21st Century Medicine

Fox’s The Resident: Everything Stereotypically Bad About Hospitals (Part 2/2)

/ Jordyn Redwood / Leave a comment

Today, I’m continuing my review of Fox’s new medical drama The Resident and all that is bad about it. You can find Part I here.

Let’s continue our list.

THE RESIDENT: L-R: Manish Dayal, Emily VanCamp, Shaunette RenŽe Wilson, Matt Czuchry, Valerie Cruz and Bruce Greenwood in THE RESIDENT premiering midseason on FOX. ©2017 Fox Broadcasting Co. Cr: Justin Stephens/FOX

Bargaining with IV drug users for drugs. In one scene, the younger protege is seen bargaining with an IV drug user so that she’ll give into his demands and it becomes a bartering of sorts like buying food in an open market. Hands down, the physician should decide what his bottom line is and not waiver from it.

Effective CPR is “until the ribs crack”.  Effective CPR is just the amount of compression depth it takes to generate a pulse that can be felt. It is a risk factor that the patient’s ribs can break, but it is not the clinical guideline we shoot for.

An environment of “no questions asked” is dictated. The senior resident gives his junior resident this mantra: “Do what I want you to do. No questions asked.” Again, this type of environment is intolerable in the hospital setting and should never be dictated . . . like ever. A questioning environment has been shown to increase patient safety and smart hospitals are encouraging this very thing. Most hospitals also have a mechanism in place to go above the bedside medical team if family concerns are not being addressed.

A surgical resident get first dibs on the new, bright, shiny, robotic surgical wonder. Need I say more?

The attending surgeon pretends to do a surgery. Remember the new shiny surgery robot? Remember the attending from Part I that has obvious hand tremors and should not be doing surgery? Did I mention this attending surgeon is an ego maniac (he even leaves positive medical reviews for himself)? Well, since no one has ratted out this well . . . rat . . . it must be him that first uses the machine. However, physically, he can’t do it. So he sets up a ruse where it appears he’s doing the surgery where in reality his uber smart, highly capable resident is. I cannot tell you how ethically bad this is on so many levels.

There are several issues that surround a lengthy medical code in the ER. The IV drug user that bargains for drugs in the beginning codes related to a heart infection. She is coded for nearly 30 minutes— the junior resident keeps it going for that long because of his emotional connection to the patient. Of course, just as he decides to call it, the patient gets her pulse back.

The senior resident is mad at him because he’s just revived a “vegetable”. Honestly, it is the senior resident’s job to watch their underlings. There would have eventually been an attending doctor overseeing this code. So, the person least responsible for the length of this code is the junior resident. Everyone higher up on the totem pull has the ability to stop the code.

Hospitals keep vegetative people alive for money. This is so patently false it’s laughable, but is probably more believable for the general public because many think hospitals will do anything to meet their bottom line.

I’ve been in nursing twenty-five years this May. I first started in adult ICU nursing and in that unit in Kansas there was avid discussion of clinical pathways to put people on to withdraw unnecessary (futile) care. In fact, I would say I’ve seen the opposite— at times a push to take people off of life support sooner then may be warranted from both the family and/or medical providers.

A resident taking it into their own hands to discontinue life support. Because the patient has no hope for life and he sees that the family is in no hurry to stop life support, the resident decides to turn off the machines. Fortunately, he is caught by a fellow resident and quickly turns back on the life support and the patient suffers no ill effects. Again, highly unethical. How about . . . having some hard conversations with the family about the viability of their daughter and helping them come to this decision? I know this is painted in the episode as a merciful thing for this doctor to do, but it would have been murder if he succeeded. He does not have permission to discontinue life support and cannot do so on his own accord. Period.

Also, there is no reason to be dumping a bucket of ice cold water onto a patient’s face . . . like ever.

I guess I should be thankful to The Resident for giving me all this blog material. It’s the only thing good about the show.

Tell me what you think of The Resident? If you’ve seen an episode, will you keep watching?

 

Fox’s The Resident: Everything Stereotypically Bad About Hospitals (Part 1/2)

/ Jordyn Redwood / 2 Comments

Seems like this television season there have been quite a few new medical dramas hitting the airwaves. I’ve done a four part series on The Good Doctor (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4) and 9-1-1. Newest onto the small screen is Fox’s The Resident.

It will make you hate hospitals and everything about them.

There are a few that say to me, “Why try and correct all this misinformation? Most people know it’s not factual.” It might actually surprise you how many people view what they see on television as real and true. The recent demise of crock pots everywhere after an episode This Is Us led the company to release a statement about their safety.

The Resident highlights every horrible hospital stereotype . . . literally on the planet. This is pretty amazing for a show to do in one hour.  The show centers around two residents: the senior resident Dr. Conrad Hawkins and a new bright and shiny resident, Dr. Devon Pravesh. One big problem . . . it’s not even clear what type of residents they are.

Hawkins is the gunslinger. The medical doctor who knows everything under the sun and bucks corruption (and common sense) at every possible turn. He is brash, arrogant, and needs a few classes in mentoring and bedside manner. Well, not just him, but really the entire cast of doctors from the senior attending with tremors who shouldn’t be doing surgery anymore to the wicked smart surgical resident who, in a room full of people (and on the fly by no less) states to a family that the result of their loved ones surgery was “Prescott’s dead.”

Sweet.

I don’t even like this show a little bit. As it stands now, I personally find nothing redeeming about it. Not only medically, but socially as well.

Here is just a short list to get us started on what’s wrong with The Resident.

An open appendectomy. Appendectomies are mostly done laparoscopically. In this patient, it’s even commented that it hasn’t ruptured so it should be the easiest of all appendectomies. However, this patient has a heinously large incision and the attending physician (the one with the horrible hand tremors) nicks an artery and the patient dies.

A short surgical code. It is true that surgeons don’t like deaths to occur in the actual OR. Considering that, the surgical code (compared to a medical code later) is laughingly short. Like big shrugs around the room after a few minutes— golly gee, our patient is dead.  Not sure how we treat hemorrhage.

The cover-up. I can’t say with one-hundred percent certainty that no bad medical outcome is hidden, but I will say that the climate is definitely supporting the truth coming out in the hospital setting. In this television episode, it’s plainly clear that this attending surgeon has a reputation for bad outcomes and the staff has been covering this up for a while. After the patient dies, they develop “the story” to cover up the surgeon’s negligence. Hands down, this puts too many careers at risk and most people aren’t willing to take that chance. This is beyond “playing along”. Most hospitals have corporate compliance hotlines where concerns can be left anonymously. Honestly, it would increase the tension of this television show to have someone trying to expose him.

Next post, we’ll continue our discussion on the medical inaccuracies of The Resident.

 

Criminal Minds: Can a Patient be Admitted for Psychological Distress?

/ Jordyn Redwood / Leave a comment

In a recent episode of Criminal Minds, a woman was nearly shot and killed by a madman operating a drone. She is saved and uninjured, but is admitted to the hospital just in case she begins to suffer some psychological distress.

Can this really happen?

The situation as portrayed on television— no.

When admitting someone emergently for a psychiatric problem, one of two things needs to be a concern. Either the person is a threat to themselves, to another, or both. You might hear a provider ask, “Is the person expressing HI or SI?” which stands for suicidal ideation or homicidal ideation.

If a person is expressing either or both of these concerns then a couple of things happen. The patient first must be medically cleared by a physician to ensure that there are not any coinciding medical concerns. Once this takes place, they then are put through a mental health evaluation.

Once a mental health evaluation is complete, it is decided what type of psychiatric services the patient may require. Sometimes, it is admission under an involuntary hold. Other times, the patient may be connected with outpatient services.

Think about the many events that have happened just in the US where people will be suffering psychological distress, but are not expressing suicidal or homicidal thoughts. The  devastating hurricaines. The mass shooting in Las Vegas. Put simply, if we admitted every patient that we were concerned for the potential of psychological distress outside of expressing HI or SI— we’d quickly run out of hospital beds. Plus, patients expressing these concerns should not be placed on a medical floor unless they also have co-existing medical problems that they need treatment for. Also, in that case, they require one on one observation.

Although a nice thought, you do have to have a mental concern other than psychological distress from surviving a potentially life-ending event to be admitted into the hospital.

Kardashian Style Ultrasounds on Reality TV

/ Jordyn Redwood / Leave a comment

Critics who say reality TV is fake must not watch the ultrasound scenes on Keeping Up with the Kardashians. On a recent episode, Khloe Kardashian visits an infertility doctor with her sister, Kim, and receives an ultrasound of her uterus and ovaries.

Instead of being like most Hollywood scripted shows, KUWTK portrays this scene with spot-on accuracy. Watch the video below… (Caution: Some adult language is censored during this scene).

What KUWTK did right

We can all see that this doctor’s visit is legit. Maybe it was scripted, but at least they recorded the ultrasound as true to real life. Here are the things they did right and something Hollywood needs to study for future TV shows.

1) The physician has the machine turned at the appropriate angle. It is facing the physician and pulled down where he can reach the dashboard. The camera still is able to give him plenty of TV time while Khloe and Kim can watch the scan on the wall monitor.

2) Khloe is pretty much covered with a paper sheet during the scan and the physician or sonographer inserts the probe. This is a very accurate scenario for a real life internal vaginal ultrasound. Sonographers and physicians who scan make sure the patient is comfortable and covered while the scan is being completed. We utilize vaginal scanning to view the uterus and ovaries and also first trimester babies. We scan on top of the belly for second and third trimester pregnancies or other types of imaging.

 3) The machine is relatively quiet. The only noise heard in the background is the cooling fan on the system. No heartbeats or added sound effects are slipped into the scene to make it seem more authentic. Finally, TV got this detail correct.

4) The physician uses the appropriate probe and the appropriate anatomy is shown on the screen. The images we see on the monitor are the uterus and ovaries.  Many times, shows present anatomy on the screen that doesn’t match the discussion they are having or the sounds coming from the machine.

5) The ultrasound equipment is a top of the line GE ultrasound machine. No ancient relic from the 1980s being thrown into a scene because it’s the only thing in the props room. Hollywood must think no one will know the difference. This physician uses modern ultrasound technology to do his job.

Reality TV might get a bad rap for not being truly “reality”, but this scene was the most accurate ultrasound example on TV to date. Maybe Hollywood films and television directors need to learn from Keeping Up with the Kardashians as an example of what to do when filming an ultrasound scene.

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Shannon Moore Redmon writes romantic suspense stories, to entertain and share the gospel truth of Jesus Christ. Her stories dive into the healthcare environment where Shannon holds over twenty years of experience as a Registered Diagnostic Medical Sonographer. Her extensive work experience includes Radiology, Obstetrics/Gynecology and Vascular Surgery.

As the former Education Manager for GE Healthcare, she developed her medical professional network across the country. Today, Shannon teaches ultrasound at Asheville-Buncombe Technical Community College and utilizes many resources to provide accurate healthcare research for authors requesting her services.

She is a member of the ACFW and Blue Ridge Mountain Writer’s Group. Shannon is represented by Tamela Hancock Murray of the Steve Laube Agency. She lives and drinks too much coffee in North Carolina with her husband, two boys and her white foo-foo dog, Sophie.

Treatment of Car Accident Victim with a Brain Injury

/ Jordyn Redwood / Leave a comment

Leslie Asks:

My character has been in a car accident and sustained head damage (swelling to the brain)— is there a medical term for that? Also, the swelling becomes so bad the doctors have to remove part of her skull— is there a name for that? How long does that swelling usually take before it goes down so they can replace the skull? Does the character regain consciousness? I have her in an induced coma which I want her in for a while.

Jordyn Says:

Upon further clarification of this question from the author, she says there is not a significant description of the motor vehicle collision in the manuscript and the scene is being told from the POV of a nurse.

The brain swelling is called cerebral edema. Usually, if it’s a significant car accident then there is usually bleeding as well. This is why I ask about the car accident. It should be pretty serious.

A nurse will use language that a family can understand. So, I might actually avoid a lot of medical terminology when speaking to the family unless I also clarify what the words mean.

I might say something like, “Your mother (or whatever relation) has a lot of swelling in her brain as a result of the car accident. We call this cerebral edema.”

A craniectomy is where they remove a portion of the skull.

Peak brain swelling is generally 48-72 from the time of injury and diminishes from there. Induced coma is a reasonable medical scenario here.

Whether or not this patient regains consciousness is up to you as the writer. Statically, the odds are pretty low for her to be the same person she was before. If she does wake up, she’ll have extensive rehab needs for sure– but you could write it either way.

Best of luck with your story!

Pediatric CPR: When to Stop?

/ Jordyn Redwood / Leave a comment

Nothing probably tugs at the heartstrings more than thinking about a child dying. It’s not the way things are supposed to happen. We expect life to follow the natural order of things— the old die first. Parents should never bury their children.

Sadly, we know this reality is not true. The pediatric nurse understands and confronts this reality more often than most. Particularly nurses who work critical care, ER, oncology, and hospice.

A reader of this blog posed this question to me: How long will a nurse or doctor perform chest compressions on a pediatric patient? Is forty-five minutes too long or would they try longer?

This is a tough question and not so easily answered. There are really no hard and fast rules as to when CPR should be stopped and it depends a lot on the reason for the code (if known) and what types of signs the patient is giving us. For instance, just because a patient doesn’t have a pulse, doesn’t mean they don’t have electrical activity in the heart muscle. Some causes of a code are reversible, but it takes time to do so. Hypothermia might be a good example of this.

I’ve worked in both adult and pediatric critical care. What I’ve found generally is providers will run pediatric codes longer than adult codes even when chances are small to get a pulse back. No one wants to see a kid die— health care providers are no different. Plus, culturally, we resist death at every turn even though it is the course each of us will journey to.

However, I did come across this article that begins to address this concern. If we can teach how to resuscitate patients— should we also not teach providers when it is reasonable and ethical to stop such efforts?

1. Are there clinical features present prior to the code that are predictive of poor survival? For instance, in the adult patient some of these from the article included pneumonia, metastatic cancer, and low blood pressure. For pediatric patients, kidney failure and use of a continuous infusion of epinephrine are mentioned.

In the emergency department setting, we want to know what the patient’s initial heart rhythm was. If there was no electrical activity in the heart (terms such as asystole, flat-line, ventricular standstill) then chances of getting back organized electrical activity AND contraction of the heart muscle are low.

2. Is the patient receiving high quality CPR? This might seem like a no brainer. Of course, if the patient codes in the hospital, they must be receiving excellent CPR. What research shows is that this is not true and it is a big drive of many institutions to simply improve the quality of CPR. If I can ease your mind, many hospitals are improving CPR basics through high fidelity code labs, more frequent CPR check-offs, mock codes, and computer based CPR training that measures effectiveness of CPR and coaches the participant on how to improve .

What are some CPR pitfalls? Initiating CPR in a timely manner. Compressing deep enough and at the right rate. Not over or under ventilating the patient (both can actually cause problems). CPR is what we call a high risk, low yield procedure— meaning we don’t do it very often, but when we do we have to do it right. What you don’t practice frequently you don’t become adept at. CPR is no different.

Considering this, we look at how long the patient’s down time was. This refers to the time when the patient’s heart stopped beating to the time they got CPR. Trouble is, this might be relatively hard to determine. When was the patient last seen? Is the patient cold to the touch? Are their pupils fixed and dilated?

The good news for the writer is there is a lot of leeway in this area as far as how long a medical team might “work” on a patient. Factors can be given for both short and long resuscitation times.

The most important part is getting those factors medically correct.

What about you? Have you written a resuscitation scene into a work of fiction?

 

5 Tips for a Character’s Stroke

/ Jordyn Redwood / 1 Comment

Even some famous authors get medical details wrong.

In a New York Times bestselling novel, the author presented his main character’s mother with a stroke. Almost all the details were accurate, except for the origin of the blood clot in the mother’s leg. This is where the author needed more research and clarification.

For example:

If the blood clot broke loose from the arteries of the leg, it travels to the toes and become lodged in the tiny capillary vessels, never reaching the brain.

If the blood clot broke loose from the veins of the leg, it travels to the heart, out to the lungs and becomes lodged. This obstruction can be fatal and is called a pulmonary embolism, not a stroke.

Therefore, when giving your characters a stroke, let’s get the details right by asking the following questions:

What kind of stroke does the character have?

There are two types:

Ischemic Stroke occurs when blood vessels in the brain become blocked by a moving obstruction that has traveled to the brain and lodged within the vessels, cutting off oxygen supply. These moving obstructions or emboli and most often come from the heart or carotid arteries.

Hemorrhagic Stroke occurs when excessive bleeding in the brain, either from a ruptured blood vessel or from trauma, places pressure on the brain tissue. This cuts off the oxygen supply in that area.

There are two types of hemorrhagic stroke:

Intracerebral – located inside the brain
Subarachnoid – located outside the brain

What are the characters risk factors for a stroke?

Characters need to exhibit a pre-existing condition that contributes to a stroke. Such as:

High blood pressure
High cholesterol
Smoking
Heart Disease
Head Trauma
Drug Abuse

What are the characters symptoms?

Think FAST:

Facial drooping
Arm weakness
Speech Difficulty
Time to call 911

Strokes on the left side of the brain will contribute to symptoms on the right side of the body and vice versa. If the stroke affects the cerebellum or brain stem, then symptoms can affect both sides of the body.

What is the characters treatment?

Ischemic Stroke: t-PA therapy is provided by licensed medical professionals and needs to be administered within three hours of onset symptoms.

Hemorrhagic Stroke: Blood thinner meds are halted and blood pressure meds are administered to decrease bleeding.

What types of medical procedures are provided for a character experiencing a stroke?

Ultrasound of the carotid arteries may be performed to determine blockage in the arteries carrying blood to the brain.

CT or MRI scan of the brain to identify the cause and location of the stroke

For an Ischemic stroke, an angioplasty or endarterectomy is performed to open the narrowed channel and provide blood flow to the brain again.

For Hemorrhagic stroke, a procedure may be performed to place a coil, clip or glue in the affected area to try and stop the bleeding.

Follow these tips and you’ll be thinking FAST in no time!
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Shannon Moore Redmon writes romantic suspense stories, to entertain and share the gospel truth of Jesus Christ. Her stories dive into the healthcare environment where Shannon holds over twenty years of experience as a Registered Diagnostic Medical Sonographer. Her extensive work experience includes Radiology, Obstetrics/Gynecology and Vascular Surgery.

As the former Education Manager for GE Healthcare, she developed her medical professional network across the country. Today, Shannon teaches ultrasound at Asheville-Buncombe Technical Community College and utilizes many resources to provide accurate healthcare research for authors requesting her services.

She is a member of the ACFW and Blue Ridge Mountain Writer’s Group. Shannon is represented by Tamela Hancock Murray of the Steve Laube Agency. She lives and drinks too much coffee in North Carolina with her husband, two boys and her white foo-foo dog, Sophie.

 

Forensic Question: Testing a Blood Sample for Pregnancy

/ Jordyn Redwood / Leave a comment

Jordyn Asks:

Can you test a blood sample to see if the person who left the blood behind is pregnant?

Amryn Says:

For most traditional tests, it would require a fair amount of blood be left behind in order for perform a pregnancy test. The blood would also need to still be in liquid form rather than dried.

It’s not something that would be done for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is that samples are usually conserved as much as possible for forensic testing. So while it’s possible with the right set of circumstances, it likely wouldn’t be done since the blood would be used for DNA testing rather than diagnostic testing.

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Amryn Cross is a full-time forensic scientist and author of romantic suspense and mystery novels. Her first novel, Learning to Die, is available on Amazon. The first book in her latest series, loosely based on an updated Sherlock Holmes, is available for pre-order on Amazon. Look for Warzone in January 2015. You can connect with Amryn via her website, Twitter and Facebook.

 

Author Question: Unconscious Teen Struck in Head by Baseball Bat

/ Jordyn Redwood / 1 Comment

Ari Asks:

Hello and thank you for this blog. It’s a brilliant resource and I’m grateful to have the opportunity to reach out to a professional in this setting.

I have two scenarios in a novel I’m writing that I could use your help with.

First, a teenage boy is struck in the head with a baseball bat. He is knocked unconscious and falls into a coma. When he arrives in the ER, I would like some compelling dialogue between the first responders to convey his condition, rather than just typing it out in the slug lines. What are some of the measures that nurses and/or doctors would take in responding to this injury? Also, what type of jargon or verbiage would make this scene convincing to someone in the field?

Second, is the scenario where the doctor informs the parents of the same boy about his condition. In what setting would he/she do this? Or for that matter, who would be the person to inform the parents to begin with?

Thank you for taking the time to help writers do your profession justice.

Jordyn Says:

Hi, Ari. Thanks for reaching out and all your compliments regarding the blog. I’m glad you’ve found it helpful.

Typically, when a patient arrives to the ER via EMS, they give a report on their patient when they get to the assigned room. In this case, it might be something like this:

“This is John Doe, age 17, struck in the head with a baseball bat at 1600 today. Pt with immediate LOC (loss of consciousness). Was unconscious upon our arrival. Responds only to pain. We started an IV, drew labs, and started normal saline TKO (to keep vein open). His Glasgow Coma Score is eight (this is bad). Vitals signs are as follows: Heart rate 100. BP 124/62. Respirations 16. Pulse ox 100% on 100% non-rebreather. Parents are here. No chronic illnesses. No drug allergies.” 

The ER team will place him on a monitor, assess the status of his IV, and do a thorough physical exam of the patient including an extensive neurological exam. I would follow the link above and do some reading on the Glasgow Coma Scale and how it’s scored.

A Glasgow coma score of eight or less will likely lead to the patient being intubated because there is concern that he would not be able to maintain his airway.

Taking into consideration this patient’s mechanism of injury and the fact that he is unconscious, he would receive an expedited CT scan of his brain to look for injury— likely bleeding in this case.

Past this, it would be hard for me to talk to you about all the things the medical team would say. It’s your scene. If it is a compelling scene in the novel, I’d have a medical person review it.

Keep in mind the POV character you’re writing the scene from. If it comes from a medical person’s perspective, then the use of technical terms, etc is more warranted because they should sound like they know what they’re talking about. If the scene is from a lay person’s POV— then you can write more generally about the medical things being done.

Who informs the parents about their son’s condition? These days, parents are generally not separated from their child, even in instances where the child has lost their heartbeat. The parents likely followed the ambulance and would be updated upon arrival in the patient’s room. A nurse or a doctor can update the parents and give them the medical plan of care as outlined by the physician.

Hope this helps and happy writing!

Author Beware: Inaccurate Ultrasound Scenes Part 2/2

/ Jordyn Redwood / Leave a comment

Today, we’re concluding Shannon’s series on how to write medically accurate ultrasound scenes. You can find Part I here. Today, Shannon is covering tips #3-#5.

Welcome back, Shannon!

Tip #3: Sonographers scan in the ultrasound department most of the time.

Most scans are performed in the designated ultrasound department for their exams, unless they are in active labor, in the ICU or for some astronomical reason, cannot leave their room. Even in the emergency department, if the patient can be transported to the department, then they will be.

Portable ultrasounds are performed on serious cases when the physician does not want the patient moved for some pertinent reason.

 For Writers: If your character needs an ultrasound exam, is conscious, can move well, or sit in a wheelchair, send them to the ultrasound department.

Tip #4:  Sonographers like top of the line equipment.

One television scene at a top-rated hospital showed a tiny little ultrasound machine from the 1990’s being used for the exam. Seriously?

Get rid of the outdated equipment. The machines in top-rated healthcare systems are the best of the best, large and full-sized pieces of equipment.

Modern portable systems look like laptops, are smaller, and are taken to the inpatient rooms or ICU.

Some facilities provide their ER and L&D doctors with tiny devices the size of a cell phone to carry in their pocket for quick peeks, not full anatomy exams.

For Writers: When describing the machine look at top of the line equipment with GE, Philips, Samsung or other manufacturers. This will give you a good idea of what is being used in the real medical world.

Tip #5:  Sonographers know where to place the probe.

Make sure the anatomy showing on the screen matches the location of the probe and the anatomy being discussed is displayed.

One television scene I witnessed had the actor place the probe in the middle of the abdomen, but a kidney presented on the screen. Sonographers know the kidneys are located on the sides of the abdomen, not in the top middle.

If you’re listening to the baby’s heart on a second or third trimester baby, then the heart will display on the screen. Not the brain, fingers, and toes.

If investigating the liver, then the probe needs to be placed on the right side of the abdomen. With the spleen, move the probe to the left side.

If it is a first trimester scan, then a vaginal exam will be performed. If the baby is in the second or third trimester, then the probe is placed on top of the abdomen.

For writers:  Research anatomy and physiology on the internet or in books before writing the ultrasound scene. Make sure the location is correct and the disease process is represented accurately. If unsure, then find a nurse, physician or medical professional to ask or connect with Jordyn and me.

When researching a specific topic, perform a google search, but select a credible source. Choose sites that end with .edu, .org, or .gov. Those tend to be most accurate. Sometimes I will use others, but always back it up with a healthcare system education site like Mayo Clinic, Cleveland Clinic, or the government site (ncbi.nlm.nih.gov).

Don’t be like one famous author, whose patient’s venous blood clot, located in the leg, traveled to the brain and caused a stroke. However, in real life, strokes most often come from the carotid arteries and heart. Venous blood clots in the legs kill when they break off and travel to the lungs.

Shannon, thank you so much for this valuable insight. I know I learned a lot.

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Shannon Moore Redmon writes Romance Suspense stories, to entertain and share the gospel truth of Jesus Christ. Her stories dive into the healthcare environment where Shannon holds over twenty years of experience as a Registered Diagnostic Medical Sonographer. Her extensive work experience includes Radiology, Obstetrics/Gynecology and Vascular Surgery.

As the former Education Manager for GE Healthcare, she developed her medical professional network across the country. Today, Shannon teaches ultrasound at Asheville-Buncombe Technical Community College and utilizes many resources to provide accurate healthcare research for authors requesting her services.

She is a member of the ACFW and Blue Ridge Mountain Writer’s Group. Shannon is represented by Tamela Hancock Murray of the Steve Laube Agency. She lives and drinks too much coffee in North Carolina with her husband, two boys and her white foo-foo dog, Sophie.