Freelance Medical Communications
Everyone seems to be twitterizing themselves, so I decided to jump on the bandwagon.
Apparently I’m not very chatty, interesting, or enthusiastic – seems I may benefit from more socialization, and less twitterization! I did love the “likely obsession” though – anyone who knows me will know how my cat is my nemesis…….she’s tried to murder me twice…….
And the “gamer” title made me laugh even more – I despise video gaming with a thousand fiery passions!
Have you twitterized yourself yet?
I’m a pathologist, so buying this book was a no-brainer for me.
Mary Roach is a science writer, originally from New Hampshire, whose previous lives took her through freelance copy editing and public relations at the San Francisco Zoo!
“Stiff” was her first book, released in 2003. It shares the findings from her exploration of the current uses of human cadavers, as well as anecdotes about the 2,000 year history of the cadaver industry.
She covers everything you could possibly ever want to know (or maybe not) about cadavers, from body snatching to “how to know if you’re dead”. If you’ve always thought you’d prefer to simply be buried after death, it’s worth checking out Roach’s review of the body’s decay process. You may just change your mind! Reading about the alternative lives of cadavers, you too might even prefer that something much cooler could happen to your body after you die!
Many of us hate to think about death in general, and certainly many immediately reject the idea of donating their body to medical research without further consideration. “Stiff”, however, is a great book for reminding us just how important this donation could be: “For every cadaver that rode the crash sleds to test three-point seat belts, 61 lives per year have been saved. For every cadaver that took an airbag in the face, 147 people per year survive otherwise fatal head-ons. For every corpse whose head has hammered a windshield, 68 lives per year are saved.”
It’s become one of my favorite books since I bought it a few years ago. Although written with constant injections of humor from start to finish (even down to the chapter titles), Mary Roach’s commentary of the postmortem life of bodies is also extremely respectfully written. Her jokes are not at the expense of the dead, but are rather directed at the absurdity of our attitudes toward death. It’s brutally honest, tremendously gruesome at times, yet always thoroughly entertaining.
It was one of those disturbingly fascinating reads that I couldn’t wait to pick up, didn’t want to put down, and certainly hated finishing! I’ve actually bought many copies since as gifts for friends, who also loved it. And you don’t need to have any background in science to enjoy this book, although it’s definitely not a read for the faint hearted (or for those who nauseate easily)!
In the words of the author herself: “Death. It doesn’t have to be boring”.
Read it. It may just change your death.
The previous couple of days have involved working late into the night to finish editing a lengthy scientific manuscript for an ESL client. I learned a lot about “Chinese Herbs Nephropathy” though – very intriguing!
“Chocolate poisoning” represented one of the “Top 10” pet poisonings reported by the Animal Poison Control Center of the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA). This occurs as a result of an adverse reaction to the alkaloid theobromine in chocolate. The toxicity affects dogs more than cats, probably because they are more likely to consume large quantities of unusual foods chocolate, whereas cats are typically less likely to voluntarily eat chocolate, especially in large quantities. Animals of all ages, however, are affected.
How Much?
According to the ASPCA’s Animal Poison Control Center, mild signs of toxicity are considered to occur in animals after eating around 20 mg of theobromine and caffeine per kg bodyweight, with severe signs arising at 40-50 mg/kg, seizures at 60 mg/kg, with potentially lethal results at 100 mg/kg.
Clinical signs typically occur within 6-12 hours, and how your dog reacts will depend especially on his size, as well as the type of chocolate eaten. Different types of chocolate contain different levels of theobromine: Baking chocolate contains the highest levels, followed by dark chocolate, milk chocolate & white chocolate, respectively.
Some approximate theobromine concentrations in various chocolate products are as follows:
Although these are approximate figures only, they at least provide a sense of the wide range of theobromine concentrations in different products. These figures equate to ingestion of approximately 3 lbs of milk chocolate by a 32 kg Labrador retriever being fatal, while only 7 oz milk chocolate could be fatal to a 4.5 kg Yorkshire terrier.
Clinical Signs
The toxic effects of theobromine affect many organ systems. The first signs of chocolate poisoning, however, tend to be vomiting, diarrhea, nausea, restlessness and increased urination. Signs can ultimately progress to fatal cardiac arrhythmias and seizures.
Treatment
There is no antidote for chocolate poisoning, so treatment tends to be supportive. Since the half life of threobromine is around 18 hours, veterinarians will often induce vomiting in affected dogs within the first 1-2 hours post-ingestion, in particular if the quantity is unknown. Activated charcoal administration can also be useful in reducing the quantity of toxin absorbed. Otherwise, however, treatment is based on the clinical signs of each individual case, with intravenous fluid therapy being commonly used in animals with toxicity-induced dehydration due to vomiting and diarrhea, for instance.
If you do suspect that your pet has eaten an unknown quantity of chocolate, contact your veterinarian immediately for advice. With appropriate, timely treatment, most animals make a complete recovery.
(888) 426-4435 ASPCA Animal Poison Control
Time for Step 3 of the “Beginner’s Medical Writing” series – a step-by-step guide to getting yourself started in freelance medical writing – an extremely basic guide for making the first move into medical writing.
If you’re just arriving, feel free to check out the earlier steps:
So, where are we up to now? Hopefully by now you have a blog or some kind of website “out there”. And I haven’t forgotten that I left you with some assignments to get you started with writing for your blog.
If you haven’t yet posted them to your blog, then go ahead and do so – this is the start of your showcase, so the sooner they are up and running, the better. As for the next step – it’s time to link up with some other folk in your field. Gathering a new social circle can be a wonderful way to help propel your new business.
SOCIAL MEDIA
Does the very thought of being involved in social media leave you kicking & screaming? If so, you have a big decision to make. On the one hand, if you are social media-phobic, then it might be a waste of your time setting up accounts for your business – there’s no point pretending you’re going to give it a go, if you already know you’ll never use any of them. On the other hand, however, this is 2011 & like it or not, social media is now part of our online business DNA.
So before you dig in your heels & declare your business a failure when it’s just getting started, I’d urge you to give it just a little thought. These days, many small businesses are successfully using Facebook, Twitter, & LinkedIn (amongst others) to promote their services. So it is absolutely in your best interests to at least consider using one of them. Decide which of the social media sites might appeal to you most – take your pick based either on which will be a better choice for your type of freelance business, or which of the networks you are most likely to actually feel content about using.
Some benefits of social networking to help persuade you in the right direction:
Just One?
If you are looking to maybe just take on one of the social networks, I’d advise using LinkedIn – this will at least expose your business to the world (including potential employers) and is probably the one that requires the least maintenance once you’ve set it up appropriately. So this might be the choice for you if you absolutely know that the Facebook, Twitter, or other universes are simply not where you want to place your energy.
I use 2 networks for my business, so feel free to link up with me at any of them:
There are also direct links to my LinkedIn and Twitter profiles at the top right of the screen.
Whilst the situation will be different for different individuals, I have to say that I tried a business Facebook site, and this has been the least useful for my business purposes – although LinkedIn & Twitter have proven to be great ways to network and for me to be found.
So go ahead & explore some of the social networking options for yourself, & see which you might be interested in trying out. Your assignment today is to set up at least one social networking profile and link it up with your business site online.
Which of the social networks have you used, and which has been most useful for your business?
The end of another busy week…….
A study published online this week in the American Journal of Hypertension has rubbed salt in the wounds of the old belief that excessive salt intake contributes to the development of cardiovascular disease
A group of researchers from the University of Exeter in England analyzed the results of seven clinical studies. Collectively these studies involved over 6,000 adults who had been tracked for at least six months. Patients were assigned to one of three groups, according to whether they had:
All patients were evaluated to determine how their dietary salt intake was associated with blood pressure, incidence of heart disease, and death. Subsequent meta-analysis of the combined data from these studies, however, failed to obtain any firm evidence that reducing dietary salt intake prevents the chances of death from cardiovascular disease. Reduced salt intake did tend to reduce blood pressure a little, although it had no effect on reducing the rate of cardiac arrest, stroke, or heart surgery.
The National Salt Reduction Initiative
The World Health Organization currently recommends a maximum salt intake of 5 grams per day, whereas many people in western countries often ingest twice this amount. And indeed the FDA currently suggests not ingesting more than a teaspoon of salt a day – almost 2.5 grams. Although they recommend that people should be trying to reduce their salt use in food, they additionally advise the food industry to remove excess salt from their products. Almost 80% of the salt in our diets apparently derives from that which is added to processed foods and drinks before they are sold.
Such public health initiatives to reduce salt consumption are mostly based on observational studies that have shown a connection between high sodium intake and increased risk of cardiac disease. Such study types, however, are not designed to demonstrate a cause-and-effect relationship – they are only able to show association, and any association could potentially be explained by numerous other factors.
In Conclusion
This new report thus introduces more controversy on conventional thinking that a reduced salt intake can prevent heart disease. Subsequently the researchers of this most recent report conclude that additional research is required to clarify the association between heart disease and salt intake – and in particular, larger randomized controlled trials would be beneficial.
Taylor RS et al: Reduced Dietary Salt for the Prevention of Cardiovascular Disease: A Meta-Analysis of Randomized Controlled Trials (Cochrane review). (2011) Am J Hypertens, July 6 [Epub ahead of print]
The hip is one of the most common fracture sites in people, with hip fractures most frequently occurring in elderly patients, representing an extremely serious outcome of osteoporosis.
In younger patients, hip fractures typically occur as a result of high impact injuries, such as those associated with a traffic accident. Patients with osteoporosis, however, have weakened bones, and can often develop hip fractures from even relatively minor trauma.
Fractures in this region represent the most common type that requires patient hospitalization, since treatment typically requires surgical correction. Approximately 10% of these fracture patients die during hospitalization, however, and it is not exactly clear what risk factors contribute to this excess mortality.
Risk factors for in-hospital post-hip fracture mortality
A recent Australian study evaluated hip fracture patients admitted to a teaching hospital from 1997-2007. They aimed to not only examine risk factors for mortality in these patients, but also to develop a prognostic model to predict in-hospital mortality.
The group evaluated outcomes among 1094 women and 410 men who were admitted to the hospital with a hip fracture.
The median duration of hospitalization was 9 days, and the primary outcome of the study was that in-hospital mortality occurred regardless of length of hospital stay. During hospitalization, the risk of mortality was higher in men (9%) than in women (4%). Increased risk of in-hospital mortality was associated with advancing age in men, as well as the presence of co-morbid conditions on admission. In particular, the risk of mortality was increased in patients with a pre-existing congestive heart failure and liver disease – factors that together accounted for 69% of the risk for in-hospital mortality.
Overall, the results of this study of hip fracture patients determined that increased age, male gender, and pre-existing conditions such as congestive heart failure and liver disease were the main risk factors for mortality during hospitalization. They were, however, unable to develop a prognostic model to predict the outcome of hospitalization following a hip fracture.
Frost SA et al: Risk factors for in-hospital post-hip fracture mortality. (2011) Bone, Jun 13 [Epub ahead of print]
Time for Step 2 of the “Beginner’s Medical Writing” series – a step-by-step guide to getting yourself started in freelance medical writing. Remember – this is not a “get rich quick” guide, but merely an extremely basic guide for those of you who are pondering branching into medical writing, but don’t quite know how to make the first moves.
A couple of days ago, I suggested in Step 1 that it would be a good idea to start right from scratch – literally just trying to decide which area of medical writing you wanted to focus on initially. So hopefully you now know whether you are going to venture into the scientific or the non-scientific/marketing side.
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Step 2: Get Yourself Out There
Now that you know you want to branch into freelance work, it’s time to put yourself out there. Let’s face it, if you don’t tell the world where you are & what you can do, it can’t find you!
So you need an online presence. There are numerous ways for you to accomplish this – you can set up a website or a blog yourself – free or paid – or you can pay someone to set you up with either one, with all the bells & whistles that a web designer can throw your way. If you are a procrastinator, you could spend weeks or more, just pondering on how to do this perfectly. During this time, you might lose time that could be spent working on your first project, & earning your first $100.
So why procrastinate? Obviously if you’re extremely organized & focused & know exactly what you want, then go for it in however which way you prefer. But if you’re hesitating because you’re still not sure what you ultimately want your site to look like, & if you’re living in a world of “what ifs” then my advice is this:
Just sign up for a free blog now!
But What If….?
I know, you probably can’t make up your mind about what to name your business. Maybe you’ll even want to change its name later? And what if you don’t like the blog in 3 months? Maybe you’ll change your writing focus at a later date too?
None of these things matter – your business will be forever evolving. The most important thing right now is that you get started. If you’re not even sure what to call your business right now, just register the blog under your name initially. You’ll be able to change the header of the blog page any time you like – it could start off as your name & progress to a business name at a later date. Likely you’ll be more tech-savvy than I am too, so if I can cope with an online presence, then so can you!
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Should I Buy My Own Domain?
Many business-related sites advise just buying your own domain from the start – go for it if this is what you want, but if you’re still wondering where the freelance world might take you, then starting out with a free blog gives the advantage of zero financial risk for you. If you decide that this isn’t for you in a year’s time, then you’ve lost nothing financially. If your business takes off, however, you can break into your own domain whenever you feel comfortable. There are plenty of talented web designers around who can help you convert your current free blog over to your new domain if necessary (and if you’re lucky, you may even have a friend in the business to help!).
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Back To The Free Blog
Probably the two main, free blog-hosting sites are WordPress.com (which I use for this blog) and Blogger.com, although there are other options available too (do a Google search so you can be sure you’ve covered all bases). I’ve used both of these options, and have found pros and cons with both. Overall though, I do prefer the cleaner, crisper look that the WordPress themes seem to offer. You can easily do some shopping around though and check out the free themes that the blog hosting sites offer – this will help you decide which site to choose initially. And again, you can still swap sites whenever you choose, so all is not lost if you have second thoughts somewhere down the line.
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My Blog Is Set Up – What Now?
Very basically, to get you started you’ll want to at least add the following:
OK, so now you’re moving! Next up is your homework assignment. I’m going to ask you to decide on titles for three posts (maybe around 500-1000 words each) – then plan an outline for each of them, and lastly, get started writing them.
If you are stuck for ideas to get you started, why not make your first post an introduction to who you are, and what kind of medical writing you are offering? Other ideas include choosing to write about a couple of medical conditions that interest you, or maybe a condition that’s prominent in the news right now.
Step 3 will follow soon, but in the meantime, get your thinking caps on & enjoy writing……..
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Hippocrates, the Father of Medicine, once said: “If you want to study medicine, go to war”.
In 1776 there were only 3,500 physicians in the colonies. These men clearly played a disproportionate role during the Revolutionary War, with around 1,300 of them serving as military surgeons at this time.
During the war, anyone with medical knowledge of any kind was drafted into service, and although all regiments had their own physicians, less than 300 of them actually had a medical degree. The minority had been trained in Philadelphia, at The Pennsylvania Hospital – the first medical school in the Americas, which opened in 1768. Since there were no laws or professional organizations to regulate medicine, however, this left anyone free to practice.
Inevitably therefore, more soldiers died due to health issues than combat during the Revolutionary War.
Anesthesia was not discovered until the mid 1800s, so alcohol and opium were typical agents used for surgical preparation of patients. Medical equipment and drugs were in very short supply during the war, and physicians were frequently forced to work with what little equipment they had in their pocket kit. Additionally, they typically performed the only surgery that they knew to be useful – amputation. Surgeons had to work fast, since their patients were not anesthetized, and some reports describe things being stuffed into soldiers’ ears so they could not hear themselves screaming! And there was always the method of “biting the bullet”.
Wounded soldiers awaiting surgery were also first bled. Bloodletting was used to treat just about every type of medical illness, based on ancient beliefs that withdrawing large quantities of blood would purge the sick patient of “bad humors”. To add insult to injury, postsurgical procedures also often involved even more bloodletting! Unsurprisingly, surgical success rates were low at this time, with wartime surgeons having no idea that such blood loss could lead to death.
Overall though, despite the fact that professionally trained physicians were rare in the colonial military organization, Revolutionary Wartime surgeons did extremely well at treating the sick, and attempting to save lives. And although no major medical or surgical advances came from the war, one step forward did come in the form of smallpox control.
Smallpox was not a problem in America until introduced here by European settlers. The American Revolutionary War brought about numerous smallpox outbreaks. Patients who actually survive the disease develop lifelong immunity to it, so the British were at a distinct advantage since many of them had previously suffered the disease.
At that time, there were only two ways to deal with smallpox:
By 1777, the ever increasing smallpox epidemics had led George Washington to order mandatory inoculation of all troops who had not had the disease. Medical historians actually credit this decision as a pivotal one – smallpox threatened to kill more soldiers than the British would, so it was this decision by Washington that allowed the Continental Army to turn the situation around and continue to fight at full strength.
Thankfully huge advances have been made in medicine since the era of the American Revolution. But one thing that remains unchanged is the fact that physicians continue to serve in the US military, helping not only fellow servicemembers, but foreign citizens too. “Service beyond self” clearly remains the mission of both the caring physician and proud military servicemember.
Happy July 4th everyone!
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