I figured since I'm in public health now, I should write about public health things. Okay...you caught me. I've been writing about public health things since the get-go. Why didn't one of you suggest I do public health sooner!?! I digress...
September is National Preparedness Month! This means making a plan, getting supplies and having conversations with your family. Theoretically you should have enough supplies to last you and your family for at least 72 hours. According to a news release earlier this week from Governor Heineman, these things should be in your emergency kit:
battery-powered or crank radio
weather alert radio
extra batteries
first aid kit
sanitary wipes
dust mask
water for drinking and sanitation
water purification tablets
waterproof matches and/or butane lighter
crank flashlight
plastic sheeting
non-perishable food for at least three days
disinfectants and medications.
medical information for entire family, including details about dosages of required medications and a list of known health issues
warm clothes and sleeping bags for winter
extra hydration and bug-repellant for summer/fall
In addition to the kit, an emergency plan should be drafted for the family so everyone can be on the same page if something happens to the house or the family gets separated. Here is one that you can just fill in the blanks!
Make sure your kits are easily accessible and movable, if necessary! You can find more information on the Nebraska Emergency Management Agency's website: http://www.nema.ne.gov/index.shtml.
Stay safe friends! You never know when fire, tornadoes or floods will hit!
So actually I'm not sure how to qualify what "grade" I'm in. Do I count M1 year as one grade, even though I did it twice (effectively)? And because I'm not staying in medical school, I'm not even sure if that counts at all....?
Well anyway, today was the first day of my 19th year of schooling. HOLY BUCKETS! I must really love school or something! (I'll let you in on a little secret, I love school).
This semester I only have one class that actually meets in person. It's "Introduction to Maternal and Child Health". I had it this afternoon for just shy of 3 hours. I like it, but it's very different from medical school. It's much slower paced and I have to admit that I was a little bored. I'm very used to needing to process more information, more quickly in class, but I'm sure it will pick up pace once we don't have to do syllabus sorts of things.
My other two courses are online: Epidemiology and Health Behavior. I've already had to take a few quizzes, even before classes officially started! Yuck. We shall see how I like online classes...I'm sure they will be quite different from the two online classes I took at CCC after my freshman year at Hastings College (I just have this sneaking suspicion that graduate level online classes are harder than Composition 101).
It's also going to be a transition to not have every minute of my day scheduled with class or studying. The program I'm in is designed for working professionals, so most people are employed in some manner. I'm trying to figure out exactly what I will do, but I'm sure it will be something because I'm kind of already going stir crazy with the lack of things penciled in to my beautiful new planner. So if anyone is looking for an employee in the Omaha area, let me know! :)
It was a good day and now I must figure out when things are due for my online classes!
I have been slacking on a serious level on the blogging. It's been a whole month since my last post. Yikes, bikes and trikes! Sorry about that!
I have not been slacking on other things, however. I have been a busy little bee over the past month. I'll save you from another long post about the rundown of my life and throw out some highlights.
Just a little humor to start you off.
SMDEP
So as I've mentioned before, I am a TA for the Summer Medical and Dental Education Program. It's a program for undergraduate students interested in healthcare. It's been really fun so far. The kids (okay, they're like a year and a half younger than me) are from all over the US, so they bring all sorts of excitement to our great city of Omaha.
They had lots of orientation stuff last week, so we only delved into actual classwork towards the end of the week. One of the mornings early last week, they took assessments about how they learn and their personalities and such. They had some extra Myers-Briggs assessments so all of the TAs took one too. As it turns out, I am an ENFJ. According to the website, these are my traits.
Warm, empathetic, responsive, and responsible. Highly attuned to the emotions, needs, and motivations of others. Find potential in everyone, want to help others fulfill their potential. May act as catalysts for individual and group growth. Loyal, responsive to praise and criticism. Sociable, facilitate others in a group, and provide inspiring leadership.
I do hope that the description runs pretty true to me because it makes ENFJs sound like pretty awesome people! It would have been interesting to do some of the other testing too, but I had other work to get done instead of taking the assessments.
The program is pretty awesome for the students. They get the chance to see all sorts of different researchers, professors, clinicians, etc. They get two shadowing experiences, plus all sorts of other great things. This past Friday we were in the cadaver lab at UNMC. The TAs were helping to show them specific things on the cadavers. I taught about the brachial plexus. The BP was covered during the third week of our anatomy core and so it was a little bit of a stretch to call on that information again. But alas, I survived and the students learned something!
The keynote speaker for their "opening ceremonies" was a clinician who works with the College of Public Health in Healthcare Disparities. She showed them this PSA about public health. It's a pretty good one! It highlights many of the issues we need to talk about for an effective reform to our healthcare system.
HIV Counseling
So, I've wanted to become a certified HIV Counselor basically since I started doing HIV Prevention Education about 7.5 years ago. And this weekend, I finally did it! I'm CDC certified! Whooohooooo! Yay me!
I did the training through Nebraska AIDS Project and so I will begin observing other counselors for a short period of time and soon I will be testing and counseling clients all on my own! I actually have tested several individuals for HIV before through a program that UNMC did earlier this spring, but we weren't CDC certified.
Much of the training was stuff that I already knew between my years of HIV Prevention Education and my clinical skills class in med school, but it was still a good refresher. Oh and there were some specific slang words that I learned (and maybe didn't need to ever learn...). It was a good time overall. Great to meet new people in the HIV prevention community!
Ethics of Treatment
You'd practically have to be living under a rock to not hear about Angelina Jolie having a preventative double mastectomy (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/14/double-mastectomy-angelina-jolie-_n_3270390.html) because she had a >80% chance of having the BRCA1 cancer gene expressing itself, which puts her at a high risk of breast cancer (and some ovarian cancers).
Well anyway, my question is at what probability of disease do we suggest that it's a possibility to undergo radical treatment options as a preventative measure? Which surgeons feel comfortable at which percentages? Is there a golden line we cannot cross? I feel like surgery (3 surgeries at that!) was very drastic for Angelina, but it was possible for her because she had access to great care (genetic testing and counseling) and the means to pay for those doctors. But that's not realistic for everyone.
And then we get into just the general ethics of treatment. Do we give certain antibiotics as preventative measures? Who deserves these treatments? Who are we to decide who is worthy to treat? Who bestows this great judgmental knowledge on physicians? What sorts of preventative treatments are too radical?
And now I'm just onto general ramblings and wonderings about ethics. But my point is, was Angelina's preventative surgery too far? What about all sorts of post-disease diagnosis extreme measures? At which point does natural selection take over when humans are always trying to dupe it?
Well, that was a happy note to end my post... Adios for now. Let's hope that it doesn't take another month for another post.
.JPG)
