When I take road trips I make sure plenty of podcasts are downloaded to my phone; I have to because there are now so few classical stations on FM radio and the satellite radio broke on the Jeep about 120K miles ago (so there went the Led Zeppelin station). This is what my podcast library currently looks like:
Nerd, right? Well compliments aside, on Ep. 49 of Trauma ICU the host interviews Dr. Kenneth Mattox who sits as the Professor and Vice Chair of the DeBakey Dept. of Surgery. I won’t go into the eye-crossing details but Mattox has some real juice.
Anyway he and Dr. Hirshberg wrote a book from transcribed chats they would have in the morning after a night in the emergency department, coffee in hand and feet up on the table.
Why do I have this book since I am not a surgeon and don’t plan to work in that role? As Dr. Mattox explains, the book is about developing problem analysis skills under pressure. You want a hard deadline? It’s not “The website is going live at 5:00 PM today so make sure all the © symbols are in place” but “The guy in front of you is bleeding from three different areas in his abdomen and his pressure is falling. What is your next move?”
To wit, this story was told in the podcast: a Mexican businessman had the book translated into Spanish and distributed 1,000 copies to his fellow businessmen to aid in their decision making skills. So with that recommendation, I bought it immediately.
I am only 10% of the way though it and am limiting myself to one chapter per day, giving the concepts time to sink in and take root. You can save money for extra gauze and QuikClot by purchasing a used copy on eBay (mine is missing the back cover). More in the full post, coming soon!
n.b. James Fodor’s podcast The Science of Everything is fantastic as well and he is up to 138 episodes as of this post. Where else can you learn that marine mammals sleep with ½ of their brain at a time? Well, Ep. 131! He is well worth supporting.