Connecting Medicine, Learning, Twitter &…Spinal Tap?

Nigel-Tufnel

I love rankings. Top five lists, Mount Rushmore’s, pantheons. They’re all great to build, tinker with, and argue about.

On any list of what I love about Medicine is our commitment to education. Learning, teaching, sharing, innovating. We see, we do, we teach. It’s one of the 4 Pillars of Explore The Space for a reason.

Pivot to any self-respecting top five list of great comedies and you’ll find “This Is Spinal Tap, and the capo di tutti capo of this epic is lead guitarist/philosopher Nigel Tufnel. (If you haven’t seen Spinal Tap, do so. If you have seen it, watch it again.)

I’ll stop now to address 2 obvious questions:

What the hell am I talking about?

What is this doing on a healthcare themed podcast?

Aside from the fact that a spinal tap is a medical procedure, here is the answer…

Start from: Nigel at a piano. Gum being chewed. Marty Dibergi interviewing while he plays a beautiful piece of music. See image above. Nigel describes the music as “just simple lines intertwining.”

Cut to: me skimming twitter after a tough week during which I recorded and posted an episode of Explore The Space with Dr. Mary Brandt (@drmlb) wherein we touched on the subject of how gun trauma impacts physicians and healthcare providers…

Now recall Nigel The Philosopher’s words; lines intertwining to create beautiful music.

A few days after our episode went up Dr. Brandt retweeted a tweet from the American College Of Surgeons Committee On Trauma (@ACSTrauma) sent during its conference. The message was from a lecture by Dr. Ronald Stewart (@stewartr84) on PTSD in those providing care for Trauma victims.

I replied from @ETSshow to the retweet and asked if the whole slide deck might be available.

Lightning reply from @ACSTrauma:, yes @ETSshow, just download the TQIP app and you can get to the slides.

Done and done. I’ve read through the slides 3 times now…they’re brilliant. I’ve shared them and will use them going forward. That’s what makes this profession so great. We teach, we learn, we share freely so others may benefit.

Lines intertwining indeed Nigel. Even in, perhaps most importantly in medicine…lines intertwining to make beautiful music.

P.S. Here are the slides: PTSD & Trauma. Hat Tip to American College of Surgeons, Dr. Ronald Stewart and Dr. Brian Eastridge.

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