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God of War healthcare and education systems
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I can't help thinking both the healthcare and education systems fail Kratos, Atreus and Faye.
Kratos is pretty much an illiterate. A grown man can't read. Guess Kratos doesn't watch Seasame Street and Reading Rainbow.
Faye is a big girl, young and healthy, and yet she died of, probable, preventable diseases. I imagine cardiomegaly, diabetes or CHF.
Atreus is sicky. They probably don't vaccinate Atreus. Antivaxxer parents....
Top Comment:
He can read boi, just not this tongue
Nhs vs other healthcare systems
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Imgs or people who have worked in other healthcare systems, especially in Europe I’m very curious how working in the NHS compares. Any particularly shocking differences? How does the quality of life compare?
Feeling quite disheartened about working in the nhs given the way things are on the ground and how are going in this country politically... Grew up in France but have 0 experience with healthcare anywhere than the U.K. as I moved here when I had just turned 18 and don’t think I set foot in a hospital till medical school
Top Comment:
Australia: Depends on where you are and what job you do. As a surgical intern in a rural regional hospital I covered 200 patients for 11 days straight (my co-intern called in sick on the weekend), from 8am to 10pm everyday. Got paid 10,000 AUD that month from the overtime though, but not worth it. Other hospitals were more chill, maybe one long day (8-11pm) every week, other days 8am to 6pm. The day times were okay, the list was normally 20-40 patients per team.
Then we do a 3mth block of nights, 7 days on, 7 days off, 10pm to 9am. Nights can be rough, with the surgical resident covering up to 100 patients.
Registrars had it rough, they would be on all weekend, 8am Saturday to Monday 8am. Off site but would have to come in to operate and make decisions.
Super competitive for surgical training programs, when I applied there were 12 accredited spots in NSW and 200 applicants, every one had a couple of years of unaccredited reg, masters, PhDs, papers, Olympic medals... As an unaccredited reg you are employed by the hospital, get paid half as much as an accredited reg, you're on a one year contract so have to interview for your job every year. You do all the shitty tasks like follow up clinics, ward rounds, minor and emergency lists, while the accredited trainees get the good cases and plenty of OT time and teaching.
Racism, bullying and sexual harassment were pretty standard back then, although it is getting better.
Pay wise and life style wise, no complaints. Sydney has amazing weather and great beaches and good food. Melbourne has great coffee and cafes. Private market is hard to get into but private doctors have very high pay, like half a million AUD a year. Medicine is also top notch, Australian surgeons and anesthesiologists are very well trained... The standard was generally very very high. Junior doctors were also very motivated.
Why is it so hard to make our healthcare systems more preventive?
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I'm passionate about medical prevention but it's not an easy task to help make our healthcare systems more preventive. I'd be curious to know what are the main challenges that you're facing in helping our patient communities focus more on disease prevention.
Top Comment: The main challenge I have is that I dont have a time machine. To be able to truly fight the obesity/diabetes/atherosclerosis/hypertension epidemics I'd need to go back in time 30,40,50 years and catch people when they were kids. I'd need to educate them on what calories are, educate them on what sugars do to you, educate them on the repercussions of lack of exercise. The sad thing is that even 25 years ago our health classes in school were considered a blow off. Generally taught by a PE teacher who was only doing it because they were obligated. I recently participated in an open forum panel with some high schoolers and found out they didnt even have health class anymore (not that it necessarily wouldve done them any good). They have pizza day every day at school. Hamburger day. French fries, etc etc. There is a complete lack of awareness about how bad these things are for you. I have families with children who are morbidly obese, come in to the clinic to discuss weight loss in their children, CARRYING SUPER SIZED SOFT DRINKS. I dont know if there's truly such a thing as "preventative" medicine. It should be preventative education we focus on. We have to save our kids before they develop these terrible habits.
Healthcare: Biden plan vs European Systems
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Lets talk about healthcare!
There's been a lot of discussion here about various approaches to healthcare systems in America, Canada, and in Europe. You've probably heard about "healthcare for all", "medicare for all", "public option", "single payer", and "universal coverage". You've also probably heard anecdotes on the internet about people who went to the hospital and left with a small bill - that's what we strive for! Let's break some of these ideas down...
Medicare: Medicare is a federal health insurance program that provides benefits to those eligible. These benefits are intended to cover the costs of healthcare associated with advanced age. Eligible participants can choose from a number of plan options depending on their needs. All Medicare options require that beneficiaries pay an affordable premium as well as co-payments for all covered healthcare services. This is a public option supplemented with private insurance.
Single Payer: this is a system of universal coverage by which most costs of healthcare are paid for by a single public system. Only 3 countries in the world have this- Canada, Taiwan, and South Korea.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-payer_healthcare
Universal Coverage: This is a system of healthcare which promises access to healthcare by all persons in "a way the does not expose the user to financial hardship". This is usually done by healthcare mandate. That means everyone must have health insurance. this is also called healthcare for all.
https://www.who.int/health_financing/universal_coverage_definition/en/
Public Option: This is a public insurance plan that is organized by the government. This is not for profit, and delivered as close to at cost as possible.
Now let's talk about countries and numbers! The French public healthcare system has been called "the best in the world". They have universal healthcare. They achieve this by having a public option insurance plan, and supplementary private insurance for those who want it. This costs them roughly $4330 per person, annually. Or, $360 per month.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_care_in_France
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_health_expenditure_per_capita
Sweden has a heavily regulated universal healthcare system. This is achieved also, by a public option and supplemental private insurance. Those private comapnies are heavily regulated in hopes to avoid predatory companies preying of citizens for profit. This costs them $5400 per person, annually. Or, $450 per month.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_care_in_Sweden
Canada has single payer. This system is arguably the least amount of paperwork. See above. This is paid for essentially, by taxes. It costs them $5900 per person, annually. Or, $490 per month.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Healthcare_in_Canada
Now, let's talk about Joe, and his plans. Joe wants to expand Obamacare, and build a public option for health insurance. This is modeled very similarly to the French healthcare system; the same system the WHO deemed "the best in the world". With a public option, the US will have universal health. Included in Biden's public option, is an insurance premium cap of 8.5% of income. This is how much you spend on your insurance plan. This means Joe's plan will cost on average $4500 per person, annually. Or, $375 per month.
https://joebiden.com/healthcare/ https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Per_capita_personal_income_in_the_United_States
TLDR; Joe's healthcare plan IS universal healthcare. It's modeled after the best healthcare system in the world (France). It's cheaper than Canada, and Sweden's systems and covers the same percentage of the population. It's very good.
Top Comment: Franz Boas
Introduction to Healthcare IT Systems – C800 study tips
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I just started this course and the volume of the textbook is overwhelming. There are no videos attached to the course material to guide me and I am more of a visual learner. I set up an appointment with a course instructor today but I will like to hear from students who have taken and successfully passed this course how they did it.
Top Comment:
I know what you mean, I learn best by watching lecture videos or having interactive textbooks. I passed this course a couple months ago & I hate to say this, but this was actually my least favorite course (for the reasons you mentioned). It's the only OA that I ever failed, but I did pass on my 2nd try.
I found this course to be a hodge-podge of other courses (like Project Management & business ethics). What makes the OA challenging is that the PA is not very similar. I distinctly remember a topic on the OA that was NOWHERE in the PA, or the practice tests from the CI, or the knowledge checks in the books. I looked it up and it turns out this topic was only mentioned once, in one of the books, and is only talked about for half a page. That was frustrating.
My best advice is to actually read all the material because they will pull questions from any of it. I typically will make Quizlet note cards from the bolded words. I would describe a lot of the questions as scenario based. It's more important for you to understand the concepts and to be able to apply it to a situation than for you to memorize a definition word for word. I know this advice sucks, but it's how I passed. Fortunately, this was the only course in my degree plan (BS HIM) that gave me trouble. C810 & D033 were somehow easier than this, imo.
Moving from MSP Systems Engineer to Large Healthcare Network Engineer
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Like the title says, in a few weeks I'm making the move from being a Systems Engineer for a MSP to a Level 1 network engineer at a somewhat large healthcare organization. I'm going from being a jack of all trades (Servers, workstations, automation, networking, databases) to just networking. They have all of their departments siloed out into networking, security, servers, applications, and desktop support.
From the sound of it, my job will pretty much entail rolling upgrades, troubleshooting after the help desk escalates, and edge config changes. I've previously done all the course work for a CCNA - Routing and Switching, done a good bit of network support in the past, and my current MSP does work for a lot of small health care companies, so I'm familiar with the standards. They say they also have a lab with at least one piece of equipment matching anything deployed for any testing before config changes. Between the two jobs I'm also going to take a two week break to recharge, and refresh knowledge.
Basically, I'm kind of wondering, are there any gotchas I should really be watching for in this move, that I might not really expect. I've never completely specialized in networking before, and the closest I'd gotten was a three month stretch where about half of my job was equipment replacement and config.
Top Comment:
You won't be a jack-of-all-trades for long. Expect to get very specialized. Your department will be understaffed despite consisting of 15 to 20 extremely busy network engineers. You won't just be a network guy. You might be a wireless guy. Or a VPN guy. Or the poor young sap who does physical installations. Oh.. But don't expect to be a routing / switching guy. Those guys won't retire for at least another 10 years.
That said, you won't have time to do your actual job. You will be putting out fires more than anything else. Why? I'll let you figure that out for yourself, but will tell you this: Get used to seeing /20 and /21, and on devices that are running deferred code revs. You can't have the downtime window you requested to upgrade code. Sorry. Find another way to fix the problem that will be non-disruptive.
No downtime, scheduled or otherwise.
You will have a change control PROCESS in place that is built around a TOOL that ceased to exist 10 years ago and is managed by those who honestly just don't understand the realities of what your job entails. This will prevent you from getting anything done. Don't try to circumvent the process. Because that will be the one time when you do a "switchport allowed vlan 123" instead of "switchport allowed vlan add 123". But it's okay, because you're not a manager, so you won't be fired. But you screwed up, and it will not be forgotten.
Zero downtime. Not even scheduled. Sorry, find another, non-disruptive way to do it.
Don't like the way the network has been architected? Or the way a process works? Suck it up and deal with it. It's how they've always done it. Don't question that. Just don't. Trust me.
Along those same lines, avoid physicians, especially surgeons. Stay away from them until you fully understand how to talk to them. If you piss them off, you may wind up without a job, even if you're not a manager. Seriously.
Oh yeah. No downtime. They fear downtime.
On the plus side, expect amazing benefits. Everyone has been there for 20 to 30 years, and there's a reason for it. If you are a match for their culture, you will be as well. The pay isn't top-notch, but it's on the higher end of the typical salary range. Obey the golden rule, and you will always have job security. YOU will be valued as a human being. It may not feel like it most of the time, but when things are at their worst, you will be reminded of it. You will be given a high amount of autonomy and accountability. Don't take advantage of that, and you will ultimately earn a high amount of respect among your peers and bosses. Over time, you will realize that your job has REAL meaning. You might even find that you wound up helping the same physician who saved your son's life.
Source: 15+ years as a Sr. Network Engineer for a health care system that consists of about 30 hospitals and a few hundred "branch locations" (physician practices, urgent care facilities, etc).
Benchmark systems named 10 Best Healthcare Tools by Software Advice in 2022
Main Post: Benchmark systems named 10 Best Healthcare Tools by Software Advice in 2022
Top Comment:
Good stuff!!
healthcare: systems, costs, problems and proposed solutions.
Main Post: healthcare: systems, costs, problems and proposed solutions.