Your Twice-Monthly
Dose of Sanity:

It seems sometimes the guys need a good whiff of reality...

A joke dedicated to Fenella (& yes, I get placed on hold...a lot)

Hello. Welcome to the Psychiatric Hotline.
If you are obsessive-compulsive, please press 1 repeatedly.
If you are co-dependent, please ask someone to press 2.
If you have multiple personalities, please press 3, 4, 5, and 6.
If you are paranoid-delusional, we know who you are and what you want. Just stay on the line so we can trace the call.
If you are schizophrenic, listen carefully and a little voice will tell you which number to press.
If you are manic-depressive, it doesn't matter which number you press. No one will answer.
If you are anxious, just start pressing numbers at random.
If you are phobic, don't press anything.
If you are anal retentive, please hold.

Get another dose of laughter at RFS' Daily Dose of Sanity or the wild colon humor site Crack U Up!

Got a funny medical joke or photo to share? Email it to us, and if we use it here, we'll give you credit!

Yes! I want my own subscription to Passionate HealthCare!

Perhaps this unfortunate biker will be seen soon in an ED near you...

Morbid merriment:
Epitaphs

1. A lawyer's epitaph in England:
Sir John Strange
Here lies an honest lawyer,
And that is Strange.

2. On Margaret Daniels grave at Hollywood Cemetery Richmond, Virginia:

She always said her feet were killing her but nobody believed her.

3. On the grave of Ezekial Aikle in East Dalhousie Cemetery, Nova Scotia:

Here lies Ezekial Aikle
Age 102
The Good Die Young.

4. A widow wrote this epitaph in a Vermont cemetery:

Sacred to the memory of
my husband John Barnes
who died January 3, 1803
His comely young widow, aged 23, has many qualifications of a good wife, and yearns to be comforted.

Passionate HealthCare:
Love Caregiving, Just For The Health of It!
www.RxForSanity.com Vol. 3, Issue No. 5
By subscription only! Please forward this ezine to any HCP (Health Care Professional) you know who wants to enhance their joy in their career. Then they can sign up for their own subscription, as our gift!

Passionate HealthCare seeks to resuscitate your passion for your medical career. Your only cost for this prescription? Please comment, complain or educate us twice a year at PLRaymond@RxForSanity.com.

Hello, HCPs!

I'm so excited! Web-boy Jason just posted the new and improved Colonoscopy humor site at www.Crack-u-Up.com. Be the first on your block to check out the seven complimentary 'colon classes' to humorously encourage your friends to flash their vertical smiles for their own colon cancer screening, as well as that same great bottom feeding humor we all love.

Who in your life has a vintage posterior? Please send them today to CCUU for their loving nag! Happy Colon Cancer Awareness Month, ya'll!

Pat Raymond M.D. FACP FACG
Chief Enjoyment Officer, Rx For Sanity

 Yes! I want my own subscription to Passionate HealthCare!

Table of Contents:

A 'Pat' on the Back	The Sanity Store
Bedside Manners	Weird Websites
Health News You Can Use	Mock Medical Music
Where to Meet or Hear Dr Raymond

Embrace Your Tiger

I’m really a very timid person.

Please don’t guffaw; it’ll startle me. Recently in Miami recently before about 2000 Emergency Nurses, I looked collected and poised. You see, I have no problems with a 1:2000 dilution- it’s the 1:1 strength that threatens me.

I hate confrontation and controversy. Perhaps you do too. But it’s time for a change – it’s time that we learn to embrace the tiger.

Why now? We’re in the natural month for action. “March” connotes moving forward into spring, leaving the harsh winter behind. Mark you calendar for next year- March fourth is a natural day for people to forgive themselves for not action on New Year resolutions and move forward into another chance. March is an opportunity. To move forward on self care. Move forward in your career.

This March I am working on my timidity, largely a matter of not wishing to confront and to let others know that they have fallen short in my eyes. I would much rather praise, even when undeserved. I consider it one of my charming flaws- it’s a nice social skill, but not befitting my status as a leader. A leader leads. A leader causes others to grow.

But I’m not alone. Many shy away from confrontation. Where do you have issues that you avoid? Do you tell it your colleagues or boss what you want to or need? What level of teamwork you expect? What are you failing to acknowledge on the home front, or on a personal level? Do you simply hope that if you avoid it, it will change or go away? As Dr Phil would say, “And how has that been working out for you?”

We must learn to embrace the tiger. In martial arts, ‘embracing the tiger’ means to not allow yourself to be intimidated. Rather than recoil in fear from an adversary, whether internal or flesh and blood, rush at them. Leap headlong into your qualms and grasp them to you with glee. Terrifying, but exhilarating. Like bungee jumping into your fears.

Choose this month to embrace the tiger. As a guideline for the timid, here’s my March recipe for confrontation.

1. Sit down with your “opponent” in a quiet space.

2. Tell them what you perceive.

3. List the facts that led to this conclusion.

4. Honestly ask to be shown where you are wrong.

5. Listen.

Recently I was gifted with a fragrance sample. Such is the power of marketing that I would wear it even if it smelled like a landfill. Why? Because it’s what I want to become. The name? “Bodacious”.

Choose to embrace your tiger, even a tiny tiger, today. Honor March, and be bodacious in your life. Live large; your self esteem will soar.

Did you like today's article?
If you did, you'll love my book Don't Jettison Medicine, available at RxForSanity.com and Amazon.com.
Want to share some sanity in your medical newsletter? This article may be freely reprinted (see details at the bottom), and more of Dr. Raymond's most popular editorials are yours at Rx For Sanity Articles and at DontJettisonMedicine.com

Your Sanity Thought for the Day:

Lama Surya Das, Buddist teacher:

"We have to lighten up while we enlighten up."

A ‘Pat’ on the back to…

Kim Cooper RN CGRN, head nurse of the Chesapeake General Hospital Endoscopy suite, who married her enthusiasm for endoscopy and her skill with photography to create a series of quirky posters celebrating colon cancer screening. For more information about this series, or to get e-files you can use, contact Ms. Cooper at kimscoop@cox.net

How about you? Do you combine your passions?

The Emergency Nurse Association, whose Lauderdale Leadership Challenge provided nurses the concrete skills to lead in medicine, politics and comunity activism. Wonderful program!

Some reader comments this month:

"Your newsletter does brighten my day and I share it with the department." ~Deb Erno LPN,CGN

" Love your latest newsletter-been subscribing for years. You make the world a better place in healthcare-your humour is superb. Not looking forward to having a PR though (laughter here who does look forward to having one) and anything else shoved up me! How you lot do it all day is beyond me. I will stick to mental health. I wish you were in the UK so I could come and see you!"
~Fenella from UK

Thanks for the feedback, gals! Please forward this international newsletter to five of your best buds today so that they can get passionate about healthcare!

The Sanity Store: Our periscopic party rocks!

In honor of colon cancer awareness month, I invite you to get the Crack U Up Party Pack, a great ‘over the hill’ party gift, and humorously lead your friends to get their vital and life-saving colonoscopy.

Each Party Pack includes:

• THREE copies of Colonoscopy: It’ll Crack U Up, a comprehensive yet pocket-sized 56 page colonoscopy joke anthology featuring the finest in inoffensive bottom humor. They get one to keep and two to share!
• THREE pin-on lapel Butt-ons- reminding strangers you pass on the street to flash their vertical smile for colon cancer screening
• One colorful canvas tote bag imprinted with the Crack U Up logo, designed to make you the envy of your lunch bunch

Who Needs a Crack U Up Party Pack?

A great gag gift for an ‘over the hill’ birthday party!

• ANY/EVERY one at their fiftieth birthday.
• ANY/EVERY one who has a friend with colon cancer
• ANY/EVERY doctor, nurse, or health care professional involved in the colonoscopy procedure
• In fact, ANY/EVERY one with a (_|_)!

Bottom line… how much is your friends’ good health worth to you?

How about just $25 for all this! It’s an ‘over the hill’ gag gift bargain!

Yes, I can't wait another minute! Deliver my Crack U Up Party Pack directly to my door!

Bedside manners: The cost of crankiness

I speak a lot about how cranky physician behavior leads to 'retention deficit disorder' in our staffs. Watch out-- it could cost docs money too.

On March 5th, an Indiana jury ordered a heart surgeon to pay an ex-employee $325,000 for a November 2001 incident involving St. Francis Hospital's chief heart surgeon accused of screaming and lunging toward a staff member. The employee had worked at the hospital for 17 years as a perfusionist operating equipment that oxygenates the blood during surgery and making $100,000 annually.

The physician was described as a domineering manager who viewed himself as untouchable and wanted to put the employee in his place after the plaintiff had threatened to tell hospital administrators that the physician had verbally abused other members of his staff. The employee could not return to a hospital work setting after his experience.

Weird websites: How many do you get for a colonoscopy prep?

Tammie Aaron-Barrada of Hunker, Pennsylvania has invented a portable toilet training reward system called PottieStickers for her two toddlers. The website at www.pottiestickers.com suggests:

"One sticker for sitting,
two stickers for a pee, and
three stickers for a poopy."

Health news you can use: All protein not created equal

(AMWA News Feb 18) A study published in the February 1, 2005 issue of the American Journal of Epidemiology reports that protein consumed from red meat or dairy products appears to pose a greater risk of heart disease in older women than protein obtained from fish, beans or nuts. In a study of 29,000 postmenopausal women, researchers from the Mayo Clinic College of Medicine in Rochester, Minnesota, found that subjects with the highest intake of protein from red meat and dairy products were 40% more likely to die from heart disease over the next 15 years than women who ate less of these foods. The authors suggest that their findings may "call into question the long-term safety of high-protein diets." Yahoo/Reuters 2/9/05

 Please start sending my own subscription to Passionate HealthCare

Mock medical music

This issue, we feature a ballad from the lost Rogers and Hammerstein musical "My Fair Colon", entitled, appropriately, "The Hole in Your Rear". Try it out loosely to the tune "On The Street Where You Live"...

Y'know, it doesn't all have to be about bowels. (Heresy!!!) Got any mock medical music about a different organ system? Share the lyrics with us at PLRaymond@RxForSanity.com, and we'll credit you!

If you enjoyed this edition, Send it to a friend or colleague!

It's time to go!

Gastroenterologist, broadcaster, speaker, and writer Patricia L. Raymond MD FACP FACG of Rx For Sanity is author of "Don't Jettison Medicine! Resuscitate Your Passion For The Career You Loved". DJM is a joyous workbook of thirty exercises that will help to resuscitate your passion for caregiving. It's available, along with her unique joke anthology "Colonoscopy: It'll Crack U Up!" at the Sanity Store at www.RxForSanity.com or at Amazon.com.

She is a frequent speaker and workshop leader at national and international conventions, teaching medical caregivers techniques of self-care. As host of NPR's regional live radio program, "Housecalls", she encourages our patients to step up and accept responsibility for their own health, every Friday at noon (EST). You can tune in for live streaming audio!

Attention Meeting Planners! Scheduled already into late 2005, Dr. Raymond brings her passionate message to "Health Yourself" to conventions, local and regional meetings and Grand Rounds. Keep her in mind- even if you have a last minute cancellation. Dr. Pat Raymond delivers high-content, interactive programs that are lots of fun. She gives away great door prizes. And, most importantly, she will make you look good. Call 757-547-0368, write PLRaymond@RxForSanity.com or visit www.RxForSanity.com for details on her programs!

Where to meet or hear Dr Raymond: When will she be in your neighborhood?

Miami FL 03/26 Newport News VA 03/31 Saratoga NY 04/08-10 Springfield MO 04/30 Sacramento CA 05/12 San Francisco CA 05/13

Minneapolis MN 05/15-16 Atlanta GA 07/09-12 Pittsburg PA 09/11 New Jersey 10/15 Honolulu, HA 10/28-11/3

Email for information on how to attend, or to 'piggy-back' your presentation into Dr. Raymond's travel plans, or even to take her to lunch or dinner (you drive, she'll buy)!

  Tell a friend about our nifty website, Rx For Sanity!

What're you waiting for? Get Passionate HealthCare now!