Articles about
Articles about
January 10th, 2021 — Part of a culture of safety is the sense that we don’t have to hide our mistakes, and in fact we don’t want to; what we want to do is learn from them, together.
January 4th, 2021 — In order to create safety, you need to have a certain amount of organization. Safety doesn’t thrive in chaotic environments; it likes structure and stability.
January 1st, 2021 — Granted, you have to be a true safety nerd to get excited about an adverse events reporting database. Given that the acupuncture profession has never actually had one, though, we thought when we made one back in 2018, everybody else would be at least receptive. Not quite.
January 12th, 2021 — Of the 160 incidents reported so far in our AERD, 26% are related in some way to forgotten or stray needles. This post is about the difference between following safety guidelines and creating safety.
January 30th, 2021 — One of the things you learn as a community acupuncturist is what an amazingly wide range of relationships people have to their bodies, their emotions, and to acupuncture itself. Here we have a perceived adverse event that apparently ended a patient’s relationship with acupuncture, and an objectively verified adverse event requiring medical attention that *didn’t*.
April 7th, 2021 — Psycho-emotional triggers aren’t listed in the Clean Needle Technique Manual as an adverse event related to acupuncture, but according to our AERD data, they’re more common than fainting (which is listed).
August 9th, 2021 — We can’t make good individual decisions about risk unless we have better collective conversations about safety.
October 3rd, 2021 — Acupuncture as medicine and acupuncture as a profession are not the same thing. The acupuncture profession has been making a concerted effort for about fifty years to argue that they are, but if you look closely enough at their respective histories, you’ll see that they aren’t. And the difference between them is particularly important for community acupuncturists -- as well as anybody else who is interested in acupuncture safety -- to grasp.
March 22nd, 2022 — If we’re going to practice “energetic medicine” we need some kind of routine and some kind of container to deal with unexpected outcomes that we can’t explain or anticipate. It’s better for punks to not be at a loss when we have a “WTF, why did that happen?” moment, because those moments are just an unavoidable part of the job.
January 1st, 2023 — Sometimes "go home and rest with tea" is the exact wrong thing to say to a patient.
April 5th, 2023 — So many bruises! Also, an error without an adverse event, and some intriguing "symptoms worse" reports.
July 13th, 2023 — So many safety issues arise in the gap between how patients experience receiving a treatment vs. how practitioners experience giving a treatment. Also, mind those Apple Watches!
November 27th, 2023 — Apologies for the delay! More AERD Greatest Hits, plus some interesting data about possibly increased risk of adverse events after medical testing.