Share Your Life Weekly Report Week 47

This week we came across an article about a hip implant design that had been designed incorrectly and how the market responded to that (D. Cohen, BMJ 2011;342:d2905). The author asked for more openness and that this could increase a better discussion and higher quality of output in the end.

We have consulted with MD Joel Matta of the Hip & Pelvis Institute at St. John's Center (http://www.hipandpelvis.com). Dr Matta is an orthopaedic surgeon in Los Angeles who is specialized in Hip and Pelvic Reconstruction. He gave us some valuable food-for-thought and some insight in how medical doctors work today and his opinion on this matter in particular, which he was already familiar with. He believed that the article provided was a little biased (and also explained why). He wished for an open discussion, and for people to be able to make an honest report of problem areas without the person making the report being processed. This would benefit everybody in the end, and make it more difficult to cover up negative issues, and improve quality for everybody involved (patients, healthcare professionals as well as medical institutions, medical businesses or pharmaceutical companies). In his opinion sharing was already part of his practise and he generously affirmed how he and his family already take part in sharing samples, blood tests etc when they themselves do health check ups etc. Dr Matta gave us valuable help and input when we are now about to start build our case and put it all in writing. It was reassuring to us that we are on the right track, and that there is faith in a system like we are proposing.   

Article available here: http://www.bmj.com.focus.lib.kth.se/content/342/bmj.d2905

This week we also started to really dig our claws into the new stage of this project - the production phase. We have divided up responsibilities for all the production work that needs to be done. There is a lot of writing to do, and the deadline is coming up really soon. We also started making preparations for the movie that we want to produce. The storyline idea is already in place so what we need is to prepare some scenes as well as arrange some props etc, and we assigned people on those tasks as well. Finally we have discussed which illustrations to put into our book chapter and most of them have been created this week.

The main focus for next week is production, where we plan to produce lots of material both for the book chapter and our concept video. We need to start to formalize our writing, and to review it together so that we are making sure we are telling one story, with one tone of voice.

Our plan is to spend Friday next week to shoot our video. We really look forward to doing it!