Category: Paediatrics

Sleeping With ASMR

I recently came across a question that seems straightforward, but, in the manner of such questions, swiftly becomes a rabbit hole for the mind. I mention it only on the reflection that the things that affect your sleep may not be as intrinsically you as at first sight.

The question was how much of you is actually you and how much comes from others. Initially, on thinking about this, I concluded that actually I am all me. But on breaking it down further, I understand the influence over time of parents, teachers, lecturers, employers, work colleagues, friends, famous figures, intellectuals and so on.

Taking aside people for a while, I find the influence of the media, the television, the newspapers, social media, the Internet. Until, in the end, I reach the conclusion that nothing is really me at all. There is zero of me that is intrinsic.

That being the case, the aspects of life that have negative connotations one would think are optional. If one cannot sleep worrying over something or other. In fact, this is outside of one’s self. Socialising to ensure that behaviour was in line with society norms. Expectations of others. Influences absorbed over the years from all communication mechanisms to which one has been exposed.

Similarly, expectations about appropriate times to sleep. The manner in which one sleeps. The things that one wears for bed. The chemicals one should take to assist with sleep and those that one should avoid. Every single one of these (and more I have not thought of) have come from outside of oneself. They must, all, therefore, be optional.

On some level one can decide to reject each and every one of them (in some cases, it would require a lot of work admittedly). I believe that a thought exercise like this is highly valuable. If you are struggling to sleep, perhaps, one of the aspects that you regard as critical is, in fact, up for debate.

Do you actually need to sleep when other people say that you do? Do you actually need to eat, exercise, drink, behave in the fashions that have been laid out for you? Is it worthwhile experimenting to find something that works for you in a better way? Even where such experimentation takes you into areas that others would find peculiar or at the least “different”.

The process requires more work than I have given it, but perhaps expanding ones thinking to embrace options that normally one would disregard without thought, may contain the seeds of a practical solution.

I notice that it is now established (as I had already concluded on this blog) that sleep gets more difficult as we age. Whenever I read articles like this, I always find the explanation of the problem to be far more compelling than the solutions. In fact, after a while, if you spend time reading a number of sleep articles, the solutions seem to come down to the same things.

One would never tend to find any solutions that would require changes that affect the ability to make money. (In fact, solutions like that tend not to occur in any media-based article I notice). For example, if you found that you could get a great amount of sleep by getting up at 3AM and going back to bed again at 11AM this would not be recommended. It would require a restructure to the way that the day tends to operate in the current working world. As far as I can tell it would be feasible to reorientate a day to fit around how a person’s body clock actually works and get the same amount of work done.

However, it would be difficult. Difficult equates to costly, and costly is an option that will never be suggested. I am not suggesting it is the correct approach. However, when you are considering how much of you is you and how much is the influence of others take into account the solutions that are never mentioned. Some of them maybe as powerful as the ones that you consistently see. There will be very good reasons that you do not see them. Some of those reasons may not be a good fit for you.

Of course, if you have found your way to the Procrastination Pen, it is probably because you have got used to using sound to distract you from all the whirring, buzzing and grinding that happens between your temples whenever you try to lay down your head. I have tried for many-many months to lay out auditory solutions. Many of these have derived from publicly available sources. I review one, I determine if it is suitably relaxing, I put it up for you to consider. Some of these have been more successful than others.

Of late, I have looked for sources outside of YouTube and out of sheer laziness, no doubt, I have found that the Internet Archive delivers a resource to which I continue to return. However, it is variable to say the least and today’s offering is no different.

Martin & Ryan (unintentional ASMR)

https://archive.org/details/MartinRyan

Blink and you will miss it. The video is less than ten minutes in length and it starts off immediately with strong background noise, which could be air conditioning. The participants are so quiet that noises from adjacent cubicles can be equally clearly heard (this is a definite “turn the volume up” video).

I would say that the patient describes himself as “Ryan Parnell” but the sound track for vocals is so indistinct I cannot be certain (even with the volume turned up to eleven). Turning it up in this way made the drawing of curtains for privacy frankly deafening and I needed the modern version of a graphic equaliser to amplify the vocal track whilst muting everything else (I do not have such a device).

The extraneous noises are very distracting; I would make a guess that the recording equipment (such as it is) was really not up to the job.

At this volume the use of a blood pressure cuff is enough to cause you to tear off the headphones in self-defence. At one point, the sound of the person breathing is actually louder than the sound of the person talking. That is, to say the least, unusual. It is a shame because the pace of the examination is well measured and what I can hear of the participants’ voices sounds very calming. The sad thing is that the intrusive noises are louder than the voices here. Not a video I would review again, but as I constantly comment, there are so many varieties of ASMR fan out there. I’m pretty certain there is at least one who will rate this highly.

I tend to spend a little while each day listening to some content from Calm. Today I thought I would recommend one that I heard some time ago:

https://www.calm.com/app/player/ZG8utTdTSd

Daily Trip

The Unchanging I

NARRATOR

Jeff Warren

AUTHOR

Jeff Warren

Calm is not free. If you want to listen to this material you are going to need a subscription. I feel suitably guilty about mentioning a paid-for option that I linger for only the briefest moment on this section and move swiftly on – to the section where I review a professional ASMR artist.

Today I am looking at one which is something of a cheat, given that it is peripheral to the core medical theme that I have focused on for a great many months.

British Doctor Hand Examination | Real Medical ASMR for Sleep

Firstly, it is unintentional ASMR content so is not specifically from a professional ASMR artist, as such. Secondly, it is from a channel dedicated to Unintentional ASMR, the clue is in the name: Unintentional ASMR Sketches. This channel has one hundred and thirty six videos, five playlists, of which the odd one seems on theme for us:

and

and

Here, therefore, we have a video originally created for one purpose, now employed to kick off some ASMR triggers. (More or less the kind of thing I try to find but here curated into ready-to-wear easy to consume packages).

Normal service will be resumed as soon as possible.

The video is in excess of thirty-three minutes and so not the shortest we have seen. It has notes: “136,639 views 19 Aug 2024

Welcome everybody! Everyone reading this will share a common love of ASMR, specifically Unintentional ASMR. So, this channel is dedicated to finding the best unintentional ASMR videos around, from medical exams, clinical demonstrations, soft spoken instructionals, psychics, spiritual healers and all other unintentional ASMR triggers to help give the tingles.

Simply put this channel is unintentional ASMR. Plain and simple.

Each video takes time; I do significantly edit these videos both the visual parts and audio in order to maximise their ASMR effects so if you enjoy this content then please give the video a like and consider subscribing for more unintentional ASMR content.

One of the best things about the ASMR community is the comments section, so please WRITE A COMMENT (especially if it’s humorous)

Hope you enjoy the ASMR!”

The notes indicate that comments will be permitted and, boy, are there a few of those. Mostly they appear to be ASMR afficionados trying to prove how in the know they are about ASMR. This is rather sad. Rather than a community of people loving calm voices, this is something more of a clique. No matter, we can ignore such things and draw conclusions about the quality of this video for sleep purposes.

It starts loud, with pronounced background noise. The professional’s title is across the screen: Mr Steve Turner, Consultant Orthopaedic Surgeon and College Examiner …

Although the video is loud, Steve has a great voice. He introduces the patient as John. John does not get to say anything. The video quality is poor, hazy in fact, and appearing out of focus. I assume it has been captured from somewhere and along the way some quality has been lost. Perhaps that also explains the hiss in the background.

I turned the volume down and everything was much more palatable (rather the opposite to the volume needed for that first video).

The pace is excellent, methodical, measured in approach. Just the sort of thing that we want to hear. There is relatively little extraneous noise. Such equipment as is employed is introduced without excessive noise. However, at 10:20, music commences. It is loud, louder than the vocal track; it is distracting. Given the person providing the channel purports to be editing the videos for palatability why is it included at all? Fortunately, it lasts for a mere moment and we are back to the voice again. At 20:13 we see a University Hospitals Coventry and Warwickshire banner in the video (possibly a clue as to where we might find the full version of this video). Fortunately, this is not an excuse to introduce yet more music. It is at this point that we recognise that very likely this video is an assemblage of many shorter videos punctuated by those banners.

I executed a search after reviewing this and found that the original video(s) have been taken down. So it is highly likely that this is the only version that you will ever see/hear. In which case it is well worthy of a review.

The inadvertent ASMR video this week is this one:

Cardiovascular examination demonstration

It has notes: ” 1,274,509 views 2 Feb 2019

MRCPCH Clinical Revision – more videos at http://mrcpch.paediatrics.co.uk

Demonstration of a paediatric cardiovascular examination by Professor Alastair Sutcliffe. Filmed and edited by James Diviney.

Revise for your MRCPCH Clinical exam, with videos and high-quality content created by the London Paediatrics Trainees Committee. “

Which are blissfully brief. Comments are denied – which might be for the best.

The channel is Pass MRCPCH – London Paediatrics Trainees Committee this has sixty-one videos, ten playlists (not surprisingly many of these look appropriate for the theme of this blog.

Todays’ video is a little less than seven minutes, so it will not keep us long. It will be interesting to see if it fits in with a theory I had some time back in this blog i.e. that adults speak much more quietly and empathetically when dealing with children than they do when dealing with adults. I wonder if that says something about the origins of ASMR itself.

This video, thankfully, starts without music. However, it commences quite loudly with a presentation towards camera (I’ll assume that it is a camera). There is quite substantial background noise – an ongoing hiss which probably speaks to the quality of the recording mechanism employed here. There is the odd thunk (presumably of equipment being moved off camera). After a brief introduction the young person (Molly) is introduced and as if by magic, the medical professional’s voice becomes more gentle and more measured.

The medical professional is humorous; the presentation is, dare I say it, kind and considerate. In fact, it is exactly the pace and volume which I have been looking for in a video. Despite the hiss, I would say this one is a good video. However, the length is perhaps a little shorter than is properly ideal. Not least because YouTube is going to slot in a bouncy advert straight afterwards.

For the patient she appears to be relaxed, even entertained, which must be quite a skill to create, I would imagine. I thought this one rather good, probably worth giving a review. In any case, I’ll trial it in the Procrastination Pen playlist for a while to see how it beds in.

On that basis, just one, video on this occasion.

That’s it on this occasion, more next time.

See you again next week.

The overall playlist of videos covered so far on the Procrastination Pen is here:

The videos weeded out because over time they are just not as good as the others is in this archive list:

I keep this in case subscribers to the Procrastination Pen have personal favourites that they want to hear.

The playlist of videos requiring age verification is here:

I can’t be bothered to stop my listening to log on, this interrupts the experience. You may not mind this, in which case this list is for you.

I hope that you find the playlists restful and I hope you get plenty of sleep.

If you liked this blog article, why not follow this blog.

Until next time.

Photo by DeepAI

Sleeping With ASMR

Of late I have been finding that just shutting out all noise using the Bose QuietComfort headphones has been enough to allow me to sleep. However, this has been right on the tail end of a period where I was using the Procrastination Pen playlist extensively.

For each of you I imagine that sleep varies, and it is doing what you can on the day to get the maximum rest.

I have been recommending the odd track on Calm based on the fact that I found it helpful. I recently tried “The Hidden Life of Mushrooms” read by “Alan Sklar” https://www.calm.com/app/player/iM8hEBPaao. As expected, Alan has a restful voice and so it makes some good bedtime listening. However, Calm is not free and I am not encouraging you to pay for it.

I am actually finding that for me one of the Calm Dailies is often more listenable than the dedicated sleep presentations. If you do find that the track isn’t for you, the other advantage of the dailies is that they tend to be ten minutes or less.

Recently, of course, I have decided to inject a little variety into the blog by reviewing one video by a professional ASMR artist. The outcomes have been a somewhat variable even amongst those that I have reviewed. Even more so in those that were rejected.

It’s interesting to find that the very criticisms I level at inadvertent ASMR videos are often found with professional ASMR videos as well. This leads me to suspect that I maybe looking for something esoteric in such videos, which others care less about.

However, given the main characteristics for me are a quiet, calm voice with little extraneous noise, I find that a bit surprising.

Today’s video starts with music, and I am not keen on startup music as you know.

ASMR Clinical Trial Medical Assessment for Headache Pain | Trigger Test Assortment on Real Person

The musical start is being used to advertise a Patreon page and as you also know, I’m not rabidly keen on advertising either. However, it could be worse. No one stops the video to declare that their sponsor is “Tod’s burgers”, or similar.

The channel is: Siesta with Sarah ASMR the channel has four hundred and sixty-nine videos and 44k subscribers so I think we can say that Siesta with Sarah is a hard-working ASMR artist. However, at least at the present time, I was unable to find the channel on the ASMR Index.

The video is just over forty-three minutes long, so a substantial one. The voices as you would expect are excellent and the tone great. It is, again, too focused on whispering. I say again in that other ASMR professional videos have also focused on whispering. I would not expect an actual medical professional and patient to be whispering together, unless they were sharing something clandestine.

There is a background noise which is probably air conditioning. I do find it odd that ASMR artists decide to include this as it is one of the factors that tends to mar genuine medical videos.

Wherever the video was recorded there is a reasonable amount of traffic noise, presumably from a nearby road just outside of the building.

There are many rustle noises from clothing, which some people probably find restful.

The concluding music is thankfully brief. Of course, I do not really have a playlist for these videos as the intent of the blog (to date anyway) has been to review inadvertent ASMR videos. However, I will put this one in the sweetie jar playlist in case it is of interest.

But enough of these distractions. The business of this blog of late has been to review inadvertent ASMR videos.

Today’s video is:

How do you do an Eye Exam on an Infant?

This one is a professional video and so has notes associated with it: “131,644 views 28 Mar 2017

Tons of parents ask Dr. Luke Small how he can do an eye exam on a 6-month-old! With a guest star Kenzy, Dr. Small shows you the steps he takes while examining your infant’s eyes.”

Comments are permitted and, for once, they are supportive. The video is eleven and a quarter minutes, so it’s not going to break any length records. It starts without music – hip-hip. However, there is some very impressive air conditioning noise, boo. By impressive I mean intrusive. Dr Luke Small is a tad loud to start but he gets a much milder voice when dealing with the infant.

There is a whirring noise from a small toy used to attract the attention of the child. It is a very quiet and gentle presentation however, whenever Dr Small interacts with the child.

The channel is: Armstrong & Small Eyecare Centre it has seven hundred and ten subscribers twenty-nine videos and four playlists. If we’re looking for similar material, I do not believe that the playlists are going to be of great assistance.

Here we are looking for eye exam material located on this channel and that features infants. This follows the theory I have that adults in videos dealing with children are much more softly spoken than adults in videos dealing with fellow adults.

Scrolling through the videos the next obvious candidate is this one:

Children’s Eye Exams Trailer

The notes are: “600 views 12 Dec 2020

Armstrong & Small Eye Care Centre

1140 Portage Ave Winnipeg, MB R3G 0S7

204-786-8991

http://www.armstrongandsmall.com

Armstrong & Small Eyecare Centre

710 subscribers”

This one is a little over a minute and sadly starts with music, and it is rather loud music. Unfortunately, the music then continues for the entire video. Not exactly what we were looking for therefore.

The very last video which appears to have anything at all to do with this area is this one:

Children’s Eye Exam in Winnipeg, MB

just less than four minutes so barely there at all. The notes are “621 views 8 Jun 2015

Our Winnipeg optometrists at Armstrong & Small Eye Care Centre specialize on paediatric eye care and eye exams. Schedule an eye exam for your child at 204-786-8991!

Armstrong & Small Eye Care Centre

1140 Portage Ave Winnipeg, MB R3G 0S7

204-786-8991

http://www.armstrongandsmall.com”

It starts in the manner of a news programme i.e. one person interviewing another person. Here Dr Small’s voice remains the most relaxing but the format itself is not relaxing. The air conditioning noise is now very muted to such an extent that it is barely perceptible. Shame that couldn’t have been the case on the first video. Sadly, this isn’t the kind of video that we were hoping for either.

So just one video this week.

The overall playlist of videos covered so far on the Procrastination Pen is here:

The videos weeded out because over time they are just not as good as the others is in this archive list:

I keep this in case subscribers to the Procrastination Pen have personal favourites that they want to hear.

The playlist of videos requiring age verification is here:

I can’t be bothered to stop my listening to log on, this interrupts the experience. You may not mind this in which case this list is for you.

I hope that you find the playlists restful and I hope you get plenty of sleep.

If you liked this blog article why not follow this blog.

Until next time.

Picture DeepAI.org

Sleeping With ASMR

At the point of writing, I am now four months ahead in terms of written blog articles to those that I have managed to post. One of the aspects of this is that I notice a lot about the dynamic nature of YouTube and the problems with rendering something which is static (i.e. a blog) to cover something that is changing all the time.

Recently as I came to review an article ready to post it, I discovered that the entire channel it had been based upon had been removed. A search of the video titles in that article though revealed that other channels were now hosting the self-same videos. So, whilst the blog article could still be written, the nature of it had changed. Playlists were gone, the channels had changed. The idea of coming back for future reviews was dispensed with.

I fear therefore that even as I publish blog posts they are sliding into the past, referring to places, channels, playlists, even people who are no longer present.

I apologise if you find one of my posts which refers to empty space. I know that all the blog writing guidance indicates that a blog article is the shop window into my site and that it should be polished and up to the minute. Elegantly researched, delicately presented, ruthlessly targeted and so on.

Mine is not going to achieve such pinnacles of God-like wonderment.

If you like it, I hope that you stick around and read some more.

If you don’t like it, then I am continually surprised at the many millions of blogs that do exist and the breadth of content that they represent. I hope that one of those alternative blogs will be a good fit for you.

Occasionally I come across blogs that are interesting (to me) and I will flag them. In just the same way that I am flagging video content from YouTube. Perhaps someone happening across this blog on their journey through the Internet may even find it useful.

Today’s video is from a channel that we have explored a great deal. It again features a very young person. And reinforces the view (I think) that people are much more careful in their handling of the small person in comparison to the fully fledged large person.

This leads me to suspect that videos featuring small people could, potentially be a source of material for this blog. It is not as if age of the “patient” will be obvious when you are trying to get to sleep the as you will be listening rather than watching, however the attitude of the medical professional is, it seems, more likely to be gentle.

Head and Neck-Jasmine

Here we have a medical professional Jasmine who is dealing with someone who is quite early in life. I am terrifically poor at estimating ages but I’ll make a guess at four or possibly five (earlier would not surprise me, much later probably would).

The video is twelve minutes-ish so a pretty standard length for videos we have covered recently. I believe the small person to be called David and David could probably win awards for the best voice heard recently.

The medical professional is a little loud to begin with (which ruins my theory about dealing with young people).

David remains quiet, perhaps I should have been focusing on him rather than Jasmine in this case.

The video quality is towards the fuzzy end of focused, read 1980s straight-to-video kind of quality. However, as you will be listening rather than watching, I doubt that this will bother you that much.

The setting is domestic. There is a large display unit in shot and the two participants appear to be using what appears to be dining room chairs for the examination. This strikes me very much along the line of student videos that we have seen of late.

The channel is one well known to us now which is MGA nursing – we’ve visited here a few occasions now and it remains a source of videos (if not the best ASMR videos we have encountered so far which I still contend is Hollie Berry.

We have established the protocol that once we browse MGA nursing, all other videos by the participants are fair game.

This is confounded in this case because Jasmine, and indeed David, feature in only one video on MGA Nursing and it is the one just covered.

I think therefore it is sensible to make this a short blog post and you can swiftly get back to the thousand things that need doing.

I hope you’ll come back and read the next one.

The MGA Nursing playlist on the Procrastination Pen is here:

The overall playlist of videos covered so far on the Procrastination Pen is here:

The videos weeded out because over time they are just not as good as the others is in this archive list:

I keep this in case subscribers to the Procrastination Pen have personal favourites that they want to hear.

The playlist of videos requiring age verification is here:

I can’t be bothered to stop my listening to log on, this interrupts the experience. You may not mind this in which case this list is for you.

I hope that you find the playlists restful and I hope you get plenty of sleep.

If you liked this blog article why not follow this blog.

Until next time.

Photo by Yerlin Matu on Unsplash

Sleeping With ASMR

If you’ve been reading the Procrastination Pen for a while you will have come across the theory that people have a much more gentle and quiet approach to examinations when dealing with small people.

What could be better to test if this is consistent or just an occasional occurrence than to occasionally feature an examination with a small person and to observe whether such videos are better in terms of volume and method.

Universities have so far been pretty good for videos but they are also often a huge source of self-promotional material involving MGM style soundtracks and Saachi and Saachi motivational messages. There is, therefore, a mass of material to look at and quite a lot of it is unsuitable for us.

The University of Leicester though, in common with Warwick University, who we saw before,  has a number of teaching videos and some of those are very good. Today’s video is sadly very brief at just shy of five minutes in duration.

Paediatric Clinical Examinations – The Abdomen

It includes comments and as expected a number of the comments are not helpful. Reading between the lines though, I think ASMR fans are here well before I am. This is something that we have come to expect now.

It is a professional video and so of course it has notes associated with it:

“30 Jul 2014

This is a real-time demonstration illustrating the technique and parent and child interaction involved in the examination of the abdominal system of a child.

The film was produced by a paediatrician to aid the teaching of clinical examination skills. It starts where the history has been taken, and the clinical examination is about to commence.

Written and presented by Dr Elaine Carter, Emeritus Consultant Paediatrician, MA, MB ChB, MRCP, FRCPCH, MMedSci.

This film was produced by External Relations, University of Leicester.

Filmed & Edited by Carl Vivian

Written & Produced by Elaine Carter”

There is no – I mean zero – music at the start of the video – Warwick take note. This is such a welcome difference.

We are introduced to mum Sophie and her son Alex, who, it has to be said, looks suitably anxious. There is limited background noise; no obvious air conditioning noises for example.

The presentation is lovely and gentle. So far, the theory about small people is vindicated yet again.

I never expected a child to be this calm when having his abdomen probed in such a deep manner. Perhaps the presentation is just a little loud but that is a minor criticism and is only possible because other aspects of the video are so right.

Interestingly, I found the video is now in the Internet Archive the first time I have ever found that to be the case.

The video is posted eight years ago to this channel: University of Leicester.

This channel is simply huge, 1.3K videos at the date I am looking at it. Eighty-seven playlists and few of these are anything that we could use.

However searching the Internet Archive, discovered earlier, we find that Elaine is also involved in another video of a similar type.

This video, as luck would have it, is also present on YouTube:

Paediatric Clinical Examinations – The Respiratory System

This one seems to have been filmed before the previous one in that this is the first time we are introduced to Alex.

Again, there are notes: “30 Jul 2014

This is a real-time demonstration illustrating the technique and parent and child interaction involved in the examination of the respiratory system of a child.

The film was produced by a paediatrician to aid the teaching of clinical examination skills. It starts where the history has been taken, and the clinical examination is about to commence.

Written and presented by Dr Elaine Carter, Emeritus Consultant Paediatrician, MA, MB ChB, MRCP, FRCPCH, MMedSci.

This film was produced by External Relations, University of Leicester.

Filmed & Edited by Carl Vivian

Written & produced by Elaine Carter”

As before there is no startup music. If it wasn’t the fact that there would be so little material to work with, I would only select videos that lacked startup music (and tail end music as well for that).

We are also introduced to Ellie, Alex’s sister, Alex looks suitably bored, possibly because his sister is the focus of attention in this video.

It is another brief one at just less than six- and three-quarter minutes.

The presentation style here, if anything, is quieter than with the previous video. Ellie seems calm, even happy at intervals.

The comments are variable as always but again reading between the lines this is also already known to the ASMR community.

That’s it for this time.

The University of Leicester playlist on the Procrastination Pen is here:

The overall playlist of videos covered so far on the Procrastination Pen is here:

The videos weeded out because over time they are just not as good as the others is in this archive list:

I keep this in case subscribers to the Procrastination Pen have personal favourites that they want to hear.

The playlist of videos requiring age verification is here:

I can’t be bothered to stop my listening to log on, this interrupts the experience. You may not mind this in which case this list is for you.

I hope that you find the playlists restful and I hope you get plenty of sleep.

If you liked this blog article, why not follow this blog.

Until next time.

Photo by Mikhail Tyrsyna on Unsplash

Sleeping With ASMR

I think I can conclude, after quite a few ASMR articles, that nursing is an absolute gift to the ASMR community. There are nursing students who post assessment videos. There are various nursing disciplines that require additional training. Much of that training apparently needs videos. Then there are the tuition videos designed to help nurses improve their expertise and log continuing professional development hours.

With nursing, GPs, and physicians we have videos which are commonly dedicated to medical examination material and this can be quite restful.

In my one blog post per week, I have hardly scraped the surface of everything that seems to be out there in this area. I may, one day, happen upon an even more productive area (paediatrics currently is a little explored area for example). But for the moment thank God for all the nurses out there and the efforts that they put in.

Today’s is from a channel dedicated to nursing it is this:

01.03 The 5 Minute Assessment Physical assessment

Despite the claims of its title the video is nearly six minutes in length.

There are no notes, which is unusual for a professionally produced video. Comments are permitted. Mostly these are unhelpful, but they do lead me to suspect that a number of people listening to this video are ASMR fans.

Oh no introductory music. Thankfully though, it is brief and unsurprisingly, for a video that declares it is all going to happen in five minutes, the pace sets off pretty rapidly and perhaps not as quietly as I would like.

The patient self-identifies as, I think, “Tammy Hawes” but that is probably misspelled. Once the examination begins things start to quieten down, but the pace certainly does not slow any.

The channel is “Nursing made easy” this has one hundred and seventy-two videos at the time I am looking at it and eight hundred and ninety-nine subscribers. That is rather a lot of videos/subscribers.

There are six playlists. One of these has seventy-four videos in it.

However examining the videos in overview, it appears that the titles denote a series. Posted one year ago are four videos with titles ranging from 01.02 to 01.05.

A quick scan of the remainder reveals that few if any will be suitable for our purposes.

The first is this one:

01.02 Barriers to Health Assessment

At just less than eight and a half minutes, the title doesn’t obviously sound like one for us. There are, again, no notes but this time no comments either. There is introductory music again. Then that frenetic pace of presentation (but this time in roadrunner proportions).

I imagine people actually play this one on half speed if they are trying to study it properly.

This really isn’t for the Procrastination Pen playlist.

01.03 is where we came in of course.

01.04 Adult Vital Signs

This is just less than five and a half minutes so another short one. Again, there are no notes and, perhaps thankfully, no comments either. That, accursed, introductory music of course. But after that start the pace is somewhat slower than with the previous two videos. It still isn’t what you would call slow though.

In this one neither patient nor the nurse doing the examination actually get to say anything, it is all about the narrator.

I think the videos in this particular blog article are probably all borderline restful. They are just good enough for the Procrastination Pen playlist but potentially liable to weeding on subsequent review.

The last video in this particular set is this one:

01.05 Pediatric Vital Signs

This is a bit of a segue in fact; the numbering system obviously linking more to the originating course than to the people delivering the examination, the patient, or even the specific subject area.

This one is just less than six and a quarter minutes long. As before there are no notes and no comments. As before the annoying start up music. As before the pace is pretty fast.

This is more a course-delivery video than a medical-examination video. It is not especially restful (although I’m sure if you are on the specific course, it is very informative).

This is not really for the Procrastination Pen playlist

The Nursing made easy playlist on the Procrastination Pen is here:

The overall playlist of videos covered so far on the Procrastination Pen is here:

The videos weeded out because over time they are just not as good as the others is in this archive list:

I keep this in case subscribers to the Procrastination Pen have personal favourites that they want to hear.

The playlist of videos requiring age verification is here:

I can’t be bothered to stop my listening to log on, this interrupts the experience. You may not mind this in which case this list is for you.

I hope that you find the playlists restful and I hope you get plenty of sleep.

If you liked this blog article why not follow this blog.

Until next time.

Photo by Girl with red hat on Unsplash

Sleeping With ASMR

Welcome reader, I hope that you enjoy this week’s item. You may well be aware how this blog works but, just in case, here is a bit of background.

Each week I am trying to add to a (what is now quite long) playlist on YouTube. Some time ago, I discovered that I was one of the lucky people who could feel ASMR effects. I also found that I wasn’t alone.

I also discovered that ASMR can help when you’re suffering with sleeplessness. I also found that a number of people suffer with sleeplessness.

If you are not one of the people who are blessed to feel ASMR, then I am hopeful that the fact I seek out YouTube videos which are quiet and restful will be helpful even so. If you lie awake at night, subscribing to the Procrastination Pen playlist on YouTube might be one of the things that you can use for relief.

I seek out videos that are not designed for ASMR (mostly medical videos). I review them for their efficacy and add them to the playlist if they are up to a standard. I then continue reviewing them, by listening to that playlist, night after night. Those that prove to be less effective I weed out to the archive list.

In this way I hope to ensure that the quality of the Procrastination Pen playlist remains high. (Although I am always happy to receive feedback).

This week, a blog item which is a legacy from my previous work in finding medical examination videos. Initially I came across the channel MDforAll when attempting to cover the feedback “Heads, Shoulders, Knees and Toes”. The channel has sixty-seven videos but sadly no playlists. Most of the videos are very short indeed at a minute or less.

Without a playlist it is hard to narrow these down in any meaningful way. However, on scanning them I found that by far the majority are in lecture mode. i.e. the person is speaking quite loudly. After a reasonable sampling, I’ve decided to reject any of the shorter videos as they are designed for instruction and there are few (if any) relaxing moments in them.

Of the remaining set, I tried narrowing to a blog post where only one medical professional is involved and found two featuring the same person.

This is the first one:

Pediatrics-Toddler

To start with (in common with other videos on this channel) it is a bit shouty. However, once the medical professional starts interacting with the young person that starts to settle down.

There are no comments and no notes. It is hard to know if any ASMR people have sought this one out already. Although given that ASMR fans seem to be natural video hunters, it is highly likely. The video quality is on the obscure side of fuzzy, such that determining where and when it was filmed is difficult. Although, given the presentation, probably a while before the 2010 posting date.

The child concerned is “Zack” who is probably an adult now and none too pleased that this video of him as a child still exists.

At one point, the video zooms in and we can see that the badge on the uniform of the medical professional refers to the Midwestern University Physician Assistant Program.

This still exists and runs from somewhere called “the Downers Grove Campus”.

Midwestern (of course) has its own channel.

Three hundred and fifteen videos at the date I’m looking at it and twenty-four playlists but none of them seem to be exactly on the same subject as this first video.

There is a possibility that something ASMR-y (official term now) may be found there and if so, it will appear on a future blog post.

The video has at intervals a pronounced background buzz to it which may indicate either its age or the state of technology of recording when it was filmed (videod).

The second video, and the last by the same medical professional on this channel, is this one:

Pediatrics-School Age

As before it starts rather loud, the medical professional appears more used to projecting their voice to an entire classroom. The child concerned is “Jeffrey” (probably misspelled) who is somewhat older than “Zack” above.

Again, there are no notes and no comments so it is going to be hard to identify who the medical professional is. If anyone knows do get in touch and I will list the details in an updated blog post.

The MDforAll playlist on the Procrastination Pen is here:

The Procrastination Pen playlist (which is no-doubt what you have all been reading this in order to locate) is found here:

I have been listening to this playlist most nights and some of the videos that were members have now been removed. If any of your favourites are missing from that main playlist you can find them here in the archive list:

Quite often the videos getting removed have no faults other than occasional intrusive noises.

The playlist of items that are great for ASMR (but contain an age verification function), usually a great way to interrupt your listening in the middle of the night, is here:

I hope that you find the playlists restful and that you get a good night’s sleep.

Hope to see you again back here for the next blog article.

If you liked this blog item, why not subscribe to this blog.

Until next time.

Photo by Shona Macrae