I blame my tech background for being intensely suspicious of pretty much all AI. The AI developed by MIT for early detection of preliminary stages of breast cancer on mammograms that was trained on an extremely rigorously vetted and sanitized data set is probably the only breed of AI I would actually trust in medicine.

I once had ideas about creating a learning algorithm (not quite as complex as AI and not a black box) that uses data from medical professional input to generate suggestions for triage and protocols in emergency medicine. My idea was to feed it the triage notes, vitals, labs, diagnosis, and disposition with patient demographics (and NO PII) to create a statistical model that would look at the triage notes and the intake vitals to make a suggestion for triage level and empiric labs/testing to expedite care.

Obviously, the triage nurse (or any other staff member, really) could override it and input a higher level of triage because there’s no good way to reliably teach a machine gestalt or heuristics. A really experienced healthcare provider will almost always have a good sense for which patients are currently just compensating and will be crumping shortly. I just think having a statistical model that puts in empiric orders to get stuff started while the patient is still waiting to be brought back could expedite care a lot.

The thing that made me think of this is the fact that every time I have seen a kiddo come through the ER with vision changes that were not fixed by glasses, they had some kind of intracranial mass, and it would just make stuff go so much faster if the head CT was already done by the time the physician could actually see the patient. (Or patients that are on the border of meeting SIRS criteria having a bunch of labs already done.)

I need to find a way to set up email alerts or something when there’s updates on this kind of stuff. Since I’m looking at emergency med or primary care, this would be super relevant to my future practice.

I was very grateful that none of the cadavers we had at my medical school were John/Jane Does, and that we have a memorial service for the cadavers every year and invite the families to express gratitude.

I worked as a scribe and as an ER tech in a Level 1 peds hospital. I’m not even done with med school and I’ve already punched that card more times than I care to remember.

Thank you!

Do you know the name of this sculpture or the name of the artist?

MRI sometimes uses a non-radioactive contrast depending on what you’re trying to get images of. MRI is probably the safest imaging modality, but it’s very expensive, kind of difficult sometimes due to how long it takes, and isn’t useful for every kind of imaging that needs to be done.

That is a deeply unfortunate genetic mutation. As if life weren’t hard enough for them already.

Humans kind of have that with HPV. Get your vaccines!

A lot of “tumors” seen on wild animals are fungal infections from invasive fungal species brought by humans. It really sucks because fungal infections are very hard for mammalian immune systems to fight without help from antifungal medications.

I once got to meet a Tasmanian Devil baby at a zoo. The zookeeper was carrying him around in a little pouch to keep him comfy while his mom was getting a vet checkup. (The picture is one I found on google because the picture I took is buried in some backup folder from about 6 phones ago)

I was about to comment a similar sentiment. I didn’t realize I stopped existing or had my gender identity reassigned because I’m on lemmy instead of other social media.

This is the mindset I have to keep myself in while working in medicine. I can’t save every patient. Some of them will die in my care, but that won’t stop me from trying to help the next one.

I’m saying that getting methamphetamine as a replacement for Adderall is a terrible idea because of the problems with contamination and legal repercussions. If you don’t have access to the psychiatric care, getting started with drugs that are cut with god knows what at highly unreliable doses is not likely to make things much better, definitely not in the long run.

I would recommend against using street drugs in place of prescriptions because of the aforementioned reasons. I’ve seen what street drugs do to people while working in ERs and in a clinical setting, and it’s just not worth it.

The problem is that the purity of the drug you’re getting is not guaranteed or regulated at all. For a lot of recreational/street drugs, the bigger problem is often the filler and crap they get cut with. If you’re paying enough for actually reliably pure drugs, you might as well just pay out of pocket for the psychiatrist and avoid the risk of drug charges.

These are incredibly important reports to publish and spread awareness of…but I kind of wish I hadn’t read them today.

That would be more similar to the Caduceus anyways given the number of snakes.

That’s why it’s a disagreement. I’m not necessarily saying their opinions are factually incorrect, just that they are devoid of empathy, morally reprehensible, and antithetical to the teachings of the religious figure that they are statistically likely to claim to be faithful to. A lack of empathy should not be rewarded.

Typically, the things I disagree with are the things like bad faith arguments, lies, rudeness, or bigoted ideals that purport that not all humans deserve equal rights, etc.