Thursday, April 25, 2013
Editorial decisions and challenges in upkeep will mean that Pallimed: Case Conferences will be moving to the main Pallimed website (www.pallimed.org). While we know we have not posted here with regularity for a while, the move will allow us to begin regularly posting new cases and importing the current posts and comments here back to the main site. The move will also allow the reader the chance to search on related topics on one blog and make it easier to coordinate similar materials. We will also
There may be some technical hiccups as we get the comments and posts synced up so please bear with us.
Current Email Subscribers: All current email subscribers will be imported to the main Pallimed list. I will work at removing any duplicate subscribers, plus the email updates have a very simple unsubscribe option. If you are only interested in Case Conferences we eventually will be moving to a new subscription system in the the next month which will allow for you to just choose Cases if those interest you most.
Comments: Comments will be closed on all Case Conference posts as of this posting. We will sync your comments over to the new post in addition to posting a follow-back link.
Pallimed Case Conferences (cases.pallimed.org) will stay online as an archived source, but will no longer be updated. For new cases go to http://www.pallimed.org/search/label/cases
If you are interested in submitting a Case or even potentially becoming a Section Editor for Case Conferences please email christian@pallimed.org
Thursday, April 25, 2013
Saturday, March 12, 2011
The Cases blog will be acting as a redesign test site for all of the Pallimed blogs since it has been dormant for so many months. No worries fans of great cases, it will soon be back to posting cases every other week.
Expect delays and odd formatting issues Saturday March 12th through the 14th.
Saturday, March 12, 2011
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
In consideration of the many family dinners that will occur over the next few days of the Thanksgiving holiday, we are hosting (along with several other medical bloggers) a guest post from Engage with Grace and the One Slide Project. This post will stay at the top of this blog from Tuesday the 24th until Sunday the 29th. You can also join the Engage with Grace group on Facebook.
Have a safe and meaningful Thanksgiving!
Some conversations are easier than others
Last Thanksgiving weekend, many of us bloggers participated in the first documented “blog rally” to promote Engage With Grace – a movement aimed at having all of us understand and communicate our end-of-life wishes.
It was a great success, with over 100 bloggers in the healthcare space and beyond participating and spreading the word. Plus, it was timed to coincide with a weekend when most of us are with the very people with whom we should be having these tough conversations – our closest friends and family.
Our original mission – to get more and more people talking about their end of life wishes – hasn’t changed. But it’s been quite a year – so we thought this holiday, we’d try something different.
A bit of levity.
At the heart of Engage With Grace are five questions designed to get the conversation started. We’ve included them at the end of this post. They’re not easy questions, but they are important.
To help ease us into these tough questions, and in the spirit of the season, we thought we’d start with five parallel questions that ARE pretty easy to answer:
Silly? Maybe. But it underscores how having a template like this – just five questions in plain, simple language – can deflate some of the complexity, formality and even misnomers that have sometimes surrounded the end-of-life discussion.
So with that, we’ve included the five questions from Engage With Grace below. Think about them, document them, share them.
Over the past year there’s been a lot of discussion around end of life. And we’ve been fortunate to hear a lot of the more uplifting stories, as folks have used these five questions to initiate the conversation.
One man shared how surprised he was to learn that his wife’s preferences were not what he expected. Befitting this holiday, The One Slide now stands sentry on their fridge.
Wishing you and yours a holiday that’s fulfilling in all the right ways.
(To learn more please go to www.engagewithgrace.org. This post was written by Alexandra Drane and the Engage With Grace team. )
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
Monday, March 9, 2009
Dear Pallimed Readers,
Thanks so much for joining us here at Pallimed. Last January we had our first annual survey to get some more structured feedback from the readers. (Here are the results from the 2008 Pallimed Readers Survey.) This year we ask you for a few minutes to complete this year's survey. (Last year the survey took less then 6 minutes on average.)
It is even shorter then last year's, since we took out some questions! Blame it on the economy, we cannot even afford more questions this year. Drew, Amber, Amy, Tom and I appreciate your feedback very much.
The survey is open for just one week. Please complete it only once. It is the same survey regardless of which blog (Main, Arts, Cases) you access it from.
We will not sell your information. We pledge not to bombard you with survey pop-ups, or separate emails asking you to finish this. It is a voluntary survey.
We are expecting to provide our readers with some feedback from the survey by the end of March.
Thanks,
Christian Sinclair (on behalf of Drew, Amber, Amy, Tom and Pallimed)
Monday, March 9, 2009
Thursday, September 18, 2008
Delay
Case Conferences are back after a month hiatus. Technically on a every 2 week schedule, only one post was skipped, but it just feels like a long time. So never fear, we are not leaving, there is still so much to post!
Scheduling
Case Conference posting will be moving to Thursday evenings to avoid crowding with Arts & Humanities (usually Monday evenings) and because the main Pallimed blog rarely posts on Thursday evenings. Still every two weeks for Case Conference posts.
Boards
The Case Conferences are a great tool for studying for the palliative medicine boards. I would encourage you to go to the UPMC Institute for Enhanced Palliative Care so you can get some of the archived cases.
Comments
We have a lot of readers but very few comments, so please feel free to add your two cents, anonymously or identified. And check out the new Comments Only subscription.
Thursday, September 18, 2008
Monday, May 12, 2008
First of all, the cases shared here are from the wonderful resource at the University of Pittsburgh - Institute to Enhance Palliative Care (Bob Arnold, David Barnard).
One potential way to add case conferences to your fellowship program is to have your fellows post comments online about the cases. If the fellowship director reads the cases, comments and keeps up to date on the comments (via email notification), you now have a case conference series with documented involvement (the comments) without much production and effort. If you already have a case conference this could augment it, but by no means should it replace it.
As far as following your fellows comments, since the site is public, they have the option of posting openly or anonymously. I would encourage thoughtful open comments, since anonymous can allow civility to be checked at the door occasionally, but I understand the issues of liability for words as a physician when posted online. So if you really wanted your fellows to participate but they (or you) wanted them to stay semi-anonymous, have them pick a screen name that only you know, so you can track their comments to give credit for the participation. Now you should all know that nothing is truly anonymous on the internet, so they should still choose their words carefully.
If you decide to use this as part of your program, please email me christian@pallimed.org and let me know, or post it in the comments on this thread.
Monday, May 12, 2008
Sunday, May 11, 2008
We are glad you found us and hope you enjoy the information and commentary we provide. If you are here we presume you have a basic understanding of the field of hospice and palliative medicine, and are likely part of the professional field. (Here is a good description of palliative medicine).
Our target audience is the professionals (MD, DO, RN, LPN, LVN, Home Health Aide, ARNP, SW, Chaplain, Administrators, PT, OT, Speech, Pharmacy, etc.) working in hospice & palliative medicine, but we welcome all readers to this blog, including patients, families and other medical professionals outside of this field.
Our goal is to review current palliative medicine, hospice, end-of-life research with a particular focus on publications not from the major palliative care journals. We also highlight important events in end-of-life care from the news media and entertainment arenas. Pallimed: Case Conferences is not intended to replace the patient-physician relationship.
Pallimed Editor-in-Chief
Pallimed: Case Conference Section Editor
Click here if you want to know more about us.
and
Please email Drew or Christian to give us general feedback on the site.
We do this in our spare time, for fun and for the pursuit of knowledge and truth (sounds noble!). We have a standard disclaimer that the views we express here do not represent the views of our employers or former employers or institutions that we are affiliated with. Please see the disclaimer and copyright information at the very bottom of our homepage. Our effort here is not to provoke but to inform and have open conversation about some potentially thorny issues. Our clinical care is enhanced by being able to comprehend as much information in our field as possible, which is part of the reason we do this blog. We use our real names and not pseudonyms, because we feel it imparts credibility and responsibility for our words.
So what is the big deal about these blogs I hear so much about? If you are new to blogs the first thing to do is 'bookmark'/'add to favorites' this site in your browser (Ctrl+D in most browsers). You can even add the bookmark to your toolbars in your browser (Firefox, Internet Explorer) so that you can access Pallimed: Case Conferences with one click. This is a great start, but the main problem is you have to actively seek the site to get the information. Wouldn't it be nice if the information just came to you?
To get the information to come to you we have a two different options to subscribe to Pallimed: Case Conferences:
1) Email
Using a service called 'Feedblitz', Pallimed: Case Conferences can provide you with posts as they are written directly to your email box. Just type in your email and click the button and you are done. No signing up for a new account or anything. Give this a try and if it does not work for you then just unsubscribe.
2) RSS/Atom Feeds
If you are a little more tech savvy you can make use of the RSS/Atom feature present on most blogs or news sites. RSS (Really Simple Syndication) and Atom are very similar. You may be familiar with the orange button on many sites that looks like this:
or the icon that looks like this:
Here is a very helpful 3 minute video to explain RSS.
Basically RSS and Atom are computer languages for universal formating of information. It can be read using a RSS/Atom Reader. Many readers exist as separate programs or add-ons to your browser, but you can use Firefox 2.0, Safari or Internet Explorer 7 to do the same thing (links go to those sites tutorials). Those of you on IE6 need to upgrade to IE7 to get the RSS benefit.
Ours is located in the right column and is supported via Feedburner. If you click on this link it will take you to their site to pick your feed options.
Christian recommends Google Reader (especially if you have a Gmail account). It is very intuitive as are most other RSS readers. If all this talk scares you, it really is not that bad, just try it. You will not break your computer.
3) The cases
The cases are graciously shared from the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center's Institute to Enhance Palliative Care. David Barnard, JD, PhD and Bob Arnold, MD have agreed to reformat the IEPC's monthly cases series to open a wider discussion on Pallimed: Case Conferences.
4) Navigating Pallimed
We have a search bar located at the very upper left of the screen in the Blogger Toolbar.
Each post/case is labeled by common topics we cover here at Pallimed so you can quickly find other similar posts. On the left hand column you will also find a list of labels and the number of posts) Click on a link and see what you find! Many older posts do not yet have labels. These labels do not translate to posts on other Pallimed blogs (Pallimed or Pallimed Arts & Humanitites)
Also in the left hand column is a feature from Google reader that allows us to share Hospice & Palliative Medicine related stories that come across our desk, but are not so interesting that we feel compelled to write about it.
In the right hand column we also have a link to the Pallimed Archives (where you can browse blog posts by date).
5) Comments
Pallimed has a comment function (at the bottom of each post) that allows you to comment on each post. Just click on the "comments" link at the end of each post (the link usually tells you how many comments have been left so it says, e.g., "0 Comments" or "1 Comment"). Tell us your opinions and thoughts. This can be a great community for discussion. You can even add comments anonymously, especially if you want to say something controversial. Even something as pithy as 'great post' or 'what are you talking about?' helps us to keep working at the blog day in and day out for you.
We ask that you refrain from providing specific details about your own cases because of HIPAA restrictions. We strongly encourage you to change any minor details or talk about issues in the case in broader terms. We strongly encourage no discussion of exact prescribing information or giving or soliciting medical advice on Pallimed: Case Conferences. If you are not sure what you should write, please choose something more conservative.
The comment function has a simple verification system to prevent spammers from clogging the site.
You can find recent comments in the right hand sidebar.
Comment Disclaimer: Pallimed reserves the right to remove any comments we deem offensive/hateful, mean-spirited, commercial, or in any other way inappropriate. Please see the site disclaimer for more details.
6) What Can You Do For Pallimed: Case Conferences?
Read the posts, make a few comments, tell others about it. This site is free. No memberships necessary. No Advertisements. Thanks for reading!
7) Confidentiality/Privacy
Feel free to email us directly at our emails listed above. Subscribers (via RSS or email) are kept private and the information will not be distributed or accessible to anyone but Drew or Christian. Website stats for visitors are tracked by Google Analytics, but no identifiable information is kept which could identify a user. Pallimed uses 'cookies' to track returning visitors, but again this data will not identify a individual user, nor is it kept over time.
Sunday, May 11, 2008
Thursday, March 13, 2008
(Last updated March 2011)
Cases have had names and facts altered or are composite cases and are not intended to represent any individual patient. If you think a case presented here represents you please contact us.
The cases in the posts originate from the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center - Institute to Enhance Palliative Care, unless where clearly indicated otherwise.
If you contribute to this blog with a comment, please recognize that you may be releasing your own protected health information and Pallimed nor its contributors are responsible for any use of this information by third parties.
Pallimed and its volunteer staff do not collect any personally identifying information about site visitors or commenters other than what you voluntarily disclose. Subscribers (via RSS or email) are kept private and the information will not be distributed or accessible to anyone but Drew or Christian. Website stats for visitors are tracked by Google Analytics, but no identifiable information is kept which could identify a user. Pallimed uses 'cookies' to track returning visitors, but again this data will not identify a individual user, nor is it kept over time.
Thursday, March 13, 2008
In addition, all opinions expressed on this blog should never be taken as medical advice in any form. Please consult with your own physician about medical issues.
Thanks for taking an interest in Pallimed: Case Conferences.
For general inquiries please contact the editor, Christian Sinclair, MD: christian@pallimed.org
You can also find us on Twitter: @ctsinclair or @pallimed
We do not accept advertisements, link exchanges or other forms of promotion. Please do contact us if you are interested in these transactions, since you will be referred to this post.
NOTE: Pallimed: Case Conferences closed April 25, 2013 as an individual sub-blog and new Cases are being posted at the main site www.pallimed.org. Old posts from this site will be imported with comments to www.pallimed.org. Comments at cases.pallimed.org are closed.
Pallimed: Case Conferences was founded April 11, 2008. It is sometimes referred to as 'Cases'
From the beginning of this blog cases have been posted roughly twice a month. Consistent posting stopped in May 2009 because of increased workload at the main Pallimed blog. Pallimed Case Conferences has always had a blue color scheme to help identify it when looking at all the Pallimed blogs.
Cases was part of the 2008 overall redesign of Pallimed and at that time had a dark blue on beige color scheme. As of March 2011 all Pallimed blogs underwent a major redesign with a focus on simplification and ease of use with a emphasis on social. The color scheme now is navy blue on white with subtle goldenrod accents. In March 2011, Pallimed: Case Conferences also opened up to guest submissions from professionals and the public. While not focused on direct medical advice, aspects of the cases may be informative to professionals and the public to discuss openly.
Yearly Site Traffic for Pallimed: Case Conferences
2008: 3122 hits, 4496 pageviews
2009: 4935 hits, 6668 pageviews
2010: 9238 hits, 12533 pageviews
Pallimed is a volunteer effort and has never and will never accept advertisements.
Our target audience is the professionals (MD, DO, RN, LPN, LVN, Home Health Aide, ARNP, SW, Chaplain, Administrators, PT, OT, Speech, Pharmacy, etc.) working in hospice and palliative care, but we welcome all readers to this blog, including patients, families and other medical professionals outside of this field.
Our goal is to review current palliative medicine, hospice, end-of-life cases. On the main blog we highlight research and important events in end-of-life care from the news media and entertainment arenas. Pallimed: Case Conferences is not intended to replace the patient-physician relationship.
(Updated March 2011)
