...Wow and lol

A study has found that using a pre-surgery checklist cuts in half the rate of surgery-related deaths. (see below)

...It's taken how many years of operations, in the history of medicine, for someone to figure out that they should use a checklist?? How many PhDs in Medicine does it take to screw in a lightbulb?? Holy crap! We use checklists just to make sure we close our store up properly each night. Knowing this, I can't believe I've ever agreed to have an operation. It's like we've been living in the Dark Ages!

***
http://www.cbc.ca/health/story/2009/01/14/surgery-check-list.html

A simple checklist, similar to the one pilots use before take off, helped to halve the rate of surgery-related deaths, an international team of doctors reported Wednesday.

The checklist included:

• Giving antibiotics on time.
• Making sure the correct patient is on the operating table, and the correct surgical site is identified.
• Checking anesthesia, blood supply and allergies.
• Counting needles and sponges to make sure nothing was left inside.

In this week's New England Journal of Medicine, researchers reported on how well the checklist worked on more than 7,500 surgical patients in eight hospitals in these cities: Toronto, Seattle, London, New Delhi, Amman, Auckland, Manila and Ifakara in Tanzania.

The rate of death was 1.5 per cent before the checklist was introduced, and dropped to 0.8 per cent afterward, Dr. Atul Gawande of Harvard Medical School in Boston and his co-authors reported.

In-patient complications also dropped from 11 per cent to seven per cent.

The most significant drops were in complications such as infections, heart attacks and blood clots, said Dr. Bryce Taylor of Toronto's University Health Network, who led the study in Canada.

"If you look at two million operations, it adds up to 60,000 patients per year who would be spared having a complication after surgery," said Taylor. "That's a pretty provocative number."

The checklist is now used at three hospitals in Toronto.

Phil Hassen, head of the Canadian Patient and Safety Institute, said he hopes the checklist will become standard operating practice at every hospital in Canada within six months, given the dramatic improvements researchers have seen.

Breezy instrumental posting

I'm watching my new Banacek dvd, and I've got the subtitles on because Fernando's sleeping, I don't want to put the sound too loud. Sometimes subtitles are really amusing. Like, during the theme song: "Breezy instrumental music." If I ever lose my hearing, I'll have to remember that Breezy Instrumental Music means that classic 80s tv show theme style.

I'm still working on my computer cleanup, hence all the tv watching right after I said I was going to get back to writing! But, well, one thing at a time. I can't cook in a messy kitchen, and I can't write on a messy computer.

Kitty Update, and Compy Cleanup

So Nombly is back home safe from the vet. He just had a checkup. His heart arrhythmia is kookier than ever, but it doesn't show in his every day run-around activities. We could go see a heart specialist, who can adjust his meds or add new ones, but that won't guarantee he'll get better. Nombly has seen a heart specialist in the past, and she was great--and worth it, because he's stopped having the seizures he used to have. But it's expensive, and this time we'd have to go much farther to see her. I think this time we're just going to keep him on the present meds, and wait until something goes wrong before we go tossing around the money. My hope is that he'll be madly dashing through the apartment one day, and drop dead. But sadly The End is usually long, painful, and filled with upset and doubt about what to do. Sigh!

But no ending yet. :-)

He was his usual Good Boy self at the vet. Not one meow, and remaining as calm as one can expect for his blood test. Of course, now we have the Crisis in the Meowee East to deal with, as usual. Poor Sherry has very sensitive smell, so bringing Nombly back from the vet makes him think we've brought in a new cat. He must think that about once a year we bring in a new cat who looks like Nombly, and we call him Nombly, but isn't Nombly... just to screw with Sherry's head. So they have to be kept separate until Sherry adjusts--about a day or two. But Haley also has to be kept away from them when we're leaving Sherry around Nombly, because if Sherry gets all "Ah! A Stranger!" he will growl and hiss and get all slinky, and then SHE starts growling and hissing, and then we'll have a major cat fight on our hands. To be avoided at all costs.

But right now everyone's asleep and quiet. My little kitties.

This weekend I'm doing fashion research, and cleaning up my computer and hard drive. It's really not procrastination, because I have little space left on either. The main problem is that the library of music on my laptop, and the one on my hard drive, are not perfect mirrors of each other. I'm trying to clean up, and get them to match, without accidentally losing any music files. Each one is 30+ GBs, and that's after I already cleaned a lot of crap out of them.

Luckily I found a program that can seek out files that appear to be duplicates of each other, even if they have different names (one of my problems), and even if they're in different folders (my other problem.) So now that I've cleaned up each folder a bit, I'm merging them, and then I'll run this program and get down to ONE master set of music. And then copy that back to my laptop (erasing the music that's still there), and then I'll clear out my iTunes player and reload the whole damn thing (or re-match them, if that's possible, so that I don't lose my playlists.) And then I'll have to decide if there's some music I don't want to keep on my laptop, but only on my hard drive, like Christmas music, to make space.

I also need to re-do a complete backup of my computer. (I've had to delete my old backup, to make space on the HD to merge the two libraries--but it was pretty old anyway.) I keep backups of what I consider my most important folders--MY WRITING!--but I need to get back to regularly backing up the whole show. So that will be next.

THEN I need to run some repair programs and really clean up the computer. But I won't do that sort of thing until a backup is back in place.

I enjoy doing this sort of thing... I'm all about the organizing, provided I have time. And music. As long as, whatever I'm doing, allows me to play iTunes at the same time. (Right now it's Metallica.) And I work on my fashion research at the same time. But maybe tomorrow I'll move everything to the living room and watch my dvds while I work at the really long stuff. ...And keep peace in the Meowee East.

My Current Useful Program Discoveries:

* backup program my dad mentioned
* a wee program that removes associated files when you delete applications
* a program that shows you what's taking up the most memory, in case there's something in there you didn't know about (Eg. I found some Garageband crap I'd missed when I deleted Garageband... because I didn't have the previous program when I tossed it!)
* a general cleanup/fixit program which I haven't used yet
* and my beloved Mr Clean, who cleans up duplicated files

(the latter 4 came from this article)

O Step-mommy and Daddyyyyy!

My parents sent me a little Christmas/New Years prezzie! Well, two of them, from my wishlist!

The old 80s series Banacek. I've only seen a couple episodes, on someone else's cable. Since I have a crush on George Peppard, I knew I had to see the whole season! (There's only 1.)


And Shakespeare Re-told. Four modern Shakes movies, though I haven't seen them all, all the way through. So also very exciting! And full of great Brit actors.

The News at 4

I've never been one for New Year's Resolutions--I usually make major decisions in the summer time, and usually start them after my vacation. However, barring a new job, I'm going to try controlling my Spare Time a little better this "semester." (I can't stop thinking in semesters. Maybe because my job is populated by students, so scheduling is always related to semesters.) Only in the interest of my writing.

I went *off* all my TV shows during Nanowrimo, so that should help. I'm not Out for TV, it's just that there's a bloody great lot of high quality shows in this day and age... one must begin to limit.

The bigger culprit is the internets. I don't mind internetsing a lot for story research, but it's the news-reading, and article reading, and email reading/responding, and music sampling, and blogging, and general trolliness. I'll at least try using a timer so I'm aware of the time I'm spending.

http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/internet/firefox/track-the-amount-of-time-you-spend-online-in-firefox/

In other news, I'm going to continue my management position until the end of the month. (Again, barring a teaching job.) I'm used to this schedule, and it gives me a little extra money for San Francisco.

And that's the news as I know it. Goodnight.

Lord Sheringham luxuriates on his blanky and chooses the DVD to watch while I choose a recipe to make for News Years...

my folks, frolicking in the rare nanaimo snow