I am starting a blog..need links

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or do you have one? It would be a place for you to write like you have here. Just wondering.

I just looked at your transcription blog. I love it! I had added to my favorites. What a great idea.

I mentioned this a few messages below, but the blog has its first post. I am NOT supporting any Ad things on there and will not be making anything off this.

If you have a link that would be useful to others to write their gov't reps, companies, news sources, etc, feel free to post them or e-mail me so i can get them up there. I am also looking for any news stories or any information we can get. One way or the other, we might be able to make a difference.

who says what he REALLY thinks about the JCAHO. Funny, I found it on Google when I typed in JCAHO and q.i.d. since I wasn't sure what to do about q.i.d. ........

The Death Star of American Medicine

I wish I had written this (JCAHO Unplugged; registration required), because it gives voice to the feelings that I (and probably 99% of the physicians in this country) have about the Death Star of American medicine -- JCAHO. A few excerpts (emphasis is mine):

That is why it really upsets me to watch the JCAHO people walk through my hospital like they were navigating a toxic waste dump. What upsets me even more is the utter paralysis of normal activity that occurs months before their visit and the huge sums of money spent on mock drills and consultants to prepare for the JCAHO invasion. JCAHO (the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organization) arouses more fear in hospitals than MRSA gone wild, and their "visit" has a greater institutional paralytic effect than circulating a neuromuscular depolarizing agent through the ventilation system.

A few unsigned verbal orders, or an anesthesiologist carrying a syringe of Anectine in his or her scrubs, or not locking up I.V. bottles of normal saline will result in conditional or provisional approval, and failure to take remedial action within 30 days may result in the death penalty, which for the hospital means bad PR, and more significantly, loss of all federal money. That's right, you can get the chair for parking tickets in the JCAHO world.

It doesn't matter that the hospital admits 50,000 patients a year, saves countless lives and performs daily miracles. Write q.i.d. twice and you can get your liver transplant someplace else.

A response by Russell Massaro, MD, FACP, Executive Vice President Accreditation and Certification Operations, JCAHO, follows Dr. Cossman's screed. The only thing I can say about it is that he makes clear that unannounced surveys will be forthcoming in 2006. Oh, joy!

A lot of the press in the past few days has been discussing issues such as oversight, accountability, and clearly expressed legal authority. JCAHO operates without any real semblence of these niceties, and does so with all the subtlety of a bureaucracy run by Darth Vader. Watching hospital administrators lose bowel and bladder control the minute a JCAHO inspection is brought up has always reminded me of Vader's underlings wilting in his presence --- and for good reason. Without the JCAHO seal of approval, they cannot operate an otherwise well-run, caring facility. The organization, as it was originally intended, was designed to ensure a basic level of safety for all hospitals. It has now become yet another "certifying" agency which must come up with new "critical" problems to fix in order to ensure its ongoing existence (those of you who have gone through the most recent mental masturbatory experience of banning QD and QID in orders know what I mean). What is most galling to me, however, is that hospitals must fork over a hefty sum for these frequent torture sessions, and the inspections are done not by practicing physicians or nurses, but by folks who long ago gave up the difficulties of actually caring for patients for the safety of a clipboard to hide behind.

Maybe I have my metaphors mixed up --- JCAHO comes in like the Death Star, but leaves no room for different institutions to solve problems in their own way. The JCAHO mantra can really be translated as "Resistance is futile. You will be assimilated!" As a result, I suppose JCAHO is really The Borg.

http://www.enchantedlearning.com/crafts/christmas/handwreath/ You can use any paper, but if you use tissue paper it may not even make it home.

Don't have time to look for more, but one time in school we had cheap glass bulb ornaments and we wrote our name and year on them with glue and then sprinkled with glitter. You could probably get bulbs/glitter at dollar store.

You might also want to go the dollar store and look for craft kits. I buy kits every year from a craft store and they usually make 6-12. If the tables in the room were in groups you could just take a paper plate and pour 1 kit out on each and they could share, or you could divide up the items into a baggie and make copies of the instructions.

You could take bagels (from the bakery outlet stores and cheap) and smear with peanut butter and then press in bird seed, attach some thread and hang on a tree near their classroom - unless you are wanting them to have something to take home. Can also use pine cones for this.

Buy some plain gingerbread man cookies and tubes of frosting and sprinkles and let them decorate them.

Starting from mtstars.com, clicking Forums, clicking Main Board leads you to page not found.

Wow, these are all great. More to add to my already long list of resource links.

I'm also looking for oncology work and would love to find out where you two are working.

the other 2 links I provided evidently didn't hold your interest because voterfraud.org is loaded with the FACTS state-by-state.......if it's too lengthy for your reading comprehension, just open up Ohio and Florida...

As an MTSO, you should never give the "answer", but the way you found it, i.e., the links. This way they will 1. learn how to find it themselves and 2. stop bothering you. It does work, even though I must say that every day is a learning process in this field.