For an introductory video this is a little long, but it is important. I don’t know how you feel about it… but if you’re like me, then you probably feel that your training thus far, was pretty skimpy on the financial and business side of things. That’s how I felt anyway.
Well, I’m going to try to change that. And here’s the road map. (My apologies, though… I wanted to get this video out, so I made it while I was pretty sick. It took a lot of editing for the coughs, sneezes, and random breaks in clear thought.) Click this video’s image to get started. (It might take a few extra seconds for the video to start. The file is a little large.)
In the next video, I’ll show you how I rapidly… and I mean rapidly… got out of debt. I’ll give you guys the exact step-by-step plan I followed. You can take it or leave it, but I bet you’ll find it quite useful.
After a great response from those of you on my “new release priority notification list”, the RookieDoc Membership program is being opened to anyone that is interested. Here’s a short intro video to show you some of the things that are part of membership. If it sounds interesting or useful, click the link below the video to find out more.
If you could sit down with me and ask me any question about being successful in your internship or residency, what would it be? I’ll answer some questions on upcoming RookieDoc FAQs – these are occasional phone conferences for RookieDoc fans and members where I discuss a hot topic or answer questions.
I may not get to every question directly, but may be able to post important answers here, in special RookieDoc reports (PDF), on the RookieDoc Squidoo lens, or in the Audio Tips series.
By the way, the RookieDoc membership is undergoing some upgrades and will open to new members soon. Stay tuned. In the meantime, though, get your question in. Go ahead, click the link above.
Information and data are increasing at alarming rates. On the one hand, this is great because we are witnessing some amazing advances in health care (and computer science, and communication, etc). However, it is becoming increasingly difficult to navigate through this body of data to arrive at the most relevant, most up-to-date, most easy-to-apply information that is suited to your specific need and specific situation. This is true if you are a doctor, a computer programmer, a world leader, or a secretary.
Many have stopped calling this the Age of Information, and started calling it the Age of Distraction, or the Attention Age. It is not enough to know a lot. Instead, it becomes increasingly important to be able to:
Find the most up-to-date, relevant information,
Find it quickly,
Synthesize or process that information, and then
Apply that information.
The one who manages information well is the successful one.
For that reason, I thought you might find the following very short video to be a useful one. In it, Rich Schefren discusses the difference between “just enough” information and “just in time” information. This is a very important distinction to make. And once you grasp it, you may find your internship and residency less stressful. Check it out…
Even though a blog is often the writer’s soap box… that’s not what I’m going to do with this particular subject. I’m just pointing it out for med students, interns, and residents… just to be aware that there are even more changes being discussed in resident work-hour reform. I want to suggest that you reserve judgment. Here’s why…
It’s easy to think about yourself in the short-term and think, “Heck yeah! I want to limit my work hours!” But be careful, there are definite pros and cons. And we are talking about a dynamic system here.
Part of being remarkable in your profession is your ability to “see systems”. You should know that one tweak in one part of the system may have profound implications in other parts of the system. And in this “me world” you might miss the effects on other parts. And in this “right now world” you might miss, even, the longer-term implications for yourself.
But I’m not going to go there right now. (RookieDoc members – I’ll teach you how to overcome the cons with a whole separate bonus module…) Just keeping you informed here by linking to an interesting article and an interesting blog post. Check them out.
You’re on-call and it’s three in the morning. You get called from the ER and you call them back from your call room, because you had just laid down. You’ll find that it’s almost like they have a direct connection to your pillow. As soon as your head hits that pillow, they’ll call you.
You call back and they see the in-house caller ID “resident call room” and the ER doc says, “Whoa! Dr. Tori, trying to get some sleep? Trying to rest your head? Why don’t you come on down? I have a few admissions for you.”
Great. That kind of stuff starts to tick you off after awhile. The first few times you’re like sure and you head on down. The next few times you start to get the idea that people think you’re a slacker because you’re in your call room.
Ready for this?… It’s a shocker… A study published in the Vol. 300 No. 10, September 10, 2008 issue of JAMA concludes,
“increased on-call workload was associated with more sleep loss, longer shift duration, and a lower likelihood of participation in educational activities.”
You can save yourself and your patients a lot of time if you work on mastering the ability to “get the ball rolling”. Basically, it means anticipating what the next steps are, and facilitating them. Let me give you an example…
Let’s say you are calling a consult. You are post-call and overnight your patient began to experience a change in mental status. Now, you want to call a neuro consult.
Guess what? You will notice that there’s a pattern. When most neurologists come by, they order the same type of stuff when it comes to a change in mental status. They’ll say let’s check a TSH, a B12, a folate, an RPR and a sed rate. Maybe if there’s no recent head CT they’ll suggest that or an MRI. This isn’t a knock on neurologists… it just is what it is.
Anyway, you can get some of that ball rolling by ordering some of those same tests that you know they’re going to order. And this does a couple of things for you… (more…)
