Television

Reverie: Not so Medically Dreamy

/ Jordyn Redwood / Leave a comment

NBC has launched a new summer show titled Reverie.  In it, Mara (ex traumatized cop, maybe psychologist) is recruited by a company specializing in making-your-dreams-come-true via a hyper advanced virtual reality program. The participants receive an implant that allows them to interact virtually with a program partly of their design.

Problem becomes, some of the clients don’t want to leave. Hence, our heroine, Mara, is recruited to go in after them and pull them back to reality.

In the first episode, it’s noted that the client has been in his dream world for two weeks and it’s commented by the staff that he’s essentially comatose. The man is lying on a bed connected to an ECG monitor and some oxygen via nasal cannula as pictured below. They give the man two days left to live providing a time pressure for the heroine.

However, medically, this man would have already been dead because they are not providing for either hydration or nutrition. This could be solved simply medically by inserting a feeding tube via his nose and providing free water interspersed with bolus liquid feeds. After all, thousands of people live in comatose states for years if their basic medical needs are met such as oxygen (if needed) and nutrition.

The heroine, Mara, is psychologically damaged. She’s had a significant personal trauma she hasn’t quite worked through. There is also a concern expressed by the designers of the program that something might not be quite right with it. When Mara enters the virtual reality program for the first time to retrieve a voluntarily trapped client they run an EEG on her which measures brain waves.

After she successfully retrieves the client, there is a conversation between the designer and lead dream architect that something is wrong with Mara’s EEG— something that indicates she could have a mental illness.

An EEG cannot diagnose a mental health disorder. Its use might be to determine if a patient has a medical cause that may be masked by some psychiatric like complaints such as a seizure disorder or sleep disturbance.

In episode 2, the producers must have gotten some feedback that they needed some actual medical equipment if they were concerned about these clients suffering medical complications. This time, a woman’s heart is going into erratic rhythms, specifically V-tach, because of the stress she’s under in her dream scape. But the medical equipment must make sense. What’s pictured in the photo to the right is what we call a rapid fluid infuser. It delivers IV fluids very quickly. Typically, it would be used in a trauma patient or one who is suffering from overwhelming sepsis where rapid delivery of IV fluids can be lifesaving. It is not appropriate for this patient who is suffering from a heart arrhythmia— much better to park a defibrillator at her bedside.

Have you watched Reverie? What do you think of the show’s premise?

The Good Doctor S1/E5: Lying to Kids is a Good Thing?

/ Jordyn Redwood / Leave a comment

When The Good Doctor starts messing with pediatric scenarios . . . well, I just cannot keep my mouth closed. You can see other posts I’ve done on The Good Doctor here, here, here, and here.

In this episode (spoiler alert!) Shaun is convinced that a pediatric patient, a boy around the age of fourteen, has been misdiagnosed with cancer. This patient first comes to the hospital for a bone fracture and Shaun goes in to consult. Shaun is over identifying with this patient because he looks just like his brother that died during his younger years.

Issue #1: A first year surgical resident consulting on an ortho case. There’s really no reason for Shaun to even be consulting on this case. An orthopedic resident, yes. If no orthopedic resident, then an ortho attending. But this is outside the realm for a general, first year surgery resident.

Issue #2: There is a tendency in these shows to separate parents from children during treatment. This is not really done or encouraged at all anymore unless the presence of the parents put the child at risk in some manner.

Issue #3: This child has had a cancer diagnosis for SEVEN months and his parents haven’t told him he has cancer. This is unconscionable. We don’t need to lie and hide the truth from children. They are so much stronger than we give them credit for! Also, this is highly unethical and would not be supported by any decent pediatric medical team. Great effort would be made to help the parents give their child this news.  It doesn’t benefit him or protect him to be told this lie. Plus, is he not receiving treatment? The episode proves this point when the patient tells Shaun he already knew he had cancer.

Issue #4: Because his parents haven’t told him, Shaun decides to without their permission. Again, we would work very hard to have the parents tell the child this news. It’s unethical for any healthcare provider to do this without the parents permission no matter what. So much would be done to help these parents talk to their son. I’ve never seen this happen in pediatrics . . . like ever.

Issue #5: In order to prove his alternative diagnosis, Shaun decides to perform a medical procedure on the patient without the parent’s consent. This is legally dicey and Shaun should suffer disciplinary repercussions for doing so.

Issue #6: A patient after having open heart surgery is in recovery with only an IV and simple monitoring. Any patient who has had open heart surgery will have a variety of tubes— like chest tubes. It’s not a simple recovery.

Are you watching The Good Doctor? What do you think of this surgical resident getting away with all these bad things without repercussions?

 

A Real Doctor’s Thoughts on The Resident

/ Jordyn Redwood / 5 Comments

As you know, last week I did a couple of posts on Fox’s new television show The Resident. You can find Part I and Part II by clicking the links. Shortly after this post, I came across a You Tube video by Dr. Zubin Damania who runs a series of entertaining and informative videos on healthcare under the name ZDoggMD.

I’ve found Zubin’s videos fun. Some are satirical in nature, but others tackle very serious healthcare issues. Zubin does for the general public what I try to do for writers. As a note, some of his videos do have some salty language.

So, it was with interest that I viewed his thoughts (serious ones) on The Resident to see if we agreed on the same things. I was somewhat shocked in some of the things he thought were spot on as far as medicine goes and I must say I’m relieved we’ve worked at different hospitals. To be fair, I’ve never worked on a surgical floor or in the OR so my expertise is not in that area. You can view his thoughts in the posted video.

One thing he found more truthful than I did was the cover-up of the doctor who shouldn’t be performing surgery anymore. That something like that wasn’t as blatant as it appeared on television, but was much more subtle— but does happen.

It was interesting to see the differing opinions between a physician and a nurse. The lead female character— I think is a resident because she wears a long, white lab coat. Nurses typically don’t wear this unless they are nurse practitioners. He thinks this same character is a nurse who seemingly works in every unit of the hospital. What’s clear is it’s not clear what her job is. This is also one of my major complaints about medical shows in general— they don’t realistically show the true nature of the job.

I appreciate ZDoggMD— particularly his support of nursing. It has not gone unnoticed by me. Keep up the good fight, my friend!

9-1-1 S1/E3: Evaluation and Treatment of Overdoses

/ Jordyn Redwood / Leave a comment

In Episode 3 of 9-1-1, the story opens with officer Athena Grant, played by Angela Bassett, finding her daughter unconscious from taking hydrocodone pills as seen in the trailer below. The daughter, who appears to be between twelve and fourteen, is whisked off to the hospital and admitted to the ICU in short order. One, did they treat this ingestion (or overdose) correctly? Two, would this type of ingestion warrant ICU admission?

It’s stated in the episode that the daughter took “six to seven” hydrocodone pills. Hydrocodone is a combination of acetaminophen (Tylenol) and a synthetic type of codeine. It comes in many different preparations with different amounts of acetaminophen and hydrocodone. Where do we start to evaluate whether or not the ingestion is worrisome?

1.  How is the patient? What signs and symptoms do they have?  The EMS crew in this situation is lucky. The mother knows exactly what the daughter took. She presents unresponsive with slow breathing. Number one treatment in this situation after assisting with her breathing? Give Narcan which this crew absolutely does not do. Narcan is a reversal agent for opioids. It can be given via a mist up the nose so you can generally reverse the sedative effects of the drug without even starting an IV. It is a life saving measure because it is the not breathing part that will kill you first. This is the medication they should have given first.

In absence of knowing exactly what the patient took, we can look at clusters of signs and symptoms called toxidromes which might point us in the right direction.

2. What did the patient take? When did they take it? How much did they take? Many drugs have multiple components and we have to evaluate EACH component and whether or not this could prove harmful to the patient. The opioid  (once reversed with Narcan) is probably the least concerning. The amount of acetaminophen ingested is our next priority and we would calculate how many milligrams per kilogram she took. We know for acetaminophen that when you start to get between 100-150mg/kg that there could be a potential for liver damage. There is a reversal drug for acetaminophen’s damaging effects on the liver called Mucomyst, but there is a window in which this can be given to be effective. Usually, a poison control center will help us manage these types of patients.

In this case, let’s say she took six pills of Lortab 7.5/500. From this we know that each pill has 500mg of acetaminophen. Assuming the average 12-14 y/o is about 100 lbs (converted to 45 kg) then she took about 66mg/kg of acetaminophen. A four hour Tylenol level (measured four hours after the ingestion) would be checked to ensure she wasn’t toxic, but in this case likely not.

3. Will this patient be admitted to the ICU? It might come as a surprise, but ingestions of medications are most often not admitted to the ICU. Most are managed and observed in the ER. In this case, the girl should have been given Narcan by EMS. We would continue to watch for the somnolent effects of the opioid and evaluate the risk of the acetaminophen.

Also, it’s generally protocol that an aspirin level is measured as well even if the patient denies taking any. We can’t always depend on the patient being truthful about what they took and aspirin can have very devastating effects as well. Other labs depend on the medication ingested and what parts of the body if affects. This patient would likely not be admitted to the ICU.

Also, if we get a toxic ingestion within an hour we can give activated charcoal (that literally looks like black sludge) that will bind the medication. This is not always done for several reasons. One is the risk of the charcoal ending up in a patient’s lungs during administration. Usually this is done under the recommendation of Poison Control.

4. Do we notify Child Protective Services? In this episode, Child Protective Services conducts a mental health exam on the teen. In the real world, this evaluation takes place through mental health providers not associated with the state. State involvement is generally reserved for what we would consider a risky home environment. A teen getting into their parents medicine cabinet for some pills would not fall into that category. What would? A two-year-old ingesting crack cocaine that was lying around the home. Each case is handled very individually, but this case presented in 9-1-1 would not rise to that level in my opinion.

As a side note, parents are not separated from their children during medical treatment. Can we please stop perpetuating this myth?

What do you think of 9-1-1?

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.

 

The Good Doctor: Season 1 Episode 4

/ Jordyn Redwood / 7 Comments

I wasn’t sure if I would continue to do these posts on the new ABC drama, The Good Doctor. One of the first posts I did got one of the largest responses ever on my FB page. The responses were 50/50 for and against the show. Many people want to champion the series because it highlights someone with autism working in the medical field.

The other half agree that if you’re going to highlight a medical drama— it would be nice to have it be the teeniest bit accurate. I’m not asking for a lot . . . just don’t give patients false hope or have them get such a skewed view of medicine that they trust medical professionals less. We’re already fighting that battle.

My disgruntlement with the show is not the fact that they highlight a character with autism— it is with the medical aspects of the show and how they handle their patients.

That is where my fight is . . . so let’s carry on.

In episode four, the main story highlights a woman who is pregnant with a child who has a large spinal tumor. The woman has already miscarried two children as the result of a clotting disorder she suffers from.

Issue #1: All surgeons cannot do all things. This continues to be a big complaint of mine for the show. One of the general surgery attendings is also a specialist in fetal surgery. I cannot tell you how specialized a field fetal surgery is. There are only a handful of these specialized doctors in the country. A general surgeon is not even, in their right mind, going to attempt something so risky for a notch on their proverbial belt. It would be negligent for them to do so.

Issue #2: OR’s are well lit. In this particular episode, I noticed all the OR scenes are shot in relative darkness. I’m sure this is so it looks uber cool for the viewer and there are times when OR light is dimmed, but we do generally want surgeons to be really able to see what they’re doing. Which is why they get really big lights.

Issue #3: Medical equipment called for— never placed on the patient. During the first surgery to remove the tumor from the child, the mother suffers a heart attack and they place her on a balloon pump that mysteriously never gets put in place. These are obvious pieces of equipment and it is never shown or mentioned again.

Issue #4: Surgery without patient consent. Despite the pretty serious complication of the first surgery, the mother is gung ho to go at it again, despite having had a heart attack. That’s actually believable. Mothers will do anything to save their child. What’s a little surprising is how gung ho the surgeons are. What follows are some pretty mind boggling discussions of who lives and who dies under what circumstances.

The attending surgeon offers a plan to not tell the mother that her surgery will end up being an abortion to save her life. That they’ll essentially lie to her telling her they’re going to take her to the OR for another attempt at saving the infant while really going in to end his life. On a one to ten scale of how unethical a plan that is to even be mentioned is like one hundred. The better person to float out an idea like that? A medical student. A resident. The attending? Those are the people teaching our young doctors— please have them be a representation of some sort of ethical boundary.

To be clear, the surgical game plan can change during an operation, but to go in knowingly deceiving a patient is malpractice.

Issue #5: The baby is just as monitored as the mother during the surgery.  In the scene of the second fetal surgery, the baby is just lying there on the mother’s stomach with no monitoring equipment. The baby is monitored as thoroughly as the mother.

What are your thoughts on The Good Doctor?

Medical Review of Fox’s 9-1-1

/ Jordyn Redwood / 4 Comments

I’m so happy to be back blogging! I hope everyone had a fantastic holiday season and is ready for a new year. Today is officially my 20th wedding anniversary! Can you believe that? I know I can’t. It’s crazy to think how much time has gone by.

Considering the occasion, I thought it would be best to write a positive (well, mostly positive) review of a new TV show— Fox’s series 9-1-1. I know . . . you can pop your eyeballs back in. This is truly a rare event considering much of this blog’s time is spent skewering medical inaccuracies in print, movies, and the small screen.

9-1-1 is a series devoted to dispatch, police, and fire calls. I’ve watched the first two episodes and was pleasantly surprised at how much I liked it. Now, it does have some problems. Writing completely to stereotype would be the biggest.

Let’s look at what they did well.

1. The characters face consequences for their actions. I’ve said all along that it’s okay for medical people to do bad things in fiction, but there must also be consequences for their actions. The point of this are many. It increases the conflict in the story AND reflects real life. Too many times in fiction medical people are shown doing bad things without consequence. One firefighter is shown facing some serious repercussions for his poor (saying that lightly) choices.

2. There is respect for HIPAA and also how hard that is for medical people. HIPAA is the patient privacy law. Because of HIPAA, most of us who work on the front lines (EMS and emergency departments) rarely ever hear how our patients do after they leave our care. This is, flat out, not easy for any of us and it makes closure difficult.

3. Shows the problem of poor coping mechanisms. It is true that healthcare people do not always have the best coping mechanisms. Hello, to all the nursing units with the mandatory chocolate drawer. Some develop addictions  and can have bad co-dependent relationships. It was nice to see highlighted that the stress of this work does take an emotional toll.

4. Highlights the difficulty of work/life balance. Of course, all professionals face work/life balance issues, but I also feel like the nature of our work makes it hard to feel like you’re getting a break. If you’re taking care of a medically/terminally ill loved one at home, and then go to work doing the same thing— there can be little room to breathe.

5. Medical information was not distracting. The medical information was kept pretty light in the first two episodes and not too distracting. There were a few minor medical errors I’ll keep close to the vest for now.

Have you watched the new Fox show 9-1-1. What did you think?

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

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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.