Hal sat under the cool shade of his favorite Weeping Willow. He looked out upon the park’s small, but well-kept pond. A mother duck was leading her six ducklings across the serene water, gliding along almost effortlessly. (At least, it appeared effortless on top of the water, but he knew those little duck feet were churning away like mad under the surface.)

As he watched them sail across this tiny “sea,” he heard his little inner voice wondering about his recent mishap and thinking, “I feel so alone, so left out.”

He looked down at his still-throbbing right ankle, now wrapped in gauze and guarded by a black plastic contraption that looked like the back half of a black cowboy boot. (Well, sorta.) He could see, in his mind’s eye, the twist it took and the odd shape into which it formed when he had fallen. It had been an ugly sight and he shivered just thinking about it. It wasn’t broken, but it was a really bad sprain. He’d be out for weeks.

Now his basketball buddies were off at the regionals playing for a shot at the state title while he sat here, looking at ducks. He had fallen that morning, just messing around with his brother, Sal, playing a little one-on-one in their driveway. Unfortunately, that was also the morning they were leaving for the tournament. He was still in the emergency room when the team took off. He wondered, “Why did this have to happen?” Now the team was off to the tourney and he wasn’t. He felt so very alone. (more…)

Children’s health literacy series uses Nucleus’s ultrasound animation to explain procedures to kids in an easy to understand way

Nucleus Medical Media, a health literacy company, announces the use of their ultrasound animation in the Health Nuts Media ABCs of Health Literacy animation series aimed toward educating children.

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At the recent Planetree Conference, promoting patient-/person-centered care, we heard some of the best “evidence” that Health Nuts Media animation was having a truly wonderful impact upon patients. These patient success stories came from one of the good folks at JFK Medical Center in New Jersey where they are using HNM content via their interactive in-room patient video services system provided by our channel partner, TVR Communications.

Adriana Rizzolo, MSN RN CRNP, spoke about some of her experiences using Health Nuts Media’s patient education content. She is a Pediatric Clinical Nurse Specialist who serves as the clinical leader for Pediatric Nursing within JFK Medical Center. Her skills include clinical expertise in pediatrics, evidence based practice, collaboration, consultation, education, mentoring, and change leadership.

Adrianna’s clinical expertise stems from 6 years experience as a Pediatric Acute Care and Critical Care Nurse at a level one trauma center. She has a Bachelor’s degree in Nursing and her Master’s degree as a Pediatric Nurse Practitioner. She is board certified (more…)

Holistic, wholistic, alternative, complementary – whatever name you want to put on so-called “non-traditional” approaches to healthcare, rarely do you see them combined so seamlessly with “traditional” Western medicine as in Dr. Larry Rosen’s new book, Treatment Alternatives for Children: Reduce Serious Side Effects with Natural Equivalents to Conventional Remedies for Common Childhood Ailments (“TAfC” for short).

Just because it says “Natural” in the title, don’t expect some hippy-dippy, New Age collection of pyramids, crystals, and healing stones. Larry Rosen, MD, is a respected pediatrician, an alum of MIT, and a very grounded and practical clinician. Along with co-author Jeff Cohen, Dr. Rosen presents a well-balanced look at treatment alternatives for some 100 or so of the most common childhood ailments. The book combines traditional Western scientific methods with the cross-cultural and time-tested methods of healing help from a variety of sources. (more…)

Here’s a simple question: Why have the worlds of healthcare and “medicine” always avoided making health fun?

Here’s a simple answer: Making health fun just ain’t easy. (Please pardon the “ain’t.”)

Think about it. The worlds of health, healthcare, and medicine have long been owned by the elite. Typically, in years past, it was only the rich or privileged who were able to get medical training. Historically, the elite in their ivory towers of medical knowledge didn’t write down their wisdom for the general public; they wrote “scholarly” papers designed to talk in big terms using big words to “big” people with big vocabularies (and, many times, with big heads.) “It’s complicated, so it must be discussed with big words and in long, dull documents,” they said. And that is where they stopped. And that has become medical tradition.

Well, they were right…sort of. Health and the workings of the human body are pretty darn complex. There’s a whole lotta stuff going on inside of each of us. There’s a lot of “this thing connected to that thing causing the other thing to do some different thing.” We’re pretty amazing creatures full of complicated “machinery.”

But those medical elitists were wrong, too. Complicated or not, every single one of us has “health” (more…)

236,000,000,000 dollars! That’s how much low health literacy costs Americans each and every year; global costs are incalculable. Health Nuts Media presents an animated white paper on the challenges of low health literacy as well as solutions for increasing health literacy and improving consumer engagement using entertainment and new media.

Learn how to address the health literacy challenge