ONEof the most important things missed from these discussions is the concept of preconception care. The US has disproportionately unhealthy patients coming into their pregnancies, and primary care needs to be happening long before pregnancy and families need the resources to plan pregnancy. No one wants to do boring…

I’m a current medical student, and after looking at my options made the decision to have my children during medical school. You have so much more flexibility as a student than as a resident, and many of my classmates take a year for research or master’s degrees anyway. My institution is clearly prepared for a large…

When I was in high school and working in a restaurant we had a few customers like this. One would come in when she knew we generally took our breaks so that she could sit at the staff table. She asked one of us to watch her cats once, and they said that her home was just filled with our takeout containers.

It all feels to me like part of this larger social mindset that children are property and not people, so what really matters is how their rightful owners felt. Children are helpless in these situations, and it’s difficult to strike a balance maintaining their ties to the family while also not risking their safety.

It’s all very consistent with King’s weird second wave goddess feminism, where women are have these deep reservoirs of feminine power that men can’t understand and use that power to prop men up, basically. See also how lesbians in his books are women who have been traumatized by men.

If millennials are into houseplants, it’s just a resurgence because housewives of the 1950s and 1960s were the MASTERS of indoor greenery. Check out your grandma’s ridicuously old and prosperous Christmas cactus.

It’s so hard to get people to become SANEs. My hospital has information about training times and bonuses for it running as a screensaver on every computer and has for the last year, but I think we still aren’t getting them. Not sure how much of what plays into it is inconvenience/still insufficient incentives for…

When the US reports physician shortages, it’s always interesting to see a comparison to other countries.... If you’re having a baby in the UK, for example, chances are you’re seeing a midwife unless you’re a high risk patient. If you’re a family doc in the US who wants to do deliveries, you’ll have to fight tooth and…

When custody cases hit the news there’s inevitably a LOT missing. It’s not the first step to remove children from parents’ custody, and it’s very hard to preemptively remove custody in the hospital. You should see the people who have permanently lost custody of 4+ children who hospitals have to let go home with a…

Probably worth noting per Fisher’s daughter’s statements in combination with the coroner that if Fisher was taking antipsychotics for her mental illness, metabolic side effects (weight gain, diabetes, high cholesterol) are a big consequence of those that contribute to long term health problems for people that depend…

People use their online presences to vent, and it is a skewed sample. I’m into my third trimester now, and some things suck... I’ve had almost all of the symptoms I was promised (pain, heartburn, nausea/vomiting) and look forward to delivery, BUT I sort of love being pregnant. Just last week I was feeling my baby…

I’ve been lucky enough to spend some time in Iowa’s Planned Parenthoods, and PP of the Heartland does such an incredible job. What’s most heartbreaking to me is that Iowa’s PPs serve women beyond Iowa who travel from neighboring states in order to access abortion because their states utilize things like mandatory…

You can actually ask for a referral to a pelvic physical therapist to do guided exercises and get better at isolating the muscles you need to, because a lot of women don’t do kegels very effectively and never realize they’re using the wrong muscles. There are also pessaries for when the muscles just aren’t keeping up…

As a 9 week pregnant woman who just about cried with relief on seeing her embryo’s heartbeat: FUCK THESE PEOPLE. It doesn’t even have a proper brain yet. Lots of things have heartbeats the you terminate everyday for far lesser reasons because they’re not on the same level of cognition as you are.

I feel like we have decades of research demonstrating that AT BEST physical punishments are no more effective than alternatives and are associated with troubling outcomes. You’re essentially teaching a child when someone smaller and weaker does things they don’t like, that a physical reaction is appropriate.

In my experience there are way more men CLAIMING to be on the list for benign things things like public urination than actually ARE. I’ve had people claim that in states where exposure is not a registerable offense.

To be fair, last week my dental hygienist told me she volunteers herself to help for medical emergencies sometimes. When I was a CNA I knew people who volunteered themselves, as well. Which is terrifying, because as a CNA I don’t feel like I really knew anything if it didn’t involve changing an adult diaper.

That’s sort of McCrory’s MO, though. He’s one of those people who acts like politics can be separated from other aspects of life because he just refuses to understand the stakes for minorities.

I think a lot of people have these really long engagements where everything is about GETTING MARRIED and PLANNING THE WEDDING and then that happens and... they don’t know what their direction is now. The relationship doesn’t have a clear trajectory anymore. They could ignore all sorts of mundane problems while they…

There’s a range of sedation offered to abortion patients at most clinics, but past a certain gestation most people choose IV fentanyl plus versed (midazolam). It’s the same kind of sedation used for most wisdom tooth removals; patients are awake but loopy, emotional, and won’t remember anything.