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EPtalk by Dr. Jayne 11/18/21

November 18, 2021 Dr. Jayne 2 Comments

Road warriors, get ready. United Airlines has resumed sales of hard liquor on flights after resuming sales of beer and wine in June. Other airlines continue to hold off on serving alcoholic beverages as incidents involving disruptive passengers continue to rise. American Airlines plans to suspend alcohol service in the main cabin until at least January 18. There is still plenty of alcohol for sale in the nation’s airports, and several where I’ve recently traveled now allow passengers to drink the gate area instead of just within specified areas. I’m one of those people who keeps my mask on the entire flight and doesn’t snack or drink except for an occasional sip of water. Hopefully, the changes won’t bring an uptick in bad behavior, but only time will tell.

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HIMSS continues to try to push its Accelerate platform through email blasts. Honestly, I have absolutely no desire to join another social media platform, let alone one that is controlled by HIMSS. I was in the beta group for Accelerate and didn’t find the content to be useful. As for joining the groups they’re pushing now, I already participate in groups through my medical specialty society and through the American Medical Informatics Association, so I sort of feel like I have all the connections I need unless something really crazy happens. If readers have found value in Accelerate, drop me a line – I’d love to hear about your experiences.

From Jimmy the Greek: “Re: monitoring. I recently worked with an organization that was planning to roll out a software package that was embracing its Big Brother tendencies. It monitors how much time you spend in each application on your laptop, how much active typing/mouse time you have, etc. and provides a dashboard to your manager.” The system in question was advertised as allowing employees to “understand your personal work habits allowing you to maximize your workday and reach your potential.” For employees who are in roles that involve a certain amount of throughput, such as medical billing specialists, coders, claims processors, etc. this kind of solution might make sense if people are struggling with meeting their goals and need tools to understand their productivity.

In other roles, I question the need for it unless people aren’t getting their work done. Solutions like that that score people on how much they are “doing” don’t give any credit for the cognitive time preparing to do something or for analysis or strategic thinking. It doesn’t reflect any work done that doesn’t involve the laptop, such as diagramming on the white board, having non-electronic meetings with co-workers, or all the fabulous things that process improvement folks do with Post-It Notes and flipcharts. It’s one more way in which employers can devalue the actual thinking that people do for their jobs.

In medicine, we’re used to it since the cognitive specialties typically get paid far less than the procedural ones, but I don’t think such a focus on “doing” at the expense of “thinking” or “planning” is necessarily a good thing. Of course, it’s all about how the manager uses it, but as an employee, I’d be pretty annoyed by the concept.

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I attended a small gathering this evening with some former co-workers from my last clinical position. Except for me, everyone is still working full time, pulling 12- to 14-hour shifts as COVID-19 cases start to rise again in our community. It was a departure from our usual sessions since most of the attendees brought their children for some s’more making around the fire pit as well as photos with a 10-foot-tall inflatable turkey. It was quite a spectacle, but it was good to see people getting away from the office and doing some normal things with their children (at least until bedtime approached and the meltdowns started).

I daresay none of us at the bonfire think that COVID-19 is “no big deal” or “fake” or any of the things clinicians continue to hear from patients on a daily basis. Most of us are glad we haven’t been infected, and if we have, that our cases have been mild because that’s not always the case with our patients. After I returned home, I was scanning through email and came across an article in the Journal of the American Medical Association that put things in perspective and made me want to tell the moms and dads to hug their children tighter. The piece is titled “Thousands of US Youths Cope With the Trauma of Losing Parents to COVID-19.” It’s something people don’t like to talk about but that those of us in the trenches have seen. In our area, we’ve had several situations where children lost both parents to the pandemic, which is for most of us an unimaginable tragedy.

The article details some of the COVID-19 specific factors that make the situations even more tragic, such as children only being able to interact with dying parents via video calls and inability to hold memorial gatherings. Recent data indicate that more than 142,000 children have lost a parent, custodial grandparent, or grandparent caregiver due to the pandemic, looking at dates from April 2020 through June 2021. The worldwide estimate counts more than 1.1 million children losing a parent or custodial grandparent.

The piece goes on to contrast the losses due to COVID-19 with those from natural disasters or mass tragedies, where intense mental health services are available and where the causative incident is limited. The authors note that surviving children may be “extremely fearful that the virus will kill a surviving parent or siblings or claim their own lives.” They also describe feelings of “intense anger or shame” that may be felt by children mourning the loss of a parent who was unvaccinated or who refused to mask or distance.

As we move into the holiday season, it’s important to pause and think about those families whose holidays will be different this year due to the loss of loved ones. Unfortunately, the death toll continues to climb, mostly among unvaccinated individuals. For those on the fence about vaccination, I would offer the suggestion that becoming vaccinated might be the best gift you can give your family and yourself. I’m looking forward to spending time with my vaccinated and boosted family members who are in their 70s, 80s, and 90s as well as doing the traditional holiday things we usually do, some of which are a bit kooky, but that’s what family is all about.

What are your plans for the holiday season? Leave a comment or email me.

Email Dr. Jayne.



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Currently there are "2 comments" on this Article:

  1. I was intrigued to learn that several airports “now allow passengers to drink the gate area.”

    That’s definitely some heavy duty drinking. Not even the magnificent Clydesdales could pull that around a stadium (https://youtu.be/DAxAB3yhtFI).







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