Creative Health Labs

Techcrunch has a great piece on Stanford medical school flipping its didactic model so that students listen to lectures at home and collaborate on problem solving projects in the classroom. Techcrunch posits that this is more innovative than Harvard and MIT posting their lectures online; I agree. Having sat through hundreds of laborious hours of monotone recitations at the University of Maryland Medical School, I can attest that lectures are not an efficient nor effective method for transferring information to students like me. Watching videos at home allows each student to play, pause, and repeat any portion at any time without any embarrassment or guilt. If there is a word or an idea that isn't clear, the student can pause and research something immediately on the web, and gain the appropriate contextual understanding that allows for real learning - this isn't possible in a live lecture. Using classroom time learning to work with other students on complicated medical is...

Having just flown out of Washington Dulles Airport, I was stunned to see the TSA personnel manning the whole body X-ray scanners not wearing radiation dosimeters. Having worked in research labs with nuclear isotopes and in many hospitals, I know that each institution REQUIRES staff who have exposure to non-background radiation to wear radiation dosimeters. It's ridiculous not to - if you care about your staff. Dosimeters are cheap (less than $50), can be easily worn as a badge, and are easy to administer ($69 for the whole year from this vendor ). Although a dosimeter does not itself protect against the cancer risks of radiation, which are well documented , it can notify you if your cumulative dose is reaching dangerous levels, something you wouldn't be able to know or feel otherwise.  I asked my screener whether she was offered a dosimeter, and she had no idea what I was talking about. I got the very a uncomfortable feeling that this young female was not properly educated ...