And honestly, not a moment too soon. This will be my last post for the year. Tomorrow I am going to enjoy my daughter and my partner, and head to Baltimore to ring in the new year with good friends. But today, I thought I’d leave you with a little inspiration to carry us into 2011.
Remember the saga of the 2 nurses in Texas who were fired and faced felony charges for bringing an anonymous complaint against a physician with whom they worked? One was tried and acquitted, the other had her charges dropped, but both lost their jobs? In July I posted that the TX Medical Board had filed charges against the physician. In August, the 2 nurses settled their suit against the hospital and others, asserting they’d been subjected to malicious prosecution and denied their 1st Amendment rights. This week, the state brought felony charges against the physician.
WHO has an upcoming webinar on Injury Surveillance, January 13th at 10:00 CET (click here to convert this to your time zone). Participation is free, but requires signing up for their webinar mailing list in order to get an invite (instructions after the jump). You can also check out their archived offerings on child injury prevention and violence prevention, easily accessed on their site.
What could be better on a Monday morning than an STD slideshow? Right. I figure this 1st day back to work post-Christmas, I’d give you all something easy. Especially since so many folks are off this week. Over at Medscape they have this slideshow, and while it’s more diagnosis and management than many of you need, nothing beats pictures to help us build the pathology vs. trauma vs. normal variant differential diagnosis list that’s critical in sexual assault care. Enjoy!
I’m finishing up a trip to Naples, FL, and will be attempting to navigate several airports at the same time many of you will be reading this post. I’ll be doing the whirlwind trip to the CLE for Christmas before taking my daughter down to DC for the remainder of her holiday from school. I hope you’ll be celebrating the holiday (or the time off the holiday affords you if it’s not one you celebrate), surrounded by people you love. As always, a sincere thank you to those of you taking a shift while the rest of us take time off. I figured I’d leave you with a favorite of mine in deference to the season:
JWI’s National Alliance to End Domestic Abuse is hosting a webinar January 11th from 12-1pm ET, Domestic Violence: Its Impact on the Workplace. The webinar is free, but preregistration is necessary. The discussion will be led by Kim Wells, Executive Director of the Corporate Alliance to End Partner Violence; Jane Randel, Senior Vice President, Corporate Communications & Brand Services for Liz Claiborne Inc.; and Jeremy Bruce, Manager, Employee Relations for Verizon Wireless.
BWJP, NRCDV and NNEDV are co-hosting two more webinars in their series, Military Experience, Trauma and Intimate Partner Violence. The 1st is January 12th from 2-3:30: Challenges Faced by Female Veterans. The speakers will be Anu Bhagwati, Executive Director, and Rachel Natelson, Legal Adviser, Service Women’s Action Network (SWAN). You can register for it here.
This week, several new sexual violence-related campaigns have come across my desk–actually, across my Facebook page, which is far better organized than my desk. I thought I’d take a minute to share them, as they are all very different, but very thought-provoking. The first comes from our friends at EVAW, who have launched their Start By Believing campaign (PDF of the press release here; Facebook page here). “Start by Believing is a public awareness campaign uniquely focused on the public response to sexual assault. Because a friend or family member is typically the first person a victim confides in after an assault, each individual‘s personal reaction is the first step in a long path toward justice and healing. Knowing how to respond is critical—a negative response can worsen the trauma and foster an environment where sexual assault predators face zero consequences for their crimes.”
Did you miss out on some sessions this year in Pittsburgh? Did you miss out on Pittsburgh altogether? Well, you can get the audio recordings of some of the sessions over at the IAFN Online CE site. If you attended, they’re free for you to access (although it was hard to tell from the site if there is an additional fee for the actual CEUs–definitely check); those of you who didn’t, but still want to access them can pay for the full bundle and listen at your leisure.
Over at Medscape, there are a few things of interest I thought I’d share. The 1st is from their roundup of the most read nursing articles of 2010. Not surprisingly, the 2nd most read article of the year was this one on nurses and bullying. Not really a big shock, since it continues to be a pervasive issue in the profession.
OVC is sponsoring a web forum December 16th at 2pm ET: Serving Crime Victims with Mental Illness. The offering is a question and answer session in real time, although it is archived for viewing as able. I have to admit it’s not my favorite way to convey information, but it’s a good topic and the forum is easy to visit as your schedule allows. You can submit questions to the forum’s speakers here.
WCSAP is hosting a webinar December 16th from 11-12:15 pm PT, Transgender Youth Services: Understanding, Serving, Celebrating. The session will be led by Michael Munson and Loree Cook-Daniels of FORGE. The session is free; register for it here.
Time once again for Articles of Note. All of these are from the late November/December/January issues and electronic previews. As always, please keep in mind this in no way a comprehensive list; simply items that have caught my attention from a selection of peer-reviewed journals. Links lead to PubMed abstracts; from there you can choose what’s worth a.) paying for; b.) a pilgrimage to your nearest medical library; or c.) downloading via the full-text access you possibly have at your disposal.
I have included both an embedded list of this month’s articles AND the usual Scribd list (for those of you who want a print out). Sorry for the length of the posting, but this should hopefully meet everyone’s needs.
If you’re a Facebook user, definitely check out the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s new site, VetoViolence. It’s billed as the CDC’s online prevention portal, and I’m looking forward to seeing how it’s used. It’s brand new, so there’s not a lot there yet.
And stay tuned tomorrow for this month’s Articles of Note…
For the next couple weeks, with so few online offers taking place live, I will be highlighting resources that might be helpful to forensic clinicians and allied professionals. Let’s start with one of my regularly visited sources for information, VAWNet. They have a number of special collections available, but the one I want to highlight today is their collection on human trafficking.We’ve been talking a lot about trafficking in my world as of late, and this is a really good single stop for a wide variety of trafficking information, up to date and beautifully-linked.
Stop It Now is hosting a webinar December 7th from 9am, Competing Meanings of Childhood: Implications for Child Sexual Abuse Prevention. From the site: “As a child and family serving professional, have you ever thought about how assumptions about childhood impact your work or that of your agency or even policies that relate to your work? In this presentation Dr. Dominic Pasura of the Centre for Applied Childhood Studies, University of Huddersfield, UK, explores different meanings of children and childhood internationally and their significance in the prevention of child sexual abuse.”
Happy Hanukkah to those of you celebrating. I’ll be attending the National Menorah Lighting here in DC tonight, and in the spirit of gift-giving holidays everywhere, I have compiled 10 gifts perfect for giving to members of your team. Even better, all of them benefit organizations and/or causes near and dear to our hearts here at FHO.