Recently I’ve been thinking a lot about how new technology will affect my life as an ED doctor. It’s 2018, and the un-ignorable hype surrounding #MedTech is reaching fever pitch. In my opinion, the big players are machine learning, telemedicine, and virtual reality (VR). Their impact promises to be unprecedented across the spectrum of medical environments, […]
How Theme Park, Space Invaders and Go have paved the way for exponential healthcare
I often imagine my retired self looking back at this point in my career, marvelling at how primitive it all was. By that stage, hospital fax machines, handwritten patient notes, stethoscopes, ‘bleeps’ and other relics of a time-gone-by will be collecting dust in the Ancient Medical History Museum. I’ll be a regular visitor at the […]
The Ugly Side of Exercise #RSMFrontline
Last week I attended ‘Frontline resuscitation’, a one-day conference hosted on by the Military Medicine Section of the Royal Society of Medicine (#RSMFrontline). Its aim was to ‘showcase cutting edge developments in resuscitation medicine and provide understanding of how these can be translated to military medicine’. I was one several civilian attendees keen to benefit from some […]
Olympians and Comedians #PerformanceLDN
Traditionally, human factors and performance psychology are low down the priority list (or non-existent) in medical training. Students graduate from medical school with ‘academic-style’ mindsets, arguably ill-prepared for the practical, performance-dependent branches of medicine. In short, our training predisposes us to the yips. But change is afoot. On 24th June, I attended the London Performance Psychology Symposium at the Blizard Institute, close […]
‘My Mental Toughness Manifesto’ Part 4: PROCESS
Everything in aviation we know because someone somewhere died… We have purchased, at great cost, lessons literally bought with blood… We cannot have the moral failure of forgetting these lessons and have to relearn them.” Sully Sullenberger Pilot of Flight 1549, ‘The Miracle on the Hudson’ All frontline healthcare warriors will bear scars from emotionally […]
‘My Mental Toughness Manifesto’ Part 3: PERFORM
‘Practice’ is about building a skillset, and fostering a way of life (via ‘immersion’) that serves to strengthen perception of one’s available resources when crunch time arrives. However, reality dictates that certain scenarios are impossible to prepare for, particularly in the emergency medicine arena. The more chaotic the workplace, the higher the frequency of unavoidable threat appraisals. Therefore, it is crucial […]
‘My Mental Toughness Manifesto’ Part 2: PRACTICE
In MMTM Part 1, two-step cognitive appraisals were explained. This process dictates whether one enters a challenged or threatened mindset in the event where an immediate performance is required under acute stress. Feeling challenged, of course, is one of the two chief components of a mentally tough individual. “I am 100% committed” “I feel challenged” In this post, we […]
