Making Microsoft Outlook More Productive For You

Most of us Outlook on a daily basis if for no other reason than to access our email. But it is a productive program that can help you control much of your day, and most of us do not take the time to use it to its full ability. I would like to offer a few ideas here that may help make your day more productive.

1. Turn off the new-message alert. Yes, I know that most of us have this on by default, so every time we get a new message sent to us, the program flags us that it has arrived. And I would bet that much of the time you then immediately go to the message to respond to it, or to at least read it. But think about it: how is this any different than someone sticking their head in your door every 5 minutes to ask you something? You can turn the alert off. Here is how:

Choose Tools, Options, and click E-mail Options.
a) Click Advanced E-Mail Options.
b) Uncheck the box next to "Play a sound."
c) Uncheck the box next to "Briefly change the mouse cursor."
d) Uncheck the box next to "Show an envelope icon in the notification area."
e) Uncheck the box next to "Display a New Mail Desktop Alert."
f) Click OK.

2. Modify the subject line of archived Outlook email. Often what starts as an email chain about one subject may morph into a chain about something completely different? So, for example, you and a colleague begin a short series of back and forth emails about the dinner you just had together, and in that series you note a question about a work-related topic of some import, say, about a change in educational funding for research. This is now an email you wish to save, but the original topic line is about the dinner you had, so you cannot easily find that email now that you need it. You can actually edit the subject line to make it easier for you to find or to catalogue it. Here is how:

In Outlook, open the e-mail in question (You can't do this with message previews; you have to double-click the message to open it in a new window.)
a) Click anywhere in the Subject line to place your cursor.
b) Edit the subject as you see fit.
c) Hit Enter, then accept the warning Outlook gives you.

3. Use Outlook to access your twitter account. For those of you who use twitter, you can use Outlook to read and manage your tweets. To do so, you need to add a plug-in to the system, known as Twlnbox. When you install this, it will add a new folder to your inbox (and you can then make individual folders for each sender, which may be of help in a large organization such as ours). From there, you can just provide your twitter user name and password and it will locate all the tweets to your account and put them in the folder. You can then read them like email. You can click the toolbar that the program will put on Outlook and use it to send our your own tweets, and it will also let you know when new tweets arrive.

These are just a few ideas about making Outlook do more of what you need it to do. This is based on a short article by Rick Broida from PCWorld, (http://www.pcworld.com/article/169013/be_more_productive_in_microsoft_outlook.html)

American Society for Bioethics and Humanities 2011 Conference

I just returned from attending the annual conference of the American Society for Bioethics and Humanities, which this year was held in Minneapolis(allowing me to visit both Surdyk’s for cheese and Kaczmarcuk’s for sausage, just saying). The theme for this year was “Generation(s) and Transformation(s)” reflecting an emerging theme in bioethics, that of “enhancement.” Enhancement is anything which enhances the development or ability of a person, most often applied to the developing fetus but also seen in developments in neurology, orthopedics (i.e., prosthetics) or even use of glasses or hearing aids. I come away from the meeting with a great deal of new knowledge as well as an understanding that bioethicists wear more bowties than any other group I have ever seen.

Over the course of three days, I attended the following sessions:

• Gender, Reproduction and Bioethics: this included papers on approaching the ethics of treating LGBT populations as well as the ethics of disaster preparedness.

• Queer Generations: A second session devoted to the specific ethical issues occurring over the lifespan of LGBT person.

• Politics and Bioethics: featuring two prominent politically-oriented ethicists, John Arras and Jonathan Moreno, who looked at how ethics and politics conflict and come together in a pluralistic society.

• Research Environment and Decision Making: this was mainly about ethical decision making in a research environment.

• Bioethics in News and Theater: this looked at the confluence of bioethics and humanities as used in situations outside formal ethics courses.

• Physicians’ Obligations: This program examined the obligations physicians have to patients, and also explored physician conscientious objections to treatment as well as the concept of “firing” patients.

• Medical Ethics and Humanities Education in US Medical Schools: this was an overview of the development of a project designed to assess the state of training of ethics in the United States.

• Ethics as Transformative: an interesting session which looked at teaching macroethics, as well as how to ethically break the law and how to settle arguments about enhancement.

• Transformations over Two Generations: noted ethicist Dr. Ruth Macklin traced her career over a 40+ year period showing how the bioethics world began and became the force it is today.
• Teaching Ethics: Of interest to me since I do, it looked at the use of debate and role play in teaching ethics to medical students.

• Research Ethics: This session looked at how a controversy in bioethics occurred at one hospital, how consent forms may actually create therapeutic misconception rather than reduce it, and how people understand wrongdoing in ethics environments.

• The Birth of a Bioethics Program: Steps, Strategies and Successes: this looks at the creation of a large ethics program in the Kaiser Permanente Health System, showing how much work had to be done to launch their ethics program.

• Physician’s Role: about what doctors need to do when caring for patients.

• Patient’s Role: a switch on the above, but with a focus on what it means to be seen as a patient.

This was all fertile ground, and I very much enjoyed a program that gave me additional knowledge in an area not too well understood to begin with.

Steve Jobs, RIP

It is hard for me to think of someone, outside of my parents and family, who has had as profound an effect on my life as Steve Jobs did. As I sit here writing, I have an iPhone in my pocket, an iPad in my briefcase, a Macintosh computer on my desk at home (on which I have iTunes installed to download records), and an iPod in my desk drawer which I use when traveling or reading to listen to music. I bought my first Macintosh computer in 1984, an age when some of my current students were not even alive. It was a Mac IIe, with 1 meg RAM and a 5 ¼” floppy drive, and it so transformed my life as an editor and as a teacher that I cannot conceive of what life would be without it.

In 1984 I was early in my career with the JMPT, not yet its editor. Working with Dr. Roy Hildebrandt, every time we revised a manuscript which had been submitted to JMPT we had to have it retyped. Initially, we had to do this by hand; we then obtained an early IBM typewriter which could store up to a single page of text, which simplified the task a little bit but remained imperfect. With many submissions each month, our time was spent in reworking papers and typing them up again. That first Mac seemed magical- a full paper would be stored on this little piece of floppy material, and we could easily make changes and see them immediately reformat a page. OMG! Such power in that little piece of technology!

I also remember my first cell phone. Actually, it was called a bag phone, since it was the size of a regular land-line phone but was carried in a bag with a 9-volt battery. I imagine some of our students would not understand; they have grown up with cell technology. And that bag phone was only good for making phone calls. I look at the little device in my pocket, and I can make phone calls, but I can also access many programs that enhance productivity- or waste time- and I can read my email (and send email), access the web and watch movies.

In the classroom we use various technologies, most of which were either developed by Steve Jobs and Apple or Bill Gates via Windows. These have transformed education. We talk about Millennials, and how they learn differently than earlier generations (I am a baby boomer). I went to chiropractic college, and I sat in hours of lecture. Sometimes, the instructor had mimeographs of material, or an overhead on a acetate, and then maybe some slides (which required a slide projector). I learned well this way- and it took me a long time to understand that learning that way is no longer really operational- we have new technologies in play. There is even concern that the use of google may impact our memory and our learning, since so much information is now available for searching we need not remember it since it is always there. Google is now our brain. None of this is possible without Steve Jobs.

I will miss how visionary he was, how he transformed the world. I don’t know what Apple will do without him, but certainly the world is now a poorer place with him gone.

End of Term Youtube Bonanza

Here we are at the end of the Fall 2011 term and likely we are all feeling a bit tired and ready for a short break. I do, too, so herewith are some fun, heartwarming and interesting youtube clips to help you lead into or back from your vacation.

1. Woman hears her own voice for the first time: This video, taken by Sarah Churman’s husband Sloan, shows her dawning comprehension that she is hearing her own voice for the first time in her life; she is 29. It takes her a couple of seconds to process what is happening, but when she does, the smile and the tears that light her face are memorable. And her later comment is worth reporting: “I didn’t know I had an accent.” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZNdV76hIiuM

2. And in a baby: Of course, if it is good in a 29-year-old woman, it has to be better in an infant. So here is an infant responding to his mom after he has had a cochlear implant. The smiel is worth the price of admission. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4AOuSvAQ5LU&feature=related

3. Bus driver surprised on his birthday: Well, you won’t see this happen any time in the United States, but here we see passengers help celebrate the birthday of their daily busdriver, even to fooling him with what looks like a protest, but is really just the opposite, a celebration: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HW1_DvztM1U

4. Christian the lion- a legendary story and video, about 2 men who rescued a lion from a store in Great Britain, raised him so that he could be released into the wild, and then went looking to see how he was doing several years later. This is a memorable reunion: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ZIQUb-d4GQ&feature=related

5. And when I got back from Kandahar: Along similar lines, here we see a soldier returning home after a posting in Kandahar, and the reaction of his pet dog when he does. The dog is, shall we say, ecstatic: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ysKAVyXi0J4&feature=fvwrel

6. A young singer with a mighty voice: I confess I d not watch these reality singing programs, but this one is pretty fine. The young lady can sing: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pL2s2SWL8QE&feature=related

7. Ping pong outside the box: This is not your usual ping pong game here! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ga6zAEB9fOM

8. Hey, I play 3 instruments at once: And they are not even usual instruments, except the guitar. This fellow lays didgeridoos and stomp boxes along with his guitar- and he sings on top of it. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tiR1qT8ouGI

9. Grissom and Sarah: CSI, one of my favorite programs ever, developed the relationship of Gill Grissom and Sarah Sidle over a period of many years, using the so-called long arc of storytelling to do so. In the end, when William Petersen stepped out of the role he had owned for so long, the writers did him a good one by reuniting him with his lady love, in Costa Rica. Brings a smile to my face; this pay-off took 8 years to get to: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bkHNlwA_ESk&feature=related

Enjoy the upcoming break and for those just back, enjoy the new term. I’ll be back in a few weeks with new posts.

Apps for Healthcare Educators

I have an iPhone. Some of you have Androids, BlackBerrys or other cell phone. And all of us have a various set of apps on them. Some are for fun; in my case, I play solitaire when I, oh, wait while my wife tries on clothes at the local Von Maur. I have various newspapers on my phone, and I also have a wonderful little app called MedCalc 3000. This is an app that provides you immediate calculations of various measures used in evidence-based practice, such as sensitivity, specificity, likelihood ratios, confidence intervals, and so on. When I bought this app, at the high cost of just $4.99, I thought that there might be other good apps available. There are. I am not sure that they can be found for all phoe platforms, but I would be surprised if not. Here are a few good ones.

MedCalc 3000- you can read about this program at http://medcalc3000.com/pubapps/statist.htm. There are a number of different versions of the MedCalc program, some more for specialty physicians, but the one I note here has utility for those of us- which is all of us- involved in teaching with the tools of evidence-based practice. This little app lets you insert numbers from papers you read and then will calculate all sorts of statistics for you. Easy to use, intuitive and a good find. It costs $4.99, as noted above.

Med Calc- this is not related to the above app. This one is a more in-depth program that gives you access to many complicated formulas used in healthcare. For example, there is a body mass calculator in this program and there are many others. Take a look at http://itunes.apple.com/app/medcalc-medical-calculator/id299470331?mt=8. And it’s free.

Epocrates- we chiropractors cannot and do not prescribe drugs. But our patients still take them. And they take a lot of tem and of many different kinds. This program is the best available online phone-based app to easily locate information about the drugs our patients are taking. It has the additional strength of letting you investigate drug-drug interactions and drug-supplement interactions. It is free, but may cost money to upgrade annually as new information becomes available. Glance at it here: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/epocrates/id281935788?mt=8

NEJM This Week- this is a free app that allows you to scan new information coming from the New England Journal of Medicine, which is one of the world’s most influential medical journals. Here is an overview for the program: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/nejm-this-week/id373156254?mt=8

iRadiology- I will defer to our radiologists for other recommendations for good apps, and I know we have our strengths here, but this is one of the top programs for interns and residents to use. Take a look here: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/iradiology/id346440355?mt=8

There is a good overview of apps for doctors at http://blog.softwareadvice.com/articles/medical/the-best-medical-iphone-apps-for-doctors-and-med-students-1100709/. The author links you to a couple dozen excellent programs. This is an amazing technological innovation, and I would love to hear what apps you find most useful.

Two More Interesting Articles

1. Janamian T, Myers SP, O’Rourke P, Eastwood H. Responding to GPs' information resource needs: implementation and evaluation of a complementary medicines information resource in Queensland general practice. BMC Compl Alternative Med 2011;11:77 doi:10.1186/1472-6882-11-77

ABSTRACT
Background: Australian General Practitioners (GPs) are in the forefront of primary health care and in an excellent position to communicate with their patients and educate them about Complementary Medicines (CMs) use. However previous studies have demonstrated that GPs lack the knowledge required about CMs to effectively communicate with patients about their CMs use and they perceive a need for information resources on CMs to use in their clinical practice. This study aimed to develop, implement, and evaluate a CMs information resource in Queensland (Qld) general practice.
Methods: The results of the needs assessment survey of Qld general practitioners (GPs) informed the development of a CMs information resource which was then put through an implementation and evaluation cycle in Qld general practice. The CMs information resource was a set of evidence-based herbal medicine fact sheets. This resource was utilised by 100 Qld GPs in their clinical practice for four weeks and was then evaluated. The evaluation assessed GPs' (1) utilisation of the resource (2) perceived quality, usefulness and satisfaction with the resource and (3) perceived impact of the resource on their knowledge, attitudes, and practice of CMs.
Results: Ninety two out of the 100 GPs completed the four week evaluation of the fact sheets and returned the post-intervention survey. The herbal medicine fact sheets produced by this study were well accepted and utilised by Qld GPs. The majority of GPs perceived that the fact sheets were a useful resource for their clinical practice. The fact sheets improved GPs' attitudes towards CMs, increased their knowledge of those herbal medicines and improved their communication with their patients about those specific herbs. Eighty-six percent of GPs agreed that if they had adequate resources on CMs, like the herbal medicine fact sheets, then they would communicate more to their patients about their use of CMs.
Conclusion: Further educational interventions on CMs need to be provided to GPs to increase their knowledge of CMs and to improve their communication with patients about their CMs use.

2. Kitzman R. How local IRBs view central IRBs in the US. BMC Med Ethics 2011; 12:13doi:10.1186/1472-6939-12-13

ABSTRACT
Background: Centralization of IRB reviews have been increasing in the US and elsewhere, but many questions about it remain. In the US, a few centralized IRBs (CIRBs) have been established, but how they do and could operate remain unclear.
Methods: I contacted 60 IRBs (every fourth one in the list of the top 240 institutions by NIH funding), and interviewed leaders from 34 (response rate = 55%) and an additional 12 members and administrators.
Results: These interviewees had often interacted with CIRBs, but supported local reviews, and offered advantages and disadvantages of each. Interviewees argued that local IRBs can provide "local knowledge" of subjects and PIs, and "curbside consults" with PIs, facilitating mutual trust. PIs may interact more fully and informally, and hence effectively with local IRBs. IRBs also felt additional responsibility to protect "their own" subjects. Respondents mentioned a few advantages of CIRBs (e.g., CIRBs may streamline reviews), though far more rarely and cursorily. Overall, interviewees were wary of CIRBs, which they saw as varying widely in quality, depending on who happened to be members. Both local and centralized IRBs appear to have unintended consequences. For instance, discrepancies arose between IRBs that appeared to reflect differences in institutional culture and history, and personalities of chairs and/or vocal members, more than in local community values per se, and thus do not seem to be the intent of the regulations. While some critics see CIRBs as solutions to many IRB problems, critical tradeoffs and uncertainties emerge.
Conclusions: These data have critical implications for future policy and research. Debates need to evolve beyond simply a binary discussion of whether CIRBs should replace local IRBs, to examine how and to what degree different models might operate, and what the relative advantages and disadvantages of each are. While some critics see CIRBs as panaceas, certain problems appear likely to continue. Careful consideration needs to be given to whether the advantages of local IRBs outweigh the problems that result, and whether a system can be developed that provides these benefits, while avoiding the disadvantages of local IRBs.

Themes for PowerPoint

In an excellent article entitled “12 tips for creating better PowerPoint presentations,” Stephanie Krieger offers these thoughts on making your slide presentation work better (1). She focuses here on the idea that your slides should grab viewers' attention. Her thought is that to create slides that grab attention you should learn how to use slides effectively and try not to pack your slides with dense text-based information. You should get in the habit of including only elements that contribute to the point you are trying to make. Consider the difference between a text-based slide presenting, say, information documenting the growth of an investment, compared to a slide demonstrating the same information in graphic format. The graphic format makes a much stronger point. This information is from Krieger's post on the MicroSoft website.
One way to help grab and keep your students’ attention is to select or create your own theme. Quoting directly from Krieger’s article on the MicroSoft website: “Themes are the evolution of design templates in PowerPoint, but they're also much more than that. Themes were introduced in Microsoft Office 2007 to help you easily create the right look for your presentations and to coordinate all of your Microsoft Office documents almost instantly.

A theme is a coordinated set of fonts, colors, and graphic effects that you can apply to your entire document with just a click. The same themes are available for your Microsoft PowerPoint presentations, Microsoft Word documents, Microsoft Excel workbooks, and even your Microsoft Outlook email messages (and, in Office 2010, your Microsoft Access database forms and reports), so it's easy to create your own personal or business branding throughout all of your documents.

In PowerPoint, the theme also includes the slide master, slide layouts (and slide background options). When you apply a theme in your presentation, you automatically get slide layouts, colors, fonts, and graphic effects that go together, and you can format content with just a few clicks. In the PowerPoint Ribbon (at the top of your screen), find many built-in themes on the Design tab. To preview a theme, in the Themes gallery, simply hover your pointer over it. In Office 2010, you also see a selection of themes in this gallery that are automatically updated periodically from Office.com.

Using the galleries on the Design tab, you can also mix and match a slide design with different theme colors, fonts, and effects to quickly create your own look. You can even easily create a completely custom theme. Note: If you change the theme in your presentation but the formatting doesn't change, you may not have used theme-ready formatting when you created your presentation. When you start with a new PowerPoint 2010 or PowerPoint 2007 presentation, theme-ready formatting is automatic for fonts and colors on slide layouts and for Microsoft Office graphics, such as SmartArt graphics, charts, and shapes.”

References
1. Krieger S. 12 tips for creating better PowerPoint presentations. http://www.microsoft.com/atwork/skills/presentations.aspx, accessed September 12, 2011