May 14, 2015

So I joined the social media forefront

Well, not really.  I just added a Twitter account to this place.  Of course, it's @meriwhen.

Mind you, this isn't my first Twitter account.  My original Twitter account is circa 2007, in use before Twitter even got on the map.  I also have an account for professional reasons.  Then there's this one.

You're welcome to follow me, but don't hold me to high entertainment standards.  More than likely it'll be random thoughts, promoting forum threads, and re-tweets of things I found interesting.  I've seen how dangerous social media can be to one's career and reputation, and I have no desire to kill either of mine by a careless choice of words.  So I plan keep things relatively innocuous there, like I do here on this blog.

The Internet is full of the news articles about people getting fired or raked over the coals for something they posted on Facebook/Twitter/Blogger/et al.  They posted something they shouldn't have, or they posted a bad/tasteless joke, or an inflammatory remark, or something racially/religiously/politically charged, or shared way too much information.  Perhaps it was even something that they thought would be funny or interesting, but the universe thought otherwise.   Whenever I think of Internet missteps, I always think of that nursing student who posted the picture of the placenta.  I wonder what ever became of her.

I recommend reading So You've Been Publicly Shamed by Jon Ronson.  It's a very interesting read about how easy social media makes it to call someone out on something they did:  you can name and shame them in about 10 seconds...and anonymously, no less.  And the Internet being the Internet, once something is posted on it, it's out there forever.  Even if it's taken down right away, it's very possible that it's already been crawled, cached, copied or (screen)capped.

There's several case studies in there about actual people who have been publicly chastised.   It's amazing the damage that social media can do to a person and their reputation,  how fast that damage can happen, and how out of control the stone-throwing can get.  They don't call it a Twitter lynch mob for nothing.
 
What isn't in Ronson's book--but is a very interesting follow-up story--is that one of the people who called out someone for a rather tasteless tweet (her story is in the book) was in turn shamed for something HE posted.  He make a joke about bullying that backfired on him; he couldn't believe that people would think he was condoning bullying.  But they did...

Of course, he now has quite a bit more sympathy for the woman who he helped bring down.  Funny how being on the wrong end of the bulls-eye will do that to you.

All of this will make you think twice before you post anything online.

In other news, I found a PALS class and registered for it.   I've got just over three weeks to brush up on pediatric codes

May 10, 2015

I'm entering the final week of my assignment with Job #3.  When I started I thought I would struggle because it was so long since I had worked there (6 months!), but I found that it came back to me pretty quickly.  It's also a nice change not to wear scrubs to work...though I'm ready to get back to them.  I only have two pairs of dress pants so I have to do laundry frequently.  And I can't wear skirts because of the tattoos on my legs, which would take quite a bit of Dermablend to cover them up.

After this is the nursing convention which I am working at.  I didn't schedule any work for most of that week, so even though I'll be "working" for the forum, I won't have to work.  Then after that my schedule is rather light until the middle of June.  I kept it intentionally so since I have to renew BLS, ACLS, CPI and a bunch of other things.  Plus do some things around the house before I begin my summer assignment at Job #1.

Then there's the ED preceptorship, though it may not happen right away.  I finished part 2 of the ED course and wrote the school saying that I would like to do the preceptorship.  The instructor, the school and I are trying to negotiate when this can happen.  We're aiming to do it at Job #1 (the instructor happens to work for the same healthcare organization as I).  I had told them that either mid-May to Mid-June, or I'd have to wait until October after this assignment.  I'm thinking it'll probably be October, since it takes time for my organization to get things processed.  Plus in October, I'll have a lot more freedom in the days and shifts I can work.

So in the meantime, I'm getting all of the paperwork and requirements completed.  I may have to take PALS...I think I'll try to do that before the summer.  I took it once before but I had let it lapse, so it won't be entirely foreign territory.

In the meantime, I started working out regularly.  I actually started on April 1.  I've been doing a workout DVD about every other day.  I don't think I look any different, but I do feel better overall.  And on day #1, I couldn't get through the workout without stopping every few seconds--now my endurance has increased to the point that it's rare if I pause.

I also started paying closer attention to what I'm eating because I didn't like my most recent GFR.  Yes, I know that a GFR measurement alone does not indicate kidney disease...and fortunately, all of my other levels were fine.  But I did have the preecplampsia and then post-partum preeclampsia from my pregnancy with littler one, and since then my GFRs have been below normal.  This one is the lowest yet.  Also, my blood pressure still requires a med to keep it under control, and I could still stand to lose weight.   So let me act on a potential problem now before it becomes an actual one.