The Critical Care Practitioner

Lynn Schallom is a research scientist at the Barnes-Jewish Hospital in St. Louis. She published a paper 'Head of Bed Elevation and Early Outcomes of Gastric Reflux, Aspiration, and Pressure Ulcers' in the American Journal of Critical Care in January 2015.

Head of Bed Elevation

There is a conflict between the need to keep a patients head elevated to reduce the incidence of oesophageal reflux and consequent pneumonia, and the prevention of pressure ulcers. Can we do both? In her very small study Lynn seems to show that head of bed elevation is important and that we can. She also highlights some other areas of concern, one of which is the use of the trendelenberg position when sliding patients up the bed. This would seem to put patients at increased risk of aspiration as their secretions are encouraged to run in the 'wrong' direction!

Direct download: CCP_036.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 10:08am EDT

"Have you ever wanted the speaker to fail?"

In this episode of the podcast I speak with Dr Ross Fisher (@ffolliet) about presentation skills. Many of us have sat through 'death by powerpoint' and have come away non the wiser afterwards. Having watched a lot of TED talks I can testify that a good presentation can make a massive difference to what you learn and whether you will be back for more.

Ross tells us some very simple techniques to help us improve the way we put our message across. I think you will find a lot of useful pointers.

I include below some of the books that we mention as well. I have read them all and I can highly recommend them.

You can find Ross's website at prezentationskills.blogspot.co.uk/

Direct download: CCP_035.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 2:36pm EDT

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