Friday 29 May 2015

The assimilation of facts


Day two of 'helping' Green-Eyes with the essay. I don't know if she is learning anything about clinical practice in the control of infectious diseases - or how to write about it - but I certainly am.

I have various facts stuck in my head now which I will probably die with, but never put to practical use. I might even die because of them - or rather ignoring them.

For instance, I can tell you that in 2002, it has been estimated that 1.7 million people died as a result of poor hygiene in U.S. hospitals, MRSA being the prime culprit - or rather the prime culprits being those who did not wash their hands properly and allowed the bacteria to flourish.

I have also learned the importance of thorough investigation during the reviews of published papers. This means looking up case histories and the non-medical qualifications of those who wrote them.

I have looked through 29 such papers so far, but not very thoroughly. I don't have the time, so I am having to distill the salient facts to include in the sample review.

It's all part of the daily work for a sculptor these days, it seems.

11 comments:

  1. I think it's always good to know about transmission of infection. Nothing like safeguarding yourself if you are in hospital :)

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    1. The thing is that everyone knows, but it takes an urgent research paper to get people to put it into practice. A friend of mine's son died recently after a routine and small operation on his leg after a cricket accident. He was 10 years old.

      The people who ignore the alcohol hand-rub on a daily basis are the consultants who go from ward to ward, too important to be concerned with little details. These days they have strict nurses whose job it is to march them back to the hand-rub in front of all the patients.

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  2. Just work over the grammar, spelling and construction of paragraphs, Tom. Believe me, I know this shit. You don't need to do the research.
    If I were marking my crit would be:

    Has she introduced the topic in the intro? Does she follow through? Does her argument stack up? Does she conclude having answered the intro question?

    Jesus, you can't research an essay because ol green eyes has been at a music festival all weekend (or you could but probably should charge lots of money and forgo all familial affiliations to do it). That's HER job.

    And yes, I'm marking at the moment. And fielding last minute text messages from my students who have been at a music fest all weekend.
    So, no sympathy for any of you.


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    1. She has a complete set of guidance notes plus examples, but the problem is that she has been daunted by the sheer volume of work which goes into it.

      I have told her that I am not going to do the whole bloody lot for her whilst she sits down and watches me, and - bang - she has had a breakthrough.

      She has gone off with my couple of thousand words to add to them on her own - whilst reading all the papers like she should have in the first place.

      Result.

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    2. Like I said to Joanne, she is as lazy as me, but twice as manipulative. I just refused to check in the main paper whether or not certain criteria or methods were employed, saying that she could at least do that for herself, and a light-bulb snapped on over her head. She's gone home to carry on on her own, and she has a full weekend to complete it. It should have been in weeks ago, but they made an allowance for her dyslexia - more manipulation.

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  3. Sara toa covered it. Writing a paper is like sculpting a fine arse from white marble. From another old teacher.

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    1. She had a mental block and now she seems to have snapped out of it. Basically, she is as lazy as I am.

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  4. At least you shouldn't be able to catch MRSA or any other things, from cold stone - so you should be OK there.

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  5. Only fact I have learnt about infection recently is that my wife has gone of black pudding because they use pigs blood to test sterilisation equipment in the hospital dept where she works and she hates the smell..

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    1. I just cannot believe they use pigs blood for that purpose in a hospital. Whole wars and mutinies have been started by the British Army using pig-derived products in the munitions, never mind the hygiene implications.

      Maybe they use it in a sterile environment, but then if so, what would be the point of it?

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