Ctrl - Backspace

Sometimes it helps to know some useful keyboard shortcuts. There are so many cumbersome procedures which could be greatly simplified if you know the right keyboard shortcut.

One of them is Ctrl-Backspace.

Ctrl-Backspace: Delete the last word

It's excruciating to see some of my friends or tutors pressing backspace millions of times in order to edit text in Microsoft Word. I wanted to tell them about Ctrl-backspace but I always held back in the end for the fear of appearing showy.

Besides Ctrl-backspace, you can also use Ctrl-Leftarrow or Ctrl-Rightarrow to move forward or backward one word at a time. Want to select the words? Easy, just add the key Shift. Pressing Ctrl-Shift-Leftarrow or Ctrl-Shift-Rightarrow will navigate the word and select the words at the same time.

This method works on most programs including Microsoft Word, Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Opera etc. Once you pick it up, you will work much faster when it comes to typing and editing.

Earlier than Expected

From the day I chose medicine as a career, I have always known that the road ahead would be challenging. Long working hours, stressful environment, distressing tragedies are just a few examples in the long list of adversities faced by healthcare workers. Certainly most people would reap the reward at the end of the day, but concealed from the pride and glory is the sweat and tears as they grudgingly put up a positive front to their colleagues and patients on every single day.

Don't get me wrong here - I am not saying that being a doctor is a bad job. In fact I have been exaggerating the hardship here for the sake of drama. For the past few weeks, watching surgeries, appreciating the marvel of technologies, learning new stuff, talking to doctors, seeing real alive patients (yes you hear it right) have been some of the most rewarding moments since I entered medical school. At the end of each day, Xuan Ni and I usually exchange our daily experiences and stories while walking home along Grattan Street, and that have been been thoroughly enjoyable. We commiserated with the unfortunate cancer patients, tipped off each other about cute doctors, and assuaged each other's complaints as we shuffled home tiredly. And that, I must say, is the highlight of my days.

But still, everything came earlier than expected.

I knew that the future that awaits me are the 36-hour shifts, endless walking in the hospital and breathing in medicine-scented air. But I never knew that busy days have begun to take its toll on me, and such schedules will probably remain until I retire in the unforeseeable future.

I knew that at some point in my life, I will no longer have the freedom of surfing online until the wee hours in the morning - but I didn't know that in order to wake up at 7 everyday, I have already been robbed of that freedom in the third year of medicine.

I knew that I have been living an obscenely slack lifestyle throughout the years, and that it ought to be substituted by the harsh medicinal lifestyle. But I didn't know how a research student's lifestyle could be so much more demanding than the lifestyle of a pre-clinical medical student.

Probably I never knew well enough.

I never knew how lazy I have been for the past 21 years, that even a mildly disciplined lifestyle seems like a punishment to me.

I never empathized enough when my architecture friends complain about sleep-deprivation. Until I begin to sleep less than six hours everyday.

I never knew I am not as adaptable as I thought. When it arrived earlier than expected, I flounder. But I will move on toughly. The only way to go through a hardship, is to move on.

Petition to McDonald's

Top scientists agree: "With the present rate of human consumption, the earth's supply of gravity will be exhausted before the 24th century."

[CNN.com] Why They Told You to Think Twice

(CNN) -- "Two minutes!" yells our course coordinator.

Medical student Emily Breidbart joins her anatomy lab partner, Jonathan Adelstein, on the last day of class.

Her voice startles me as I try to concentrate on Mrs. Chin's account of her recent asthma attacks.

I have already used eight of 10 allotted minutes, and now have to wrap up my "Objective Structured Clinical Examination."

During our four years as medical students, we will do dozens of these OSCEs -- imaginary, but realistic doctor-patient scenarios.

My professor praises that I structured my 10 minutes well. I'm pleased. In our first year, we simply take a medical history. But next year, I'll add a physical examination, and in my third year, I'll be adding counseling and treatment into the "patient visit." And all we get is five more minutes added onto our OSCE time. How can I get all of this done in just 15 minutes?

Learning how to practice medicine on this sort of a time-scale is stressful. But it's totally necessary in order to properly train us for a world of health care in which the average physician visit is six minutes! When our professors went to medical school, they were taught the art of healing; we are taught how to diagnose and treat patients in a limited timeframe. I can't help but think, is this what I signed up for?

My father is a pulmonologist and the head of an eight-doctor practice on Long Island. When I tell people this, many say, "Oh, he must have really wanted you to follow in his footsteps!" But actually, he made me very wary of medicine. He is tired of spending half of his energy dealing with insurance companies. Energy and time, he says, that would be better spent on his patients, time he had when he first started practicing in a health-care era in which doctors didn't need to justify prescriptions and tests to insurance companies. He still insists on giving ample time to his patients, but now has to work incredibly long hours to do so.

At my dad's 50th birthday party, when I was 19, his colleagues interrogated me about my recent decision to pursue medicine.

Are you sure you really want to do this?

Why put yourself through all the years of stress? You're a smart girl -- how about journalism, law, business...?

Your dad couldn't convince you not to do this? I'll have to have a talk with him!

How is it that my classmates and I are going into medicine if this is what people who have lived our future are saying?

We start out in medical school as idealists. We thirst for clinical experience. We want to explore all of our options, and help those who can't afford health care. But somewhere along the line, we start taking off our rose-colored glasses. I've seen it happen already with some classmates after only one year of school. We know that it is surgeries and procedures that are financially rewarded. Insurance companies reimburse very little for routine examinations. So although we might really be interested in primary care or pediatrics, after hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt (my school estimates that each year, tuition, housing and expenses will cost about $55,000), many of us feel pressured to go into a specialty field that will ensure we can pay back our loans. Our dreams and good intentions have to be put aside.

And then there are fields like OB-GYN, which a lot of my colleagues have already ruled out because of the high cost of malpractice insurance.

We are taught about malpractice from Day 1. I remember countless times in the anatomy lab when we were digging for arteries and nerves, our teachers saying, "Now if you cut this in real life, you would be sued," phrased in terms of a legal consequence instead of the repercussion that the patient might die.

This "art of defensive medicine" infiltrates the classroom too. We are taught how to ask questions of our patients and treat them in such a way that minimizes our risk of a lawsuit. We are trained what kind of patients to be wary of. Basically, we are taught that we can't trust our future patients, which is confusing to first-year medical students. How can we expect our patients to trust us if we can't trust them?

Yet, after all this, I'm truly excited to be a doctor. Medical science and technology are booming and there will be so many ways in which we can help our patients. I want to go into pediatrics, and can see nothing more rewarding then helping sick children. And I can't blame the medical school curriculum; it is only preparing us for a reality. It is my hope however, that in my lifetime, our health-care system will change in such a way that lets us go back to simply learning the art of healing.

From: CNN.com

Lies, Damn Lies... and Statistics

Three statisticians and three epidemiologists are traveling by train to a conference. The statisticians ask the epidemiologists whether they have bought tickets. They have.

“Fools!”, say the statisticians. “We've only bought one between us!”

When the ticket inspector appears, the statisticians hide together in the toilet. The inspector knocks and they pass the ticket under the door. He clips the ticket and slides it back under the door to the statisticians.

The epidemiologists are very impressed, and resolve to adopt this technique themselves. On the return they purchase one ticket between them, and share the journey with the statisticians, who again ask whether they've all bought tickets. “No”, they reply, “we've bought one to share.”

“Fools!”, say the statisticians, “we've not bought any.”

“But what will you do when the inspector comes?”

“You'll see.”

This time when the inspector appears, the epidemiologists hide together in the toilet. The statisticians walk up to door and knock on it. The epidemiologists slide their ticket under the door, and the statisticians take it and use it as before- leaving the epidemiologists to be caught by the inspector.

The moral of this story is that you should never use a statistical technique unless you are completely familiar with it.

Retold by Frank Shann in The Lancet 1996; 348: 1392

Anyway, speaking about statistics, it's funny if you realize what most medical researches are about. What most journal articles will give you a result like this:

We are 95% confident that people on average will be about 1.5 - 2.1 times more likely to have accidents if they have obstructive sleep apnoea.

And that's all we are proud of, a double layers of probability. I'm not saying that statistics are bull shit; it's just that with bad curriculum in this subject, most healthcare providers are unfamiliar with it. That makes it easier for those in the know to manipulate it, possibly to the detriment of the patient's welfare.

In fact, statistics is the backbone to evidence-based medicine. If doctors know that doing certain things will very likely benefit your health, they must have learnt it from good studies, and certainly, good statistics.

But It's Wrong in Principle!

A child: Mum, I'm full. We can't really take away the remaining burger. So can I throw it away?

His mum: Hey, finish your burger, don't waste it! Do you know how many Ethiopians are starving to death? You mustn't be so wasteful!

Everyday we make a lot of decisions. We decide whether to have a short rest in the afternoon, whether to tell the cute guy that his zipper is undone, and whether to finish our homework before playing a new Wii game. In the decision making process, we justify our actions based on a set of personal moral principles.

As everyone grows up, moral axioms like "wasting food is wrong", "lying is sinful" are deeply entrenched in our minds after years of inculcation from our parents and teachers. As time goes by, we kind of forget why those principles are there in the first place - we just know that it's right, and because of that we uphold them as the noblest virtues.

To begin with, there is nothing inherently wrong with following moral principles, as they are, after all, moral. But there is a problem: we are lazy. In day-to-day scenarios, many of us do not bother to think through every decision - we often resort to the comfort of the tried-and-true principles, and apply it indiscriminately to every situation that fits the criteria. Again, it's not that there's something wrong with doing so; in fact most of the time such modus operandi just works fine. People who function as such are sometimes even positively described as highly-principled people. However, it's also because of the same reason that we hear things like:

Lying is wrong, so I must not tell lies. Not even white lies.

Telling the truth is the right thing to do - therefore I must tell the truth even if it incites anger and hatred.

Such stands are obviously contentious and are no longer universally accepted. What's right for a person might be hurtful for another. Being highly-principled might not be good after all.

So, what do we say about the child in the example above?

At the first glance, this child is being wasteful and is thus by default unethical. However, why is the child at fault apart from the moral consideration? Why is he under moral obligation to finish the burger? How does the Ethiopians' extreme impoverishment translate to his obligation to finish the burger?

Here I am assuming that the child or the mum above didn't buy extra burger despite knowing that he can't finish it. I am also assuming that the burger can't be taken away. In such a hypothetical scenario, he shouldn't be blamed for not finishing the burger. Yes, we should commiserate with the starving people; but whether you finish the burger or not will not change their fate in any way, assuming that you didn't get more than what you could eat in the first place. In fact, over-eating could be detrimental to the child's health, which might contribute to the obesity problem in the country and indirectly further impoverish other countries.

Therefore, don't stick to principles stubbornly. Sometimes the end does justify the means.

Creepy Eh?

Click F11 for full screen, then go here:

Link (Tips: It follows your mouse cursor!)

Nothing scary there. Just creepy. Leave it on your office computer, and scare the hell out of passing colleagues. :P (Also, she will NOT crawl out of your monitor!)