Word Watch: scanxiety
Canada’s Word Spy Paul McFedries has identified another new term: “scanxiety” — the mental distress felt while awaiting the results of a medical test, and particularly an MRI or CT scan (scan + anxiety).
He cites two recent uses of the word — one, an article on the BoingBoing website in 2013, and the other in the Vancouver Sun in April this year.
But the earliest use McFedries found was in 2006, in a post on a lymphoma support/forum website.~TM
The crash of flight MH17 and the cure for AIDS
HIV virions | Credit: CDC/ A. Harrison; Dr. P. Feorino
It seems beyond doubt that Malaysia Airlines flight 17 (MH17) was intentionally shot down. It’s just not clear by whom.
The loss of life – including Dr. Joep Lange and several other people who were instrumental in HIV research and advocacy – is tragic, made worse by its magnitude.
In the immediate aftermath of the crash, more than one person was quoted in media reports asking, “What if the cure for AIDS was on that plane?”
That question serves to heighten – and at the same time demean – the tragedy. Continue reading →
Kids in cars: Look before you lock!
I don’t get it, but it happens: On a beautful summer day, an adult forgets there’s a child in the back seat of car and leaves him there while running an errand. Or the adult remembers the child is there and leaves her there because this will take only a minute…
For the third year, the U.S. Department of Transportation’s National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has launched a national(U.S.) radio and internet campaign, “Where’s Baby? Look Before You Lock,” to remind parents, caregivers and grandparents that summer temperatures in a closed car can soar to heatstroke-inducing heights (and worse) in minutes. Continue reading →
Chicago doctors send greetings from 1962
Contents of Grant Hospital time capsule | Courtesy Eric Nordstrom
In 1962, doctors at Chicago’s Grant Hospital left a letter for those who followed them 50 years later, offering their predictions about what the practice of medicine would look like in 2012.
The letter, and other contents of a time capsule, were revealed recently by Eric Nordstrom,who owns and operates Urban Remains, an architectural salvage firm.
Nordstrom found the capsule when the hospital building was demolished in 2009. At that time, he returned some of the box’s contents, such as reports, to the surviving doctors who wrote them. But he has made the letter public only recently, in an article on the Urban Remains website. Continue reading →
‘Wellcome’ addition to images in the public domain
Credit: Annie Cavanagh, Wellcome Images
Earlier this year – but only recently reported by the Public Domain Review – over 100,000 images from the historical holdings of London’s Wellcome Library were made freely available through the Wellcome Images website.
They were released under the Creative Commons-Attribution only licence and can be downloaded directly from the website for any personal or commercial use. Continue reading →
And… we’re back!
Murray’s Revie
w has been on hiatus for the last several weeks owing to a family medical emergency. We now return to our regularly-scheduled programming…~TM
Medical diphthongs, or ‘a’ before ‘e’ (except when it’s just ‘e’)
Credit:
Claudio Divizia/Terry Murray
To “ae” or not to “ae”—that was indeed the question put to Dr. Anne Curzan (PhD) by the “Department of Orthopaedic Surgery” at a medical school recently.
Dr. Curzan, professor of English at the University of Michigan, where she also holds appointments in linguistics and the School of Education, spelled out her reasons for coming down on the side of the ‘ae’ vowel diphthong in the Chronicle of Higher Education.
The unnamed medical school department consulted her because the department wanted to retain the diphthong, but there was “a higher level administrative decision” to drop it. The department argued that ‘orthopaedic’ is the only correct spelling for who its members are.
Dr. Curzan said she sided with the “department members’ right to spell orthopaedic as they wish,” not because they are right and the adminstration is wrong, and not deferring to the roots of the word, which she called “a poor justification.”
Her reason for agreeing to the diphthong was based on an interesting combination of prevailing standards and human (or at least professional) rights. Continue reading →
Do you see what I see? When you do, you won’t be able to unsee it
That’s the logo for this year’s FIFA World Cup at the left.
According to FIFA, the logo — chosen by a seven-member judging panel from more than 125 submissions — shows three victorious hands together around a soccer ball. The “uplifting humanitarian notion” of interlinked hands are rendered in the yellow and green, with the type below in the blue of the national flag of Brazil, where the 2014 World Cup is being held.
Some people have seen a facepalm. Now do you still the ball? Not likely. Continue reading →
Researcher proposes mandatory mental health screening for university students
Credit: alexsokolov
A Northwestern University researcher has proposed that all university students undergo mandatory mental health screening to uncover and treat depression and other conditions.
“The challenge is that we can’t help what we can’t see,” Dr. Simon Williams (PhD) wrote recently in the Chronicle of Higher Education.
“The only real way to uncover and aid sub- and pre-clinical depression, anxiety, and other conditions is through some form of screening,” said Dr. Williams, a medical sociologist who is research associate at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago. Continue reading →
Quotable: “There is no room for callousness in the business of healing”
“The medical profession—beset by too many technocratic physicians steeped in dazzling science—has been scrambling lately to restore its compassion, its capacity to cope with patient anguish. Medicine wrestles to comfort those in pain and devises intricate strategies to strike sacred connections with human beings who are ill. There is no room for callousness in the business of healing….
“Inserting compassion into the patient-doctor relationship is not just a nice touch or a polite gesture. Sound data demonstrate that a warm, empathetic approach improves clinical outcomes, bolsters immune systems, increases patient satisfaction, and even augments professional gratification among physicians…”
– Dr. Benjamin Corn, professor and chairman of the Institute of Radiotherapy at Tel Aviv Medical Center and a co-founder of the NGO Life’s Door – “On Shavuot, the Book of Ruth Offers Doctors a Prescription for Compassion,” Tablet magazine, 3 June 2014
Murray's Review of Medical Journalism 