Why are hospital staff wearing uniforms, scrubs and white coats in public?

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 14 Comments

by Carolyn Thomas

One of our big hospitals is around the corner from my local grocery store. This location is handy for hospital staff, who can pop in for groceries on their way home from a long shift. And it also makes it über-creepy for those of us who watch them leaning over the produce bins while still wearing the same bacteria-laden scrubs, white coats or uniforms they’ve been wearing at work.

Here’s why I get the heebie-jeebies at this sight.  John Gever, Senior Editor at MedPage Today, has reported recently on a study* suggesting that more than 60% of physicians’ coats and nurses’ uniforms sampled tested positive for disease-causing bacteria, including antibiotic-resistant Staphylococcus aureus.  Continue reading “Why are hospital staff wearing uniforms, scrubs and white coats in public?” →

“Jenny, know your numbers!” A free Mayo Clinic app

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 5 Comments

Catch the cameo appearances here by Mayo Women’s Heart Clinic cardiologist Dr. Sharonne Hayes (at work and joining Jenny on the treadmill!) on this spoof of a classic 1982 song reminding us to know and keep track of our heart health numbers. As part of the campaign, viewers can use a free application on Mayo’s Facebook page that will help them calculate their risk of a heart attack and learn how to prevent one.

Six life lessons from Dan’s cat, Annie

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 7 Comments
Annie

by Carolyn Thomas  ♥  @HeartSisters

My friend Dan Curtis is an award-winning documentary filmmaker, an adult educator, a certified life coach, and all-round lovely person. I first met Dan when he showed up on our hospice palliative care unit many years ago to film part of a documentary he’d been working on for three years, following the end-of-life journey of Robert Coley-Donohue, a man living with ALS (whose wife Barbara had also, tragically,  died of the same condition).

Unfortunately, because I was new at my PR position at the time, I knew nothing of this project – so I tried to sternly hustle Dan and his intrusive camera equipment right out of the building, thus inadvertently threatening to ruin forever an especially poignant scene in his documentary. Despite this, he forgave me my bossy ways and we went on to become friends, and his moving documentary about Robert went on to become a popular National Film Board of Canada film called Bearing Witness: Robert Coley-Donahue, and then Dan went on to become a professional personal historian, one who helps record the life stories of others for posterity.

Dan also has a cat named Annie. She is an endless font of useful life lessons, according to Dan.  I loved his essay on Annie’s tips for good time management so much that I asked his permission to repost it here for those of you who have ever wished there were more hours in the day.

So with a grateful hug aimed in Dan’s direction, here’s what he writes about Annie and her lessons on good time management:  Continue reading “Six life lessons from Dan’s cat, Annie” →

Researchers openly mock the ‘myth’ of women’s unique heart attack symptoms

~ Carolyn Thomas ~ 36 Comments

by Carolyn Thomas  ♥ @HeartSisters

I was a woman on a mission while covering the proceedings of the 64th Annual Canadian Cardiovascular Congress in Vancouver.  Specifically, my mission was to track down researchers working in the area of women’s heart disease. They were, sadly, few and far between, my heart sisters, as I had to explain here earlier.

“Out of over 700 scientific papers presented at this conference, I could count on one hand the number that focused on women’s heart health.”

Luckily, I did track down Dr. Karin Humphries from the Centre for Health Evaluation and Outcome Sciences at St. Paul’s Hospital in Vancouver, and her University of British Columbia doctoral student Mona Izadnegahdar. Their paper found, not surprisingly, that women under age 55 fare worse than their male counterparts after a heart attack.(1)

While chatting with me about their findings, Dr. Humphries and Mona happened to mention the “popular misconception that women and men present with different heart attack symptoms”.   Continue reading “Researchers openly mock the ‘myth’ of women’s unique heart attack symptoms” →