Month: May 2009

Medscape has a new CE offering: Suicidal Behavior in Adolescents–Risk Factor Identification, Screening & Prevention. 0.25 CEs are available for both physicians and nurses. Access is free, but registration is required on the site. As with all of their offerings, it’s in a standard article-posttest format; there is also a pretest (2 questions) that must be completed prior to reading the article.

I am looking forward to a (relatively) relaxed mother’s day–if for no other reason than that I don’t have to head to the airport after breakfast (as has been my pattern for the last 4 or 5 Sundays). I do have a boatload of work to catch up on, but not until after I have brunch with my people.

I hope your mother’s day looks relaxing, as well. In honor of the day, a video from one of my favorite performers at one of my favorite venues–Playwright and UNICEF Violence Against Children Goodwill Ambassador Sarah Jones at TED, talking about the many voices of women. Pay special attention to her 1st “guest”: I swear to you it’s my grandmother and every one of her Rummycube pals.

The University of Louisville Health Sciences Center has a free online course on PTSD & traumatic brain injury. Presented by Humana Military Healthcare Services, the course is meant to benefit “both civilian trauma patients and affected service members. Improved quality of care will reduce healthcare costs and morbidity related to these conditions. This course is designed for all physicians who provide care for civilian, veteran, and active duty military patients who have witnessed or have been exposed to serious trauma.”

Some good stuff over at the Sustainability site this week. We talk money, we talk meetings, and we talk about having a passion for the work:

• Resources for starting a non-profit from Idealist, the Foundation Center and others
• A fantastic sustainability framework from the Finance Project
• Creating the often intimidating logic model, for all you grantwriting and evaluation wonks
• Some good (and common sense) tips for running meetings that don’t waste people’s time (a HUGE pet peeve of mine)
• A fantastic Coordinator Q&A with the inimitable Karen Carroll of the Bronx SART.

Enjoy your weekend and your Mother’s Day!

Sitting in the airport in Moline, IL, looking for something completely unrelated, and I came across this podcast from the CDC on electronic aggression. It’s a little over 12 minutes and looks at online bullying and youth violence. You can also view a transcript of the session on the same page, or download a PDF here. For more on the issue, you can check out their related page, which links to other resources, including a brief for educators and caregivers.

I’m a huge fan of The Moth, a nonprofit storytelling website (I think storytelling is the greatest form of communication ever). The site is a catalog of stories from people famous and not-so-much. Writers, comedians and musicians like Malcolm Gladwell, Moby & Lewis Black turn up for unscripted storytelling (that’s the rule) and it’s all captured on audio & published as podcasts. One of those storytellers is Ed Gavagan, a furniture maker and gang violence survivor whose personal story of victimization, and the climb back out is poignant and funny at once. He’s been featured on The Moth twice now, and both podcasts are worth listening to, if only to gain some perspective on the complexities of recovery and the realities of our patients’ lives after they leave our care.

Mickey Sperlich, a community-based nurse midwife, has been coordinating research on a study of PTSD in women in their childbearing year at the University of Michigan’s Institute for Research on Women and Gender. Specifically focusing on mothers with sexual abuse histories, she and colleague Julia Seng published a book, Survivor Moms: Women’s Stories of Birthing, Mothering & Healing After Sexual Abuse. One of my students introduced me to the book and their work last year, but I hadn’t come across anything that would fit with this site–until now.

HRSA has an online course available on addressing health literacy, cultural competency and limited English proficiency for clinicians. The course consists of 5 modules; CEUs/CMEs are available. All that’s available about the course is on the site page:

• Improve your patient communication skills

• Increase your awareness and knowledge of the three main factors that affect your communication with patients: health literacy, cultural competency and low English proficiency

• Implement patient-centered communication practices that demonstrate cultural competency and appropriately address patients with limited health literacy and low English proficiency

The newest Funding Alert (PDF) is available at VAWNet. I’m not sure why it hadn’t occurred to me to highlight the alerts here before now (it seems pretty relevant), but I will try and add them as they come out. If you don’t yet subscribe to the alerts and would like them to show up in your inbox every couple weeks, you can sign up here. In this round: