While You Were Sleeping: What Sleep Technologists Need to Know This Week Your media watchdog for headlines and trends relevant to sleep technology and patient education.
I was one of the lucky “birthday” winners to receive a free copy of Meir Kryger’s latest book, “The Mystery of Sleep,” at the AAST meeting in Indianapolis last fall. TMoS is touted as “an authoritative and accessible guide to what happens when we shut our eyes at night.” Indeed, I found the format, tone and relevance of Kryger’s book to live up to the hype.
While You Were Sleeping: What Sleep Technologists Need to Know This Week Your media watchdog for headlines and trends relevant to sleep technology and patient education.
Michael G. Eden, RPSGT, RST, has been working in sleep medicine for 23 years and became an RPSGT in 1998. Eden has worked for the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario as a task force member, creating legislation for all sleep clinics in Ontario. He has been on the executive board of the Canadian Sleep Society and chairs the Education Committee. Eden has been on the Scientific and Technologist Planning Committee for both the Canadian Sleep Society and the World Sleep Society, planning international meetings. He has been on the CEC Committee for AAST for the past two years. Recently, he was elected to the AAST Board of Directors. It is his pleasure to serve the sleep community in any capacity, but education and patient advocacy are key elements to his work.
While You Were Sleeping: What Sleep Technologists Need to Know This Week Your media watchdog for headlines and trends relevant to sleep technology and patient education.
As technology improves, so does a sleep technicians’ ability to help their patients. As sleep tests are getting more mobile, sleep professionals are seeing a shift in in clinic versus home sleep testing (HST). We posed a question to the AAST membership: What percentage of your sleep tests are occurring at home, and is this an increasing trend among your patients?
On a snowy day in 1975, Allan Rechtschaffen came into the conference room at the University of Chicago Sleep Research Laboratory and told me I should join a group called the Association for the Psychophysiological Study of Sleep. He said there was an annual meeting and some other stuff that would make it worth my while. The other graduate students started to chant, “Do it! Do it!” and so, succumbing to peer pressure, I joined my first professional society. (Author’s note: I’m not sure it really happened that way. It was a long time ago. My memory for what I just had for breakfast is hazy, so you can imagine what is left of my 1975 memories. But something like that did happen. I think.) I’ve been a member ever since.
While You Were Sleeping: What Sleep Technologists Need to Know This Week Your media watchdog for headlines and trends relevant to sleep technology and patient education.
I worked in neurology departments during my sleep center days. We were a friendly group and usually all had lunch together. I remember one day our chair, Nicholas A. Vick, came into the room and told us that he had just finished giving the annual neurology lecture to the newly installed emergency medicine residents. He said that he had started off with his usual question: “When is an MRI appropriate in the emergency room?” The reply from the residents: “When the patient has a head.” Hilarity ensued. Of course, some thought needed to go into the ordering of a $2,000 test. Not everyone with a head needed an imaging study. But at the same time, it reminded me of our PAP therapy mantra, which I attribute to Phil Westbrook: “When in doubt, pressurize the snout.” We had the feeling that PAP therapy, whenever used, would first do no harm. Well, partner, that ended in 2015.
While You Were Sleeping: What Sleep Technologists Need to Know This Week Your media watchdog for headlines and trends relevant to sleep technology and patient education.
