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This is the personal blog of a Dutch psychiatrist working in a University hospital. His specialty in psychiatry is the treatment of depression. This explains his interest in electroconvulsive therapy and the development of new forms of neurostimulation for the treatment of depression. He is also involved in medical education. He does research in the treatment and neuroscience of depression. He mostly writes about these topics on this blog for fun and to keep up with recent developments. Besides writing about his work he also writes about other subjects that (neuro)stimulates him such as chocolate, computer gaming, gadgets, and Internet. The postings are based on what I want to write about and what I feel will be interesting to read.
Dr Shock MD PhD
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by Dr Shock in Dr Shock MD PhD
How do you experience, perceive your blogging? This is a different question from why do you blog, or your motivation for blogging. This question is more about your blogging style. Well they have an questionnaire for that and it’s recently validated.
A total of 182 bloggers (87 males, 95 females; age range 18–64 years) recruited from [...]
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Baker, J., & Moore, S. (2010) Creation and Validation of the Personal Blogging Style Scale. Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking, 2147483647. DOI: 10.1089/cyber.2010.0130
by Dr Shock in Dr Shock MD PhD
If you can predict academic success by personality factors, then med schools should consider including measures of these personality factors during their selection process. Mental toughness and stress tolerance are just two that came up. A recent systematic review looked at prospective cohort studies since 2000 on the subject of medical students’ scores on valid [...]
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Doherty, E., & Nugent, E. (2011) Personality factors and medical training: a review of the literature. Medical Education, 45(2), 132-140. DOI: 10.1111/j.1365-2923.2010.03760.x
by Dr Shock in Dr Shock MD PhD
Does a lot of friends on Facebook make you happy or does a positive self representation on Facebook make you feel happy. These two important questions were studied amongst 391 college students using Facebook. How does faceook use contribute to happiness?
Indeed more friends on facebook increases your subjective well-being. This association was not mediated by [...]
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Kim, J., & Lee, J. (2010) The Facebook Paths to Happiness: Effects of the Number of Facebook Friends and Self-Presentation on Subjective Well-Being. Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking, 2147483647. DOI: 10.1089/cyber.2010.0374
by Dr Shock in Dr Shock MD PhD
In simple terms anhedonia is an important symptom of depression. The DSM IV states that individuals having this anhedonia “may report feeling less interest in hobbies, ‘not caring anymore,’ or not feeling any enjoyment in activities that were previously considered pleasurable”. For the diagnosis of depression either this symptom or low mood is required together [...]
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Treadway, M., & Zald, D. (2011) Reconsidering anhedonia in depression: Lessons from translational neuroscience. Neuroscience , 35(3), 537-555. DOI: 10.1016/j.neubiorev.2010.06.006
by Dr Shock in Dr Shock MD PhD
Learned something new about field dependence and field independence. These are individual differences in learning style. There is a difference in how people perceive discrete items within a surrounding field. People at the one end of the extreme where perception was strongly dominated by the prevailing field were designated “field-dependent.” Field-dependent learners see the [...]
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Glicksohn, J., & Rechtman, S. (2010) Profiling the profilers: Who is watching our backs?. Personality and Individual Differences. DOI: 10.1016/j.paid.2010.12.010
by Dr Shock in Dr Shock MD PhD
Raw Oysters, especially ‘wild’, are excellent sources of several minerals, including iron, zinc and selenium, which are often low in the modern diet. They are also an excellent source of Vitamin B12. Oysters are considered the healthiest when eaten raw on the half shell.
A search on PubMed also reveals that eating these creatures can be [...]
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SurgeXperience, Grand Round at Buckeye Surgeon
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Wright, A., Danyluk, M., & Otwell, W. (2009) Pathogens in raw foods: what the salad bar can learn from the raw bar. Current Opinion in Biotechnology, 20(2), 172-177. DOI: 10.1016/j.copbio.2009.03.006
by Dr Shock in Dr Shock MD PhD
About two third of medical students I am teaching is female. Nevertheless, only few surgeons are women. Especially in general surgery, female physicians are clearly underrepresented. This is in The Netherlands but also in Switzerland and probably in your country too. Why is it, doesn’t surgery appeal to women, is it the male-dominated culture [...]
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Glynn, R., & Kerin, M. (2010) Factors influencing medical students and junior doctors in choosing a career in surgery☆. The Surgeon, 8(4), 187-191. DOI: 10.1016/j.surge.2009.11.005
Freischlag, J. (2010) Surgical Residency Training in Transition: Evolution or Revolution?. Archives of Surgery, 145(11), 1036-1036. DOI: 10.1001/archsurg.2010.237
Kaderli R, Guller U, Muff B, Stefenelli U, & Businger A. (2010) Women in surgery: a survey in Switzerland. Archives of surgery (Chicago, Ill. : 1960), 145(11), 1119-21. PMID: 21079102
by Dr Shock in Dr Shock MD PhD
Young people are high users of the Internet but we know very little about how they use the Internet, how they “are distributing their engagement across the various resources of the Internet”. This knowledge might be useful for learning and education.
Researchers collected data from a nationally representative face to face survey of young people (n=1069) [...]
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Eynon, R., & Malmberg, L. (2011) A typology of young people’s Internet use: Implications for education. Computers , 56(3), 585-595. DOI: 10.1016/j.compedu.2010.09.020
by Dr Shock in Dr Shock MD PhD
Email overload is the feeling of being overwhelmed by a large volume of incoming messages. Email overload makes the management of the Inbox necessary. Wouldn’t it be great if the inbox itself could filter the email by prioritization, information structuring and work-flow management?
Now the user has to assess and prioritize the message based on [...]
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Szóstek, A. (2010) ‘Dealing with My Emails’: Latent user needs in email management. Computers in Human Behavior. DOI: 10.1016/j.chb.2010.09.019
by Dr Shock in Dr Shock MD PhD
They tested the protection of epicatechin on heart infarct size in mice. Epicatechin is a flavinoid and a major component of dark chocolate. It has antioxydant effects associated with a lower risk of stroke and heart failure. Epicatechin can bind to opiod receptors that can induce heart protection, moreover it can induce cardiac protection from [...]
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Panneerselvam, M., Tsutsumi, Y., Bonds, J., Horikawa, Y., Saldana, M., Dalton, N., Head, B., Patel, P., Roth, D., & Patel, H. (2010) Dark chocolate receptors: epicatechin-induced cardiac protection is dependent on -opioid receptor stimulation. AJP: Heart and Circulatory Physiology, 299(5). DOI: 10.1152/ajpheart.00073.2010
by Dr Shock in Dr Shock MD PhD
What is strategical thinking?
A key leadership requirement.
Strategic thinking is an individual thinking activity that benefits organizations. Its purpose is to discover competitive strategies to position the organization significantly differently from the present.
Experiences contributing to the development of strategic thinking in order of importance according to a survey in individuals who attended ten educational events sponsored [...]
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Goldman E, Cahill T, & Filho RP. (2009) Experiences that develop the ability to think strategically. Journal of healthcare management / American College of Healthcare Executives, 54(6), 403. PMID: 20073185
by Dr Shock in Dr Shock MD PhD
From 759 medical students from different year levels about 87% use Facebook, 55% used it daily. 25% used Facebook for educational reasons and one quarter of this group had used the Facebook group feature specifically for learning. Another 50% said they were open to using Facebook for learning in Med School.
Facebook may be used for [...]
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Gray, K., Annabell, L., & Kennedy, G. (2010) Medical students’ use of Facebook to support learning: Insights from four case studies. Medical Teacher, 32(12), 971-976. DOI: 10.3109/0142159X.2010.497826
by Dr Shock in Dr Shock MD PhD
Students have different thinking styles. The way students think, perceive and remember information, or their preferred approach to using such information to solve problems can be different between students. Different models for learning styles are present. The mostly used is the learning style model by Kolb. Students have preferred learning styles as well as lecturers [...]
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SWAMI, V., FURNHAM, A., MAAKIP, I., AHMAD, S., HUDANI, N., VOO, P., CHRISTOPHER, A., & GARWOOD, J. (2007) A cross-cultural investigation of students' preferences for lecturers' personalities in Britain, Malaysia and the United States. Learning and Individual Differences, 17(4), 307-315. DOI: 10.1016/j.lindif.2007.03.006
by Dr Shock in Dr Shock MD PhD
Besides patient care and education, research is also an important part of a med school. Funding and keeping a research department alive in medicine is very complicated. Below are some suggestions from a approach as published in a recent article from the Advances in Health Sciences Education. It’s my own interpretation of the suggestions made [...]
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Brutkiewicz, R. (2010) Research faculty development: an historical perspective and ideas for a successful future. Advances in Health Sciences Education. DOI: 10.1007/s10459-010-9261-4
by Dr Shock in Dr Shock MD PhD
Teaching psychopharmacology to med students can be very dull. Often tried ways of teaching this subject were through lectures or in smaller groups during seminars. At the University of Minnesota Medical School they tested the use of gaming compared to the ordinary lectures. The study was conducted during a 6-week psychiatry clerkship of third year [...]
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Shiroma, P., Massa, A., & Alarcon, R. (2010) Using game format to teach psychopharmacology to medical students. Medical Teacher, 1-5. DOI: 10.3109/0142159X.2010.509414
by Dr Shock in Dr Shock MD PhD
Dr Shock is utterly biased when it comes to gaming. Especially when Call of Duty is used for research into the topic of possible negative or positive influences of exposure to violent games. This recent research with the action game “Call of Duty” did not support any negative influence of gaming on prosocial behavior or [...]
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Ferguson, C., & Garza, A. (2010) Call of (civic) duty: Action games and civic behavior in a large sample of youth. Computers in Human Behavior. DOI: 10.1016/j.chb.2010.10.026
by Dr Shock in Dr Shock MD PhD
Rapid tranquillisation is sometimes used with disturbed violent patients in adult in-psychiatric settings and emergency departments. It’s only a small part of the algorithm for the short term management of these patients. Other aspects are prediction, prevention, other interventions than medication and a post incident review.
There’s a guideline from the UK’s National Institute for Health [...]
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Huf, G., Coutinho, E., Adams, C., & , . (2007) Rapid tranquillisation in psychiatric emergency settings in Brazil: pragmatic randomised controlled trial of intramuscular haloperidol versus intramuscular haloperidol plus promethazine. BMJ, 335(7625), 869-869. DOI: 10.1136/bmj.39339.448819.AE
Raveendran, N., Tharyan, P., Alexander, J., Adams, C., & , . (2007) Rapid tranquillisation in psychiatric emergency settings in India: pragmatic randomised controlled trial of intramuscular olanzapine versus intramuscular haloperidol plus promethazine. BMJ, 335(7625), 865-865. DOI: 10.1136/bmj.39341.608519.BE
Alexander, J. (2004) Rapid tranquillisation of violent or agitated patients in a psychiatric emergency setting: Pragmatic randomised trial of intramuscular lorazepam v. haloperidol plus promethazine. The British Journal of Psychiatry, 185(1), 63-69. DOI: 10.1192/bjp.185.1.63
by Dr Shock in Dr Shock MD PhD
Social software or the use of Internet (Web 2.0) for generating your own content, to connect with one another and to share and manage content with each other is used by young people. How do first year medical students use this social software? This could be important because these networks could become networks of learners [...]
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Sandars, J., Homer, M., Pell, G., & Crocker, T. (2010) Web 2.0 and social software: the medical student way of e-learning. Medical Teacher, 2147483647-5. DOI: 10.3109/01421590701798729
by Dr Shock in Dr Shock MD PhD
This is part of a title of a commentary in the JAMA. Would have reacted in the JAMA but found my blog more appropriate. The subtitle is a neurobiological perspective. This commentary does provide an update on the neurobiological findings on empathy but they’re not new and can also be read on this blog. What [...]
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Riess, H. (2010) Empathy in Medicine--A Neurobiological Perspective. JAMA: The Journal of the American Medical Association, 304(14), 1604-1605. DOI: 10.1001/jama.2010.1455
by Dr Shock in Dr Shock MD PhD
In short: women want dominant men as short term mates and prestigious men as long term mates. Dominant males being those who are ambitious, assertive and boss other people around, intimidating others. The kind of alpha males chasing desired women. The prestigious kind are those who achieve high social status through social networks (twitter?), making [...]
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Kruger, D., & Fitzgerald, C. (2010) Reproductive strategies and relationship preferences associated with prestigious and dominant men. Personality and Individual Differences. DOI: 10.1016/j.paid.2010.10.022
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