Pre-meds please read

Ahh, RE the action potential question? Besides that one I haven't seen too much of that in this section....

Wasn't a homework assignment.... I heard about the procedure and couldn't find its formal name. Wanted to learn more. Of course i tried googling, etc, before posting a thread. Is there a problem?

Arcan57 said:

Googling "chest cracking procedure" yields a link to a trauma article that answers your question on the first page. However, this thread actually also pops up on the first page, threatening to yield an infinitely recursive loop. It amuses me that one of the main procedures lay-people associate with emergency medicine is actually almost never done by emergency physicians (when it is done, it's done by surgeons). Of course my neighbor of three years just asked me if I was a trauma or a "generalist" emergency physician despite knowing that I don't work at the only trauma center in town.

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I still haven't quite convinced my grandmother that I am not a surgeon.

relevant: http://forums.studentdoctor.net/showthread.php?t=840313 (i like recursion)

i guess your chances of performing a thoracotomy on a patient drop significantly when at non-trauma hospitals proximal to trauma centers. and the trauma centers themselves have surgeons. but, next to surgeons, you guys are the next likely type of physician to be required to perform this.

relevant: http://forums.studentdoctor.net/showthread.php?t=840313 (i like recursion)

also relevant: http://forums.studentdoctor.net/showthread.php?t=407688&highlight=thoracotomy (learning this term has made lots of knowledge newly accessible to me)

i guess your chances of performing a thoracotomy on a patient drop significantly when at non-trauma hospitals proximal to trauma centers. and the trauma centers themselves have surgeons. but, next to surgeons, you guys are the next likely type of physician to be required to perform this. since circumstances occasionally warrant this level of invasion, it's best for those of us in this position (not me... yet) to learn as much as possible about how to successfully perform it. perhaps the number of successes will rise as better strategies are developed.

also, to address the creation of this thread, I respect your rights as a 7-year member of this community, but I'm a little offended at your calling my interaction here an "abuse." There's surely no shortage of server space, so it's about content. I guess ER docs are the intended audience of this forum, so I can understand some frustration since most of you probably know what cracking means. I just don't personally know who else to direct this question to. I suppose one answer would be, a librarian. But, what is the purpose of allowing pre-meds the ability to post here if we aren't supposed to ask questions? And pre-meds include people with varying degrees of experience, yet this is the kind of knowledge that has to be passed down to the younger generations. Why oppose this forum being used in this way.

matto said:

also, to address the creation of this thread, I respect your rights as a 7-year member of this community, but I'm a little offended at your calling my interaction here an "abuse." There's surely no shortage of server space, so it's about content. I guess ER docs are the intended audience of this forum, so I can understand some frustration since most of you probably know what cracking means. I just don't personally know who else to direct this question to. I suppose one answer would be, a librarian. But, what is the purpose of allowing pre-meds the ability to post here if we aren't supposed to ask questions? And pre-meds include people with varying degrees of experience, yet this is the kind of knowledge that has to be passed down to the younger generations. Why oppose this forum being used in this way.

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Dude... because it's annoying.

I'm a pre-med, and I knew the answer to your question. But sometimes I read things on this forum with which I'm not familiar; a good example of this is this recent post by the OP, where I hadn't heard the acronym PEA.

Now, I had three choices in this scenario:

1. Post a reply going "lol wut is pea d00d"
2. As #1, but added to that post a complaint that the OP didn't originally define his acronym, and therefore was doing a poor job of educating me. Because obviously, as an attending trying to have a convo with his professional peers, it's Arcan57's job to educate me, the random Intarwebs pre-med (who should be neither seen nor heard in most cases.)
3. Googled it and took some responsibility for myself.

I chose option three and educated myself with this extremely informative article. You could have done the same. Note that not asking Googlable questions is not equivalent to not asking questions at all; this forum, in general, is very helpful to those pre-meds with questions that can't be answered by Google.

matto, as an alleged CompSci major, you really ought to understand the signal-to-noise ratio thing. When you're on deadline implementing an algorithm for a school project, do you really want to explain to your six-year-old nephew why the screen lights up when you push the button? It's a privilege for we pre-meds to be able to listen in on the convo (Anesthesiology, for instance, has several closed forums where we can't), and being an entitled whiner is a good way to get that privilege revoked. Accept that you were called on it and modify your behavior.

Perhaps my current tech support day job has conditioned me to be more tolerant of others, but I feel like I was using this resource in an acceptable way...

This is the google query I started with. Didn't think to include the word chest, that's on me, but I have yet to hear of a resource that I could have used to look up medical procedures by their operative slang definitions. In the future, people with my question will likely find their answer with google, because of my post.

I'm sorry that I haven't aggregated as much knowledge as all of you, I was just trying to solve an internal discontinuity I was having after a conversation with a friend. When people post in this forum using proper medical terminology, googling is easy and interesting discussions hopefully take place. I'm all in favor of this.

matto said:

relevant: http://forums.studentdoctor.net/showthread.php?t=840313 (i like recursion)

i guess your chances of performing a thoracotomy on a patient drop significantly when at non-trauma hospitals proximal to trauma centers. and the trauma centers themselves have surgeons. but, next to surgeons, you guys are the next likely type of physician to be required to perform this.

Click to expand...

matto said:

relevant: http://forums.studentdoctor.net/showthread.php?t=840313 (i like recursion)

also relevant: http://forums.studentdoctor.net/showthread.php?t=407688&highlight=thoracotomy (learning this term has made lots of knowledge newly accessible to me)

i guess your chances of performing a thoracotomy on a patient drop significantly when at non-trauma hospitals proximal to trauma centers. and the trauma centers themselves have surgeons. but, next to surgeons, you guys are the next likely type of physician to be required to perform this. since circumstances occasionally warrant this level of invasion, it's best for those of us in this position (not me... yet) to learn as much as possible about how to successfully perform it. perhaps the number of successes will rise as better strategies are developed.

also, to address the creation of this thread, I respect your rights as a 7-year member of this community, but I'm a little offended at your calling my interaction here an "abuse." There's surely no shortage of server space, so it's about content. I guess ER docs are the intended audience of this forum, so I can understand some frustration since most of you probably know what cracking means. I just don't personally know who else to direct this question to. I suppose one answer would be, a librarian. But, what is the purpose of allowing pre-meds the ability to post here if we aren't supposed to ask questions? And pre-meds include people with varying degrees of experience, yet this is the kind of knowledge that has to be passed down to the younger generations. Why oppose this forum being used in this way.

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matto said:

Perhaps my current tech support day job has conditioned me to be more tolerant of others, but I feel like I was using this resource in an acceptable way...

This is the google query I started with. Didn't think to include the word chest, that's on me, but I have yet to hear of a resource that I could have used to look up medical procedures by their operative slang definitions. In the future, people with my question will likely find their answer with google, because of my post.

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This is something I cannot understand: if you are a CS major/tech support, how come you can't simply quote, or not even copy what you'd written exactly one post before? vBulletin is NOT difficult to use. The manner that you did this makes me wonder if you are CS or not, and, if you are, if you have a bizarro personality. It doesn't make sense, and I cannot reconcile it.

This is the google query I started with. Didn't think to include the word chest, that's on me, but I have yet to hear of a resource that I could have used to look up medical procedures by their operative slang definitions. In the future, people with my question will likely find their answer with google, because of my post.

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First of all guys, be nice!

Second of all, I just googled this: "what do you call it when a doctor cracks a chest open"

Look what came up on the FIRST page!!!

Result #4: http://forums.studentdoctor.net/archive/index.php/t-482839.html
Result #5: http://forums.studentdoctor.net/archive/index.php/t-812073.html

So then I searched with in SDN forums in the google box above with the exact same terms...

super long link

That was really not hard.

That's kinda why some of the mods are irritated.

matto said:

Perhaps my current tech support day job has conditioned me to be more tolerant of others,

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OK, kiddo, since you went there.

1. If tech support is making you more tolerant, you haven't worked it long enough to have an opinion.
2. If your day job is tech support, you're paid to be nice to people, but these fine folks here on SDN are not paid to be nice to you.
3. If you apply that kind of problem-solving skill on the job, one of your tier-threes or tier-fours will someday eat you.
4. If you take that attitude to a technical community, something like this will happen to you.

Other regions of the forums, the med student allopathic section, for example, have rules regarding who is allowed to start threads. Generally, the rule is that posters can start threads in sections of the forum designated with their level of education or below. Exceptions can probably be made for medical students to ask the occasional question in the appropriate physician/resident forum for their current/upcoming rotation.

One of the pre-med forums (pre-allo or pre-osteo) is the most appropriate section for pre-meds to create threads. Medical students and physicians regularly post in the pre-med forums, so most reasonable questions do not go unanswered.

Hello everyone

After internalizing all the communications that have happened in the past couple of days, I can safely proclaim to have learned more about the ways of SDN, and I have a few things to say. First and foremost, I would like to apologize: I am sorry for posting in the wrong forum. I should have posted it in the pre-med forums. There is a lot of intelligent medical knowledge there, and as it happens, thoracotomy is not predominantly an emergency medicine procedure (it is more surgical).

Furthermore, I am also sorry for not spending more time doing my own research. I wasn't able to come up with the right search terms and admittedly did not spend enough time trying to work around this.

Since so many of you responded (thanks for all the time spent on my behalf, btw), I will proceed to show my advanced knowledge of BBcode quoting:

Apollyon said:

This is something I cannot understand: if you are a CS major/tech support, how come you can't simply quote, or not even copy what you'd written exactly one post before? vBulletin is NOT difficult to use. The manner that you did this makes me wonder if you are CS or not, and, if you are, if you have a bizarro personality. It doesn't make sense, and I cannot reconcile it.

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My phone made a double post instead of editing. I actually wasn't aware this had happened until just now... It's not quite as smart a phone as I would like... For what it's worth, I can make websites and implement distributed recursive calculations on hyracks. But I'm not sure why my choice of undergrad degree is relevant.

Dzerzhinsky said:

OK, kiddo, since you went there.

1. If tech support is making you more tolerant, you haven't worked it long enough to have an opinion.
2. If your day job is tech support, you're paid to be nice to people, but these fine folks here on SDN are not paid to be nice to you.
3. If you apply that kind of problem-solving skill on the job, one of your tier-threes or tier-fours will someday eat you.
4. If you take that attitude to a technical community, something like this will happen to you.

Click to expand...

Your last 3 points are certainly true. I have breached the etiquette here, but now I'm all the more aware of it. And the net result is that what was confusing me is now more easily searchable (because of my thread), the purpose of this forum is now better defined (at least in my mind), and there are a couple of extra rows in the SDN database (things will be OK).
As for #1, I first began providing tech support as a volunteer in middle school on Battle.net. I still enjoy it, though making money is definitely an added bonus. Getting to interact with faculty and staff in a helpful way is fun, but perhaps my clientele isn't as bad as most tech support gigs.

Anyway, I am thankful for having my confusion resolved. Moving forward, as I begin the meat of the pre-medicine curriculum, my resourcefulness and general knowledge will grow. I haven't taken any bio classes yet in college, and know most of what I know because I am currently taking an EMT class.

Mods, you definitely have my permission to move my post to pre-med. And if anyone still has negative feelings about me after all this, you can bite me like the hater you are

matto said:

My phone made a double post instead of editing. I actually wasn't aware this had happened until just now... It's not quite as smart a phone as I would like... For what it's worth, I can make websites and implement distributed recursive calculations on hyracks. But I'm not sure why my choice of undergrad degree is relevant.

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Are you dim, or just being obtuse? If you are a CS major, and you work in tech support, I would think (having had a CS major roommate in college) that you would know more than the average person. You REALLY don't understand that? REALLY?

matto said:

Mods, you definitely have my permission to move my post to pre-med. And if anyone still has negative feelings about me after all this, you can bite me like the hater you are

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When you post this, it colors the rest of your post as being frankly insincere.

I know lots of things. I do not know your friend, "the CS major".

Please reinterpret my last sentence as an unwarranted emotional outburst, I assure you my sincerity is wholesome and true.

You can be assured that future posts from you will be ignored out of hand. Good job.

*plonk*

It was a post that could have been averted by a search but at least it was straight forward and was not a WAMC question.

He even apologized. Let's cut him some slack and move on.

Apollyon said:

Are you dim, or just being obtuse? If you are a CS major, and you work in tech support, I would think (having had a CS major roommate in college) that you would know more than the average person. You REALLY don't understand that? REALLY?



When you post this, it colors the rest of your post as being frankly insincere.

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Apollyon, I think he is trying to convey that if someone is still mad at him despite his admitting his mistake and offering an apology, as well as his offering an explanation of how things happened, there is little more that he can do about it and they can just still be mad at him.

Come on man, this is more than fair. After all, he is still barely in his 20s if at all...I don't know about you but I remember taking many missteps back then

ThymeLess said:

Apollyon, I think he is trying to convey that if someone is still mad at him despite his admitting his mistake and offering an apology, as well as his offering an explanation of how things happened, there is little more that he can do about it and they can just still be mad at him.

Come on man, this is more than fair. After all, he is still barely in his 20s if at all...I don't know about you but I remember taking many missteps back then

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It's the not quite contrite and bravado to which I reacted. I note that the apology to which people refer is an edited post, and I am not privy to the prior, unedited content. I wonder if it was just as it is now, or if the first half was like the second half.

Apollyon said:

It's the not quite condrite and bravado to which I reacted. I note that the apology to which people refer is an edited post, and I am not privy to the prior, unedited content. I wonder if it was just as it is now, or if the first half was like the second half.

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Possibly.

"Contrite". Contrite!

Apollyon said:

It's the not quite condrite and bravado to which I reacted. I note that the apology to which people refer is an edited post, and I am not privy to the prior, unedited content. I wonder if it was just as it is now, or if the first half was like the second half.

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I did edit a reply in this thread, but not the apology reply. This was because I too was "not privy to the prior, unedited content." Your first sentence confuses me. To avoid reading my content in the future, click here and type in 'matto'. Have a nice day

matto said:

I did edit a reply in this thread, but not the apology reply. This was because I too was "not privy to the prior, unedited content." Your first sentence confuses me. To avoid reading my content in the future, click here and type in 'matto'. Have a nice day

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See, this is exactly about which I was talking. You're not that important, and you seem a bit, again, obtuse. You're not so witty with your prose (despite your self-satisfaction), and you are not worth being on my ignore list. Seriously, get over yourself - soon.

Is unconditional self-satisfaction really a bad thing? Who said anything about my importance, other than you? You're the physician, I'm the 20 year old who wants to make something out of my life. I have a lot of work to do, please don't bother me any more with your incorrect, subjective observations.

seriously? lets lock this thread.