Another Sad Farewell…

The senator from Massachusetts may be the top news story, but another sad passing has my attention. The last episode of Reading Rainbow airs today.

My kids moved out of its target audience years ago, but I was still depressed to learn that LeVar Burton would no longer lead children on adventures. No more children reviewing books. No more junior book club.

As reported on NPR this morning, the demise has been expected for several years:

the funding crunch is partially to blame, but the decision to end Reading Rainbow can also be traced to a shift in the philosophy of educational television programming. The change started with the Department of Education under the Bush administration, he explains, which wanted to see a much heavier focus on the basic tools of reading — like phonics and spelling.

John Grant (who is in charge of content at WNED Buffalo, Reading Rainbow's home station) says that PBS, CPB and the Department of Education put significant funding toward programming that would teach kids how to read — but that's not what Reading Rainbow was trying to do.

My daughter discovered this show shortly before her 4th birthday. Field trips and other diversions explored the themes suggested by the book of the episode. Nothing was off-limits; shows explored slavery and parents in prison, as well as animals and farms. Episodes often sent Jen and I traipsing to the library or Barnes & Noble, looking for a book we saw on the show or one with a similar theme.

No, this show was not about how to read; it was about the joy of reading, of losing yourself in another world. As John Grant noted in the NPR interview:

Reading Rainbow taught kids why to read," Grant says. "You know, the love of reading — [the show] encouraged kids to pick up a book and to read.

For many children educational television may support those first building blocks of reading- the alphabet and phonics on Sesame Street come to mind. Very few children’s shows encourage reading the way Rainbow did. Even though I had not turned it on in years, I am sad to know it will not be there for my grandchildren (not that I feel old enough to be a grandmother, even though it is biologically feasible at this time).

Guess I will just buy them books.

Rainbow courtesy of PhotoXpress.

Lies, Damn Lies, and NO Statistics

Last week I listened to some of the Sotomayor hearings on CNN. The hearings were about as I expected, but the ads between sessions were frightening. A Canadian woman was on the tube telling me how she would have died of a brain tumor if she hadn’t traveled to the US for treatment.

I have a number of Canadian friends and acquaintances, most of whom are physicians. They LOVE the Canadian system. They know that every patient they see is covered. Layers of administration for preapprovals and claim resubmissions have been peeled away from the process (I have spent 45 minutes on the phone to get non-tablet forms of medications approved for a pediatric patient). And they don’t have to inflate their base charges so that the 80% rate someone negotiated will cover the actual costs incurred. A couple of them have said that Michael Moore got their system right in Sicko. Even those who experience the system as patients like it. Yes, they pay for it with taxes, but they don’t have to worry about losing their coverage with their job.

This ad just didn’t sound right. Elective procedures often involve waits (like they can in the US), but I had never seen a documented life-threatening emergency put off that way. Then I heard this interview  with Maureen Taylor, a health reporter for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, on NPR’s On the Media. The full clip is available, and I’ve pasted relevant material from the transcript below, just in case you’re the impatient type:

Shona Holmes is a woman in commercials who says that she would have been dead within a year because doctors in Canada were making her wait six months to have her brain tumor removed. Tumor, in its strictest sense, means a swelling or enlargement. In Shona’s case, it was not cancer:

“What she had was actually a cyst in her pituitary gland, which you can call it a tumor if you want, but it’s not a cancerous tumor. And it was causing her some hormonal problems and pressing on her optic nerve to give her some vision problems.

This is not a life-threatening thing. I don't deny that it would be very disturbing to have vision problems and be told that we're not going to be able to operate on that for six months. So she went to the States and had this done. But nobody at the Mayo Clinic is claiming that they saved her life, yet this is being reported in the American media as a woman with brain cancer who would have been dead had she let the Canadian health care system prevail.

It just makes me angry that the media isn't looking into this a little more. It wasn't hard for me to find out what she actually had and do a little research on it. People, I'm not walking over a lot of dead bodies here on my way into the studio.”

Many of the other commercials feature patients seeking experimental or nonstandard treatments which would generally not be covered under present private insurance in the US.

Healthcare should be a right, not a privilege. Calling what we have in the US a “system” is generally inappropriate, because “system” implies some sort of order or sense. Most healthcare workers will tell you that rhyme and reason are not part of the way we fund medicine in the US.

Forty years ago, we put men on the moon. Today, we still have people who can’t get basic healthcare. Embarrassing, really. Yet we are listening to lies about a real system that works. Even more embarrassing.

Ears vs. Eyes: Learning to Love Podcasts

I am a visual person. I remember faces and I remember names, but I can’t always put them together again. I often find the very act of making a list allows me to remember what I need, even though the list gets left in the car. I can still see what I have written in my mind.

The popularity of audio books escapes me. I read fast, and I process things so much easier by seeing them than by hearing them. A multi-chapter book would require a recap at the start of each commuter session (or a long enough trip to listen to the whole book in one session).

A couple of years ago, I won an Ipod Nano. I quickly transferred a bunch of CDs and set up my Itunes account. I am not fond of listening through headphones, but my new car has a Ipod jack. The podcast, however, has only recently gotten my attention.

Other faculty have been creating podcasts that physicians can download to answer specific questions. I didn’t get it, because I wouldn’t remember what I listened to long enough to benefit (see first two paragraphs). I far prefer to access an online “written” reference, especially if its presentation is friendly for my BlackBerry screen. Other physicians began downloading these short updates, though, and they still seem to be popular.

Now I have become a podcast personality. ASN Kidney News, the magazine I edit, started producing these with the May issue. I chat with the author(s) of something in the magazine, and we post it on the ASN web site and in Itunes. I was thrilled when the first one was downloaded more than 700 times. After all, kidneys are a niche audience. We just posted the second Kidney News podcast; in 10 days it has received >4,000 unique visits and >12,000 total visits!

I have also wandered around the Itunes store to see what other podcasts are out there. I am especially delighted to find my favorite NPR shows. I often miss Fresh Air on my local station; now I subscribe and listen the next morning at work (or on my way home in the car, if I have to do something away from my desk)! For the past year, I have planned Saturday morning rounds so I could hear as much of Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me as possible. If you haven’t tried this one, you do not know what you are missing; it is roll-on-the-floor, pee-your-pants funny. While this level of humor has, on occasion, proved problematic while driving, it is always appreciated. Now my patients don’t have to “wait, wait” while I laugh!

I still don’t remember as much of what I hear as what I read or see. I do appreciate what podcasts can do for the world, though.

By the way, I am a member of KIOS, the Omaha NPR station. Have you joined your local NPR affiliate?