A college student in Arizona has a bowel movement in his dormitory and then goes about his everyday business.  Were this a dormitory at most universities, there would be little interest in this young man’s excrement.  But Arizona State University is very interested in their students’ stool.  They are studying it in an effort to […]

There was a spike in COVID cases a week ago in Danbury, a city in western Connecticut near the New York border.  The state and city responded by urging residents to stay home and avoid large gatherings.  The city also canceled all youth sports for the fall to not leave their homes.  They also limit […]

A 20 year old woman was declared dead by an EMS crew in Michigan, and was later found to be alive in the funeral home. I don’t know the details: Did they apply a monitor and confirm asystole in three leads? Did they work the patient for twenty minutes? Did they give the patient any […]

We are told to keep six feet of distance from each other, but how effective is this the distance in preventing the spread of COVID-19? The answer may well be, yes, it helps, but it is not the full answer. In a new article published in the British medical Journal provides a fuller view of […]

In 2013, I wrote a post called Get Another Job. Here’s how it went: We were dropping off a regular patient at one of the hospitals the other day. A chronic PCP user. The “crusty” old nurse in the psych ward threw a fit complaining that she had just dealt with him two nights before. […]

I have had my temperature taken hundreds of times since COVID hit and I have yet to reach 98 degrees.  I routinely ask the temperature takers if they have ever found anyone with a fever and the answer has routinely been no. Add to that that the latest knowledge is that much of the COVID […]

Commentary in the August 2020 issue of the  American Journal of Industrial Medicine asks: Should public safety shift workers be allowed to nap while on duty? After weighing pros and cons, they conclude:  “Where feasible, administrators of EMS agencies and others with influence over policy and safety should consider novel (yet safe) applications of an intra‐shift napping strategy […]

Riggs is a therapy dog.  Our ambulance service moves him about between various divisions to boost responder morale.  I met him for the first time on Friday.  They brought him out to one of the hospitals, and he came over where I sat in my fly car, and he let me take his picture. When […]