Endocrine Witchery

I remember coming across on Facebook a post on using a dead person’s social media presence to inhabit an AI persona. I think it was in China. In this way, the parents can still talk to their dead daughter. I didn’t click on it because I thought, what an absurd idea! But is it? I remembered this again as I asked Gemini to suggest topics for the #HealthXPH chat. One of the topics suggested was…

I signed up when I saw it. It had Leo Celi’s name. I didn’t check the time. Days before, Leo messaged me on WhatsApp to ask if I could be a coordinator. He said that this was to make sure I attended the entire conference. It started 9 am in Boston, which meant 10 pm for me last night, a Thursday night, after a 6-hour afternoon clinic. It turns out Sebastian was more than capable of handling the…

I spend a lot of time talking about diabetes. Over the years, I’ve become more conscious of the words I use. Language shapes how we think about illness, how patients feel about themselves, and how we relate to each other in the clinical encounter. Uncontrolled. Pasaway. Matigas ang ulo.These words slip out, and they carry weight. They assign blame. They reduce a person to a diagnosis. They can…

We can keep patients safer by identifying problems and speaking up about them. But apparently, this systematic review found that previous literature have not really operationally defined “speaking up” in a consistent manner. The authors’ suggested definition is as follows – Therefore, our suggested definition for speaking up for patient safety was adapted from Law and Chan attributed to Sayre et…

Every time it rains, I think about floods … and you know, what’s next. May araw din kayo! But for tonight, to keep it light at the #HealthXPH chat, I thought about AGIMAT. Agimat, bertud, o anting-anting ba? There are just some days where talismans, amulets, and charms seem to save our sanity as health workers. Claude suggests – Healthcare superstitions aren’t really about magic – they’re…

Over the past years, I’ve had to work with multi-generational teams. I’m not always the oldest one, nor always the youngest. I find that working with younger people, keeps me young. It amuses them to teach me new lingo, just as they look surprised when I understand some new slang. Being a mother to sons aged 22 and 18, I’ve also found myself more patient when things are done differently than what…

I’ve been on social media long enough to see the “enshittification.” There is widespread anti-science sentiment, which can erode the trust we usually expect from our patients, as their physicians. Without trust, our patients can skip the medicines we prescribe or miss recommended followups. There is improvement in health outcomes when patients trust their physicians and the care they…

#HealthXPH was born on Twitter. Sometimes I slip and say X … and my son always says, never call it that. I still say tweet chat anyway. I’ve moderated #HealthXPH tweet chats four times before on staying on Twitter or moving out. Why are you still on Twitter? last 20 May 2021 Twitterverse: Healthy Debate or Bardagulan last 4 Feb 2022 Are you staying on Twitter? last 7 May 2022 – this was days…

Yesterday, I pitched the idea of EFREN at the #AIHorizonsPH. Efren, from “a friend” (yes, it’s that Superman joke), aims to assess diabetes distress. In the context of the 7As approach to identify and support persons with diabetes distress, EFREN can hopefully take over the third A. But is that something that both physicians and persons with diabetes will agree with? I’m not sure. I think that…

I gave a presentation at the UP Manila New Faculty Orientation Workshop last Thursday. I also took the opportunity to run a short fishbowl exercise where I asked the faculty about AI. The faculty were divided about students’ use of AI. One said that yes, we should allow the students to use it because AI is inevitable. Another said, she didn’t know enough about AI to decide. And apparently, many…

I have been attending medical audit conferences for years. Lately, I’m hearing this more often – “The patient (or the relative) did not give consent for the procedure.” I’m wondering why. I often ask, “What exactly did you tell the patient?” What one says and how one says it, matters of course! The following are the required elements for documentation: The nature of the procedure The risks and…

The original title I had was Mentor or Tormentor. And aha, there’s a journal article entitled Tormentor mentors, and how to survive them from Nature. Alas, it’s pay walled. But I thought dementor would be way more cool. Here’s how dementors have been described – Dementors were wraithlike creatures that fed on human happiness and generated terrible feelings of despair within any person in close…

In 2018, I moderated this #HealthXPH tweet chat, Conflict of Interest in Healthcare. Intriguingly in the last paragraph, I said it was inspired by recent events. Well, that is the case again now (though I cannot remember what happened in 2018!). What is conflict of interest? Nilda Fink quotes the Thompson definition in her publication, Conflicts of Interest and an Approach to Managing…

Yesterday was my last ward consultant rounds for October with the PGH endocrine fellows. By asking them to present their patients in the SBAR (Situation, Background, Assessment, Recommendation) format, we went through many “teachable moments” together. A teachable moment is an opportunity where a teacher can offer insight to students. I remembered my own teachable moments with Dr. Lina…

This will be the 78th #HealthXPH tweet chat I will moderate. Will it be the last? We’ve been here before. I moderated a #HealthXPH tweet chat in May 2021, asking Why are you still on Twitter? Back then, I don’t think we knew that Elon would be taking over. June this year, I celebrated my 13th year on Twitter. Unlucky? Will this be my last year on Twitter? February 2022, I moderated a tweet chat…

This is a very simple digital escape room I created on Canva for the NTTC-HP webinar later today. NTTC Escape RoomFind the links and click to explore!

Join the #HealthXPH tweet chat 21 Jan 9 pm Manila time. Does ChatGPT scare you or excite you? Should there be limits to its use in education?

I first tried chatting with ChatGPT last December after seeing a post on how it can compose songs ala Taylor Swift. I asked about health informatics, as I teach courses in graduate school. ChatGPT provided a good overview of what personal health records are for example, but it was hardly graduate school level. I didn’t feel alarmed. I even shared ChatGPT’s output in our messenger group of grad…