher Reeve and Michael J. Fox and stage and film presence of people with dwarfism and other conditions – in typical roles, not as “freaks” in carnival sideshows as they were in years past – and musicians like Itzhak Perlman and Stevie Wonder; and in the academic world, where students of all abilities are admitted to schools and people like Stephen Hawking are celebrated rather than shunned. Humankind has made great strides in our attitude toward those with differing abilities.