It’s the first blog of March, which can only mean it’s time for the reading round up- what’s new, what’s hot, and what I’ve found interesting over the last couple of weeks. Without further ado…
The NSQIP risk calculator is definitely helpful for most patients. However, in patients who undergo lap colectomy and have complications, it may not provide the whole picture.
Much as we discovered a decade or more ago that it was our use of benzodiazepines for sedation in the ICU that was making patients delirium, the next practice that we have to question is the use of restraints. Clearly we have to keep our patients safe, sometimes from themselves, but this definitely adds a complexity that will be interesting to sort out.
My good friend Rob Cartotto demonstrates what I have long suspected to anecdotally be true, that what we are ordering in terms of tube feeds for burn patients is more than what they are actually getting. My pragmatic solution has been to start calculating their total requirements for 24 hours, then “guesstimate” how many hours a given patient will be off. I hope it’s getting us closer to target.
This eloquent commentary makes a cogent argument why palliative care needs to be a part of our training of the next generation of physicians. We’ll also rely heavily on them to “mentor up” because this is part of a huge culture change.
And, last but not least, it’s not in print yet but we’re looking forward to some great discussion next week about NSAIDs and anastomotic breakdown.
Current non-medical reading? I just polished off The Burgess Boys. Mixed review from me, if you want to read it go in with the knowledge that the characters are a bit two-dimensional and the story is a bit oddly told.