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February 4th, 2021 — The phone rings in your clinic. When you pick it up, a patient says, “Hi, I need to talk to you about something. I think that last treatment made me worse.” What do you do next? Here’s an outline of how to create a positive outcome, i.e. make some safety, from this stressful and unavoidable situation. If you treat enough people, you will certainly get this phone call at some point!
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.
February 12th, 2022 — We have some! And they don't suck!
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.
May 22nd, 2023 — Legally, we’re responsible for managing adverse events in our practices, not just avoiding mistakes. Lots of acupuncturists are confused about that. Insisting that safety incidents only happen as a result of bad practitioners (see also, “undertrained physical therapists”) does everybody a disservice.
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.