Acupuncture for pain relief in the ER

In January 2017, our very own Aurora West Allis Medical Center initiated a study offering acupuncture treatments to ER patients.  While some other hospitals have outpatient acupuncture clinics, we are currently the only Wisconsin hospital to present patients with this treatment option in the emergency setting.  

This article from Medscape goes into further detail about how the study was conducted (it also requires you to sign up for a free account).

So far, patient feedback regarding pain reduction has been promising.  Additionally, patients have reported that the acupuncture treatment helped reduce nausea, anxiety, and stress.

NPR's Book Concierge

Are you looking for something new to read over the holidays?  Searching for a gift for your favorite bibliophile?  NPR just published an interactive guide to great reads from 2018.  Even better, you can sort their suggestions by many different filters (genre, length, tone, etc).  

Have you read any of their suggestions already?  Are there any they missed?  Let us know in the comments!

https://apps.npr.org/best-books-2018/#/tag/science

Podcasts we're listening to - November 2018

A few weeks ago, I asked our blog readers what podcasts they're listening to.  Here are some of their recommendations:

Hidden Brain https://www.npr.org/podcasts/510308/hidden-brain 

NPR’s Shankar Vendantam “uses science and storytelling to reveal the unconscious patterns that drive human behavior, shape our choices and direct our relationships.” Sounds too dry? I assure you it’s not. If you like NPR, you’ll like this podcast.

Welcome to Night Vale http://www.welcometonightvale.com/listen/ 

I’ve heard this described as Twin Peaks meets the X-Files,  but really this fiction podcast (masquerading as a radio show) defies definition. Dive into the town of Night Vale and find out for yourself.

Sawbones http://www.maximumfun.org/shows/sawbones  

A podcast on the weirder side of the history of medicine by physician Sydnee McElroy and her husband.

Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me: https://www.npr.org/programs/wait-wait-dont-tell-me The super funny news quiz from NPR. How much do I love this podcast? I went the live taping in Milwaukee a few months ago.

Fiat Lex: https://fiatlex.podbean.com/  

A Dictionary Podcast – If you’re nerdy about words and/or enjoyed Kory Stamper’s book Word by Word, this is the podcast for you.

Stuff You Missed in History Class:  

https://www.missedinhistory.com/podcasts  

Two engaging hosts talk about historical people and events that you might not know about - or forgot you knew about.

Lend Me Your Ears: 

http://www.slate.com/articles/slate_plus/shakespeare.html  

A podcast that explains the politics in 6 of Shakespeare’s plays and draws parallels to current politics. Same stuff, different century.

In the Dark: https://www.apmreports.org/in-the-dark

Two amazing seasons from investigative reporter Madeline Baran. The second seasons on the Curtis Flowers case was recently cited in a US Supreme Court brief and the Court has agreed to hear his appeal!

Dr Death:  https://wondery.com/shows/dr-death/

A neurosurgeon, horrific surgery outcomes, and the system that kept him practicing. Don’t listen if you have surgery coming up soon!

Along these same lines, heard any good audiobooks lately?  Send your recommendations to annie dot lipski at aurora dot org (take that, you gnarly web-crawling bots!) and watch for them in an upcoming WHSLA blog post.

I intend for book, podcast, and audiobook recommendations to be ongoing, so please feel free to send them to me at any time!  With the holidays and the end of my semester coming up, they might be delayed a bit, but I promise to post them eventually!

copyright clipartpanda

The fascinating science behind phantom limbs

After working on a recent search about mirror therapy for phantom limb pain I wanted to find out more about the brain and why phantom limb sensations in those who have lost a limb, but also in people born without limbs. TED-Ed takes us behind the current science of phantom limbs. 

Where will AI show up next?

The only time I've attended SLA I was smart enough to sit in on a session led by Mary Ellen Bates, an independent information professional, on super searching tips. Since then I've been following her blog, "The Reluctant Entrepreneur". This week she wrote a short, but eye-opening post about artificial intelligence and Google's use of voice recognition. What I found especially interesting, and a little disturbing, was that since 2007  Google found a way to leverage "volunteers" (including perhaps you and me) to help tweak its speech-recognition software. 

In Mary Ellen's words...

• "So here’s why I’m going to be watching Google carefully. Back in 2007, Google launched a speech-recognition project – Google Voice Local Search, a.k.a. GOOG-411. You could call a toll-free number, speak the name of a local business, and Google would respond with the address and phone number of that business. Google wasn’t doing this just to be a good citizen but to fine-tune its speech-recognition software on willing test subjects. Now, speech recognition is an embedded feature of Google Maps, Google Assistant, and Google Keyboard. Google even offers a free speech-to-text API for developers figuring out new uses for speech-enabled technology."

• "So when I see Google trying out ways to automate human interactions, I pay attention. As we become accustomed to voice dictation and predictive typing when we send text and email messages, will AI do away with routine human interactions? Or, just as Google Translate has made my travel in non-anglophone countries so much easier, will AI overcome a problem that I didn’t imagine possible to automate?"

Read more...

2019 WHSLA Election

Dear WHSLA Members,

In the absence of an Elections Committee, one of my responsibilities as WHSLA President is to run an election.  This simple task brings new blood to our WHSLA Leadership, and keeps the organization  running well into the future. 

For 2019, we are voting on

1 President Elect

and 2 WHSLA Board Members. 

The bylaws say we are allowed to go ahead with the election even if we have only one candidate for each office.    Thank you to our candidates for their willingness to serve.  Let’s make it official, WHSLA!

President Elect – 2019   Candidate – Vote for 1 Holly Egebo, MLIS, BS Current experience:  Medical Librarian at Aurora BayCare Medical Center, Green Bay Past experience /degrees:   I have a background in Library work including University and other Hospital Libraries.  I have also taught English and worked in bookstores.  My education includes the University of South Dakota (Bachelor of Science, Library Science Education), the University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee (Master of Science in Library and Information Science.) and various courses at Northeast Wisconsin Technical College. Information about myself:  I love attending conferences and taking the CEs offered there, doing literature searches, reading, planning and sleeping at the end of busy days.
At Large WHSLA Board Members 2019-2020 Candidates – Vote for 2
·        Diane Giebink-Skoglind, MLIS, BBA, RT(R) Current experience: Medical Librarian at ThedaCare Past experience/degrees: I have a background in healthcare (radiology) and pharmaceuticals (women’s health).  My education consists of an Associate’s degree in Radiologic Technology (RT(R)(ARRT)), Mercy Medical Center School of Radiologic Technology – Oshkosh), Bachelors in Business Administration (BBA, University of Wisconsin – Oshkosh) and Master’s in Library and Information Studies (MLIS, University of Wisconsin – Madison). Information about myself: I enjoy gardening, reading, cooking and traveling with my husband Mike and my daughter Rebekah.	·        Deb Knippel, M.S. Deb Knippel, M.S. is a Reference Librarian with the Marshfield Clinic Health System.  Previously, she was a Library and Information Consultant with Ministry Health Care (Ascension) for 12 years.  Deb’s primary duties include assisting employees with copyright permissions, reference questions and literature searching.  Deb lives in Stevens Point. She is married, with two daughters and six grandchildren.

Cast your votes here (It will only take about 30 seconds) : 

WHSLA 2019 Election 

Only current WHSLA Members are invited to vote.  Therefore, I will be emailing current members separate from the much larger WHSLA Listserv with the survey link where they can cast their votes.  If you are a current WHSLA Member and did not receive my invitation to vote, please check your spam folder, and then contact me for an invitation.

Voting will be open until November 21, 2018, at 5 pm. 

Official announcements will be made at the Annual Business Meeting in December (TBD).

Thank you for your participation.

Michele Matucheski, MLS, AHIP

WHSLA President

Michele dot Matucheski at ascension dot org

The importance of critical thinking

Every day, we're faced with a deluge of information coming at us from all sides. This article from Wired discusses how we can use critical thinking to distinguish between reputable and non-reputable information.  I know that as library people, most of you probably already have a good handle on this.  But it's an interesting read all the same.

US military fought venereal disease through comics? A true story

I know what you're thinking. This blog post title must be a bait and switch. Surely the US military didn't create comics to wage "war" on venereal disease? Ah, but we did. A picture is worth a thousand words, right? Well these WWII cartoons cut straight to the chase in trying to keep soldiers free of disease and being smart about sexual activity.

"Going into WWII, troops were told what their main enemies would be: Hitler, Mussolini, Hirohito, and … gonorrhea. In order to prevent the type of rampant venereal disease that plagued the U.S. military during WWI, in the late 1930s, the government commissioned a series of colorful PSAs aimed at warning troops of the dangers that lurked with randy pleasures. From disease-riddled French prostitutes to Nazis dancing arm in arm with sexy skeletons, these ads were both fascinating and frightening. Initially drawing inspiration from ads created by the Works Progress Administration under FDR’s New Deal, artists used a wide range of techniques to get the message out, from dramatic comic book pamphlets to funny slogans like “Fool the Axis — use Prophylaxis!. ”

Read more

Launch slideshow

https://www.good.is/slideshows/the-militarys-graphic-design-war-on-venereal-disease#9

What are you listening to?

Thank you to everyone who shared so many great reads with us!  Since I got such an enthusiastic response, here's the next question I'd like you to answer:

Heard any good podcasts lately?  What are they about?  Why are you enjoying them?

Here's one to get you started.  I've been enjoying The Lazy Genius Collective.  Kendra's all about helping you figure out how to be "a genius about the things that matter and lazy about the things that don't."  Sometimes I get caught up in all the things I "should" be doing, and feel terrible about not getting to them, despite working/attending college full time.  This podcast is great for helping me manage that stress.

Please send your answers to annie dot lipski at aurora dot org* and I'll compile them into a blog post.

 

*Did you know that bots can find your email address in blog posts and send you tons of junk mail unless you write it in a weird format they can't read?  Someone just learned this the hard way!

Book Review: Cutting for Stone

What are you Reading?  
Cutting for Stone

by Abraham Verghase 
[ISBN : 9780375714368]

Review by Michele Matucheski, 
Ascension Mercy Hospital / Ascension Wisconsin

I stumbled on this book a few years ago, and it quickly became one of my all-time favorite reads—ever.  It’s written by a physician, so we get an insider’s view of the clinical side of the medicine—which was particularly interesting for a Medical Librarian.  There are several fascinating expositions on various clinical topics, surgeries, and treatments.  Not only is Verghase a physician, but a wonderful writer storyteller, too.  He was born in Ethiopia and was himself displaced by political upheaval there.  He had to leave his homeland, not unlike the characters in the novel. 

Cutting for Stone is an EPIC story that spans multiple continents (India, Africa, North America) as well as generations.  It begins in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, at “Missing” Hospital – the charity hospital run on a shoestring by The Carmelite Sisters.  On a prayer and a wing, they made it work, and managed to marshal the supplies and staff to keep it going …   And we meet some of the magnificent and flawed people who work there.  Dr Stone, the brash surgeon, develops a working relationship with one of the nuns, Sr. Mary Joseph Praise.  Their secret union begets twins, Marion and Shiva.  But Sr. Mary Joseph dies in childbirth, and the surgeon disappears, unable to bear the grief or responsibility of raising the boys.  Two other local physicians – Hema and Ghosh, transplants from India – raise the boys who both go into medicine themselves. 

Some of the main themes:

              How geography shapes destiny

            Love, Betrayal and Loss

            Being an outsider / Otherness

            Immigrant Story / Migration

            The Haves and the Have-nots

            Miracles

            Food

            Medicine

           

I was struck at how working in a “third world” country aptly prepared Marion for work in an inner-city hospital in the US, where gang violence offered a steady stream of organ donors for wealthier clients in other cities – one of which his father, the brilliant Dr. Stone, worked as a transplant surgeon.   

It all comes together in the end as just the right people converge to do what only they could have done to move the story forward.    I fell in love with so many of the characters …  I wished Hema and Ghosh had been my own parents—or maybe that I could be the kind of parents they were-- always doing the right things for the ones they loved, patient, kind, loving ...    And the Ethiopian food …   Just writing about it now, makes me long to see these characters all over again.  I think I may have to re-read the book!

It was the kind of book that was so chock full of themes, happenings, and events, that I wished I had been in a book club so I could discuss it with other people.  There was so much there …  I was sad to finish it, and wanted to keep the characters around a while longer. 

A few choice quotes:

“The key to your happiness is to own your slippers, own who you are, own how you look, own your family, own the talents you have, and own the ones you don't. If you keep saying your slippers aren't yours, then you'll die searching, you'll die bitter, always feeling you were promised more. Not only our actions, but also our omissions, become our destiny.”

“Tell us please, what treatment in an emergency is administered by ear?".... I met his gaze and I did not blink. "Words of comfort," I said to my father.” 

“According to Shiva, life is in the end about fixing holes. Shiva didn't speak in metaphors. Fixing holes is precisely what he did. Still, it's an apt metaphor for our profession. But there's another kind of hole, and that is the wound that divides family. Sometimes this wound occurs at the moment of birth, sometimes it happens later. We are all fixing what is broken. It is the task of a lifetime. We'll leave much unfinished for the next generation.” 

“That's the funny thing about America--the blessed thing. As many people as there are to hold you back, there are angels whose humanity makes up for all the others. I've had my share of angels.” 

If it seems too long to read, consider listening to the audio book.  The accents add to the story. 

If you want to know more, read on …

Cutting for Stone (Good Reads)

Cutting for Stone (Amazon)   

Tiny books!

Since we're talking so much about reading this week, I thought you might be interested in this article.  In October, Dutton publishing released its batch of tiny books.  These editions are "the size of a cellphone and no thicker than your thumb, with paper as thin as onion skin. They can be read with one hand — the text flows horizontally, and you can flip the pages upward, like swiping a smartphone."  This format originated in the Netherlands in 2009 as the "dwarsligger."

And while horizontally-oriented books are new to the US, tiny books are not.  In 1943, the War Department and the publishing industry sent 120 million lightweight paperbacks to American troops fighting World War II.  Molly Manning's excellent When books went to war: the stories that helped us win World War II is an interesting read for history buffs and book lovers.

Book Review: Killers of the Flower Moon

As promised, here's a longer book review.  Thanks to WHSLA Treasurer Robert Koehler for the following:

Killers of the Flower Moon / David Grann

In Killers of the Flower Moon, David Grann focuses on what became know as the “Osage Reign of Terror.” Officially taking place from 1920 through 1924, during this period members of this Oklahoma Indian tribe began to be killed: some murdered outright, many others dying under mysterious circumstances. Ineffectual, and often incompetent, local law enforcement failed to make any headway in finding who was responsible for the murders. This is not surprising since many were bribed to turn a blind eye. Desperate, the Osage finally convinced the Federal Bureau of Investigation to take on the case in 1924. Newly appointed as director of the agency, a young J. Edgar Hoover was eager to do so, feeling that if the case could be solved, it would bolster his credentials and win greater respect for the Bureau at a time when it was still fairly new and poorly funded.

Grann details the ensuing investigation, which reads like the plot of a first class detective story. And typical of such stories, Killers of the Flower Moon has a surprising twist even after the series of murders was seemingly solved. 

This book brings to light a shameful chapter in American history. It documents how the lust to acquire the Osage wealth led highly respected members of the surrounding white community to turn to murder to achieve their ends. This story of blatant racism, greed, and corruption should be included in every school textbook. Killers of the Flower Moon is an indictment not only of the criminals involved, but of an entire culture that fostered such an activity.

What we're reading - Part 2

Thanks again to all the WHSLA members who have sent me book reviews.  Please continue to email them to me and I'll add them to the blog.  I'll keep them anonymous, so don't worry if you're shy about contributing.  If you're not shy and want to write a full-length review with your name attached, I'm happy to post those as well!

Here's the next installment of brief reviews:

The Zookeeper’s Wife by Diane Ackerman

A nonfiction book written in a flowing narrative (think Erik Larson) about a couple that helped hide Jews at their zoo in Poland during WWII. Very well researched!


The Mystery of Mercy Close by Marian Keyes

Funny Irish contemporary fiction featuring the Walsh family’s five grown daughters. Just as funny as Janet Evanovich and not as tired as the debate between Ranger and Morelli!


The Lacemaker's Secret by Kathleen Ernst

Chloe Ellefson, curator at Old World Wisconsin, visits Heritage Hill Historical Park in Green Bay to help out, but instead discovers a body in a century-old bake oven. I love this series from Kathleen Ernst, each book has her visiting Wisconsin historic sites and solving mysteries along the way.


Sleeping Beauties by Stephen King & Owen King  

Father and son collaborate on this creepy tale where nearly all the women of the world go to sleep, wrapped in gauzy cocoons.  If anyone tries to wake them, they become spectacularly violent.  It's an enjoyable spooky read for the dark days of fall.  And I really liked the idea of being able to take a long, undisturbed nap.


Call the Midwife series by Jennifer Worth

Love the history of postwar London and the true stories of the people Worth met and worked with. Some of the stories are heart-wrenching but others show the resilience of the people who live and work in the East End.



Eating Mindfully by Susan Albers

Learning how to eat mindfully and see if that makes a difference!

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NaNoWriMo 2018

November is here, and that means it's time for NaNoWriMo!  Every November, creative writing participants set out with the goal of writing 50,000 words in thirty days (that averages 1667 words per day to meet the deadline).  It's a great way to jump start your creativity and to connect with others who are passionate about writing/reading.

I've been participating since 2015.  And while I've only "won" (wrote 50,000+ words) once, it's always a good time.  Plus, "I'm writing a novel" is always fun to say when you have to make awkward small talk.

It's still early in the month.  You can still catch up if you start now!