RSS in Plain English -- The Best Video Explanation in 3 Minutes

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There are two types of Internet users, those that use RSS and those that don't. This video is for the people who could save time using RSS, but don't know where to start.

Author: The Common Craft Show. Get the HTML code to embed in your web site.

Link via davidrothman.net.

Related:
Best Web Feeds Reader for Medical and General Information
Web 2.0 in Medicine Presentations by a University of Michigan Librarian

Updated: 06/18/2007

Boris Yeltsin Remembered

Boris Yeltsin, the first president of the Russian Federation, passed away on April 23, 2007. He was hospitalized with a URTI after a vacation to Israel, developed a CHF exacerbation and reportedly had 2 cardiac arrests, the second one of which proved fatal.

Boris Yeltsin was a controversial figure of enormous historical importance. There are many videos on YouTube which show Yeltsin at his best and "worst", often laugh-provoking, moments. A limited selection can be seen below.


Boris Yeltsin and Bill Clinton share a laugh in 1995. A brief explanation is needed to understand to joke: Yeltsin ridiculed the news media for stressing that U.S.-Russian differences were so significant that meeting would be a disaster. Yeltsin says to the reporters: "you were writing that today's meeting with President Bill Clinton was going to be a disaster. Now for the first time I can tell you -- you're a disaster."


A Tribute To Boris Yeltsin, 1931-2007

More videos on EnglishRussia.

References:
Clinton, Yeltsin narrow their differences on Bosnia. CNN, 1995.

An Unusual Question: Can I Stand on My Head While on Coumadin?

A 67-year-old male was just diagnosed with embolic occipital stroke due to atrial fibrillation. His visual changes noted on admission have resolved completely. He has no motor or sensory deficits. Coumadin is started and his doctor (who is a teaching attending) discusses the discharge instructions with him.

Patient:

Doctor, I am very active, I run every day and do yoga exercises. It may sound like a stupid question, but do you think I can do headstands while on Coumadin? It's a blood thinner, right?

Attending doctor (perplexed):

Hmm... I am not sure. In medicine we do studies and determine which is the best approach to treat a particular disease. I don't think there was ever a study comparing people on Coumadin who perform headstands to ones who do not...

However, we know your blood pressure should be well-controlled while taking a blood thinner. Otherwise you are at a higher risk for bleeding in the brain. Headstand increases blood pressure in the head area, therefore I would recommend against performing this exercise while on Coumadin. I am sorry to disappoint you.

Intern:

May be we should do a study comparing patients on Coumadin who perform headstands to ones who do not, and we will see if headstand increases the risk for intracranial bleeding.

Attending doctor:

Yes but the recruitment would be very difficult. How many patients in their 60s who perform headstands do you know?

Read more on ClinicalCases.org in Anticoagulation and Yoga Exercises: Can I Stand on My Head While on Coumadin?

References

1. Avoiding central nervous system bleeding during antithrombotic therapy: recent data and ideas. Stroke. 2005 Jul;36(7):1588-93. Epub 2005 Jun 9.
2. Intraocular pressure changes and ocular biometry during Sirsasana (headstand posture) in yoga practitioners. Ophthalmology. 2006 Aug;113(8):1327-32. Epub 2006 Jun 27.

Image source: Vertical headstand, Jesse Warren, creative commons license.

A List of Medical Wikis

David Rothman has assembled a comprehensive list of medical wikis which seems to be growing longer every day. He will need to reorder them in categories soon.

If you click through the entries on the list, you will notice that many wikis are still in early stage with just a few entries. Many of them will not make it and will eventually fade into oblivion. It is a normal process similar to natural selection. The most popular wikis (with most contributors/readers) will survive.

We have discussed several times with the founders of AskDrWiki that the main challenge for a wiki manager is getting people to contribute. Doctors are busy and few of them have time (and desire) to create quality content for free.

The WSJ Mossberg Solution includes an article about Creating Your Own 'Wiki' Web Site.


Mike Cannon-Brookes has a nice presentation on Organisational Wiki Adoption on SlideShare (link via DavidRothman.net). This may convince your department or hospital to start a wiki, if you do not already have one.


Wikis in Plain English

References:
Why don't more doctors blog? Kevin, MD.
Medical Wikis Proliferate. John Sharp, eHealth.
Which Wiki is Right for You? School Library Journal, 5/1/2007.
WiserWiki was originally seeded with content from John Noble’s “Textbook of Primary Care Medicine” (3rd Edition) provided by Elsevier.
Image source: Arik Baratz, Wikipedia, Creative Commons.

Updated: 01/07/2008

A Medical Blogger Quoted in the Google Annual Report

Joshua Schwimmer of KidneyNotes was quoted in the Google annual report to shareholders. On page 5, he was commenting about the usefulness of Google search and Google Scholar for medical information. This is an excerpt from an interview Joshua gave to Dean Giustini in 2006. Dean interviewed 4 medical bloggers interested in using search engines for medical queries: Kevin, Joshua, Graham and me.

The fact that Google quoted Joshua proves 2 things:

- Google listens. They want feedback.

- Google became too big too fast and quality control suffers. They should have adhered to the the common practice of citing your sources. Joshua's quote was from Dean's blog and they should have linked to it as a primary source.

References:
I was quoted in the Google Annual Report. KidneyNotes.com.
Physician Bloggers Talk to a Medical Librarian
Image source: Tech Medicine.

Last Moments

The Sacramento Bee has published the 2007 Photography Pulitzer Prize Series: the last moments of a child with terminal cancer.

Link via Over!My!Med!Body:

"Be Prepared With Tissues" … was the only warning our classmate gave when he just sent this out to our class listserv. I had no idea I could be so moved to tears within the span of about 2 minutes."

Being a doctor sometimes feels like the most difficult job in the world.

Related:
The Guardian: A sombre series of portraits taken of people before and after they had died is a challenging and poignant study, 03/2008.

One Thousand "Blogs of Note" on Blogger.com Including Medical Ones

Blogger.com, owned by Google, seems to be the best free blogging service currently available. This is the reason why I host most of my web sites there. Blogger.com has an interesting feature called "Blogs of Note":

"a simple, ongoing, (ir)regularly updated list of blogs [we]'ve happened to come across and found interesting for one reason or another. This reason need not be substantial. It could be [we] liked a particular post. It could be the blog seems to have good writing, or good design, or original content or concept, or [we] just like the name."

The 5+ year archive just featured the 1000th blog of note. I am happy that CasesBlog was included in this list in 2006 along with the blog of the Google staff physician, Taraneh Razavi.

Please let me know if any other medical blogs were featured in Blogs of Note so that I can list them here.


This Google video shows it takes about 2 minutes to start a blog on Blogger.com. Creating a web site has never been easier.


This Google video shows it takes about 2 minutes to start a blog on Blogger.com. Creating a web site has never been easier.

References:
Blogs of Note: 1000 and counting! Blogger Buzz.
Clinical Cases and Images is "Blog of Note" on the Front Page of Blogger.com
Google On-site Doctor Has a Blog