Category: Uncategorized

No wrap-up at the sustainability site today (the blog was quiet while I was on the road). Instead, a new offering from the Government Innovator’s Network and the Initiative to Stop Human Trafficking: Best Practices to Combat Human Trafficking–Forced Labor. It will be held November 16th from 10 AM-12 PM (bummer for any of you west of the Mountain time zone). This webinar will focus on the best practices to combat one of the most invisible forms of human trafficking. The discussion will be moderated by E. Benjamin Skinner, Fellow, Carr Center for Human Rights Policy, Harvard Kennedy School and author of A Crime So Monstrous: Face-to-Face with Modern-Day Slavery. If you can’t attend, these guys are usually pretty good about archiving their sessions, so it should be accessible after the fact.

[UPDATE: Archived version can be found here.]
I’m knocking off early and heading to Savannah, GA for some mandatory fun (family-style). Hope you have a good weekend in store, as well.

IAFN is offering an online virtual tour, Monday, November 16th from 2-3pm ET. This webinar “will help you fully access your membership benefits. Let us connect you to the tools and resources that will enhance your career. You’ll also gain insight into the array of programs, services and resources that are available to you through your relationship with IAFN.”

I’m in Philadelphia and then heading on to Maine this weekend for a DV course we’re teaching up there next week, so things are (and will continue to be) light over at the sustainability site. However, there are a couple things from this week you might find interesting:

• A succession planning webinar, for those of you in (or striving to be in) leadership positions. It’s a critical piece of the work that doesn’t get discussed as much as it should.
• A post about difficult conversations over at the Harvard Business site. It seems like we started talking a lot about ethical communication at the IAFN Assembly in Dallas last year, and the idea has continued to really stick with me. I love that the focus of the post referenced here is about being ambushed by angry confrontation, since it’s a situation most of us don’t handle as gracefully as we’d like.
• The press release regarding the Justice for Survivors of Sexual Assault Act, introduced by Senators Franken, Grassley, Feinstein and Hatch.

It’s a beautiful, sunny day here in Philly, and while I’ll spend most of the day over at the ASC meeting (we’re doing an interesting panel as one of the closing sessions), I have been assured that there will be good Cuban food and a mojito waiting for me at the end of the day. Hope such rewards are in store for you, as well. Have a great weekend!

Many of us have made the leap to the iPhone, and while the vast majority of apps on my phone are for non-work related activities (i.e. finding food and satisfying my news addiction), there are some good ones out there that can benefit the forensic clinician (although I have yet to find a single one that is specific to forensic clinicians, so I guess there’s a project for another day). Below are 10 iPhone apps that are both free and (potentially) helpful. If there are others you like, do me a favor and leave a comment, since this is certainly not the definitive list of what’s out there…

Medscape’s One Question Blog posted a new question the other day: have you, as a nurse, been assaulted and/or threatened by a family member either physically or mentally? If so, please share your experiences. How did you handle the situation immediately? Lock the workplace? How did those in charge in your setting handle your situation?

ReachMD has a roundtable discussion on physicians and executions, facilitated by Dr. Atul Gawande. He is joined by Deborah Denno, professor of law at Fordham University; Dr. Robert Truog, professor of medical ethics, anesthesiology, and pediatrics at Harvard Medical School; and Dr. David Waisel, associate professor of anesthesia at Harvard Medical School, in a conversation about lethal injection, the current protocol, possible alternatives, and the role of health care professionals in putting convicted criminals to death.

As with all ReachMD programs, they’re free of charge, but require site registration to access.

UPDATE: The Family Justice Center Alliance is hosting a webinar on human trafficking Thursday, November 5th, from 9-10am, Pacific. Participation is free, but registration is required. Kay Buck from CAST will be the featured speaker.

You can view content from previous FJCA webinars here.

I know this is an education blog, and I don’t usually do a lot of reflecting here, but this week was a strange and wonderful one, so I hope you’ll give me a bit of latitude. First off, I was sick this week, so some of you I never got a chance to see. I barely remember Thursday, and I literally left the hotel once in the 5 days I was in ATL. Be that as it was, some pretty tremendous work was accomplished at the Assembly, and we were privy to one of the all-time great recreational events ever sponsored by the organization.

There’s now a frequently asked questions page (FAQs) to address some of the most common questions I’m asked. Right hand nav, under Pages.

The Prevention Institute has created a new resource on their website: Preventing Violence: Quick Links. It’s a “web-based compilation of practical, solution-oriented resources for communities working to prevent violence before it occurs“. You’ll find some great tools for community-wide planning and engagement. Best of all, if this is an area of interest for you, you can sign up for email alerts, so that you’re informed as additional resources are added to the page.

We have had a ton of new subscribers over the past week (thank you!), but I’ve noticed several of you are still not official in the system yet. If you’ve signed up to get FHO via email and haven’t received any yet, please check your email in-box (or possibly spam box) for a verification email from Feedburner. You must verify your email address before you can start receiving emails from FHO. This is Feedburner’s process–I don’t actually send the emails out–so make sure to follow through on this step if you want daily posts sent your way.

That is all. Carry on…

Medscape has a new CE offering on the impact of bullying on girls. Seems that a new study indicates that girls have far more long-term psychological sequelae from bullying than boys, a finding particularly interesting to me as the mother of a girl-child. If you’d like to get better acquainted with the study (or at least a brief synopsis of the study), you can check it out and get 0.25 hours of AMA PRA Category 1 credit (or for my nursing friends, .50 contact hours) for your efforts. As always, these offerings are free, but require site registration to participate.

The Missouri Children’s Trust has an archived podcast on their site from Dr. Linda Chamberlain on the early brain development of children. In the podcast, she discusses how witnessing domestic and other violence impacts developing brains. Access is free: listen to it online or download it to your iPod for future use.

The Family Justice Center Alliance is hosting a webinar on maintaining professional boundaries, October 1st from 9-10 am Pacific. The session is free, but preregistration is required.

Today’s post is an incredibly wonky one–many of you will bail right off the bat, and of those of you who decide to check out this video, several of you won’t make it past the 2 minute mark. So what is the fascinating offering I’m posting? It’s actually a session from TED that I find to be really interesting: how statistics fool juries. If you don’t feel like you can commit to the full video, skip ahead to the 14 minute mark, where the reason for my posting the video becomes clear.

Much of the content on the sustainability site this week was pretty self-centered, I must say. But hopefully it’s useful, so, if you’ll indulge me:

• The slides from the session I did at NSAC on sustainability are posted here under Conference Handouts (click here to go to them directly). They’ll be available for 30 days (after that, by request).
• I’ll be hosting a web forum on sustainability for OVC Sept. 30th from 2-3pm
• A fantastic (and relatively brief) tool for managers of all stripes: a guide to effective communication that has some great recommendations for delivering bad news, holding meetings that don’t waste people’s times, and much more.

I’m off to the wilds of Colorado this weekend and will be working from there most of next week. I’ll try and keep posts pretty regular, assuming my connectivity is reasonable. Have a great weekend!

ReachMD, available online and at XM Satellite Radio, has a huge feature this month on disaster medicine. There are more than 60 podcasts, all from within the past year (and many from this month) linked on their page right now. You can download several at a time and listen to them while you’re plodding through administrative tasks, or select one, like Ethical Issues Arising in Natural Disasters, and host a staff discussion around it. There’s a lot that’s conversation-worthy.

Today, President Obama issued a proclamation recognizing the 15th anniversary of the Violence Against Women Act. You can read it here.

Sorry, gang–my time has been consumed this week with NSAC and I just haven’t been able to keep up with posts. We’ll resume Monday with regular offerings. Enjoy your weekend!

Contemporary Forums has a CE offering for both physicians and nurses on managing complex STD cases. It’s 1.5 CEs for $15, downloadable as either a PDF or MP3 (audio). You can catch a preview here if you’re not sure you want to spend the money.