Category: Physical Examination

Sleeping With ASMR

A week in which I have had sympathy for those who are struggling to sleep and, in which, I have been quite dependent on the playlist for a restful breathing space. I’ve been active in weeding activity every time I happened across a more jarring moment.

I am researching the idea of trimming videos without actually hosting them. I haven’t made progress yet, but I live in hope that I may soon despatch funky startup music.

Today’s video another one properly designed for tuition of future medical professionals. Not the longest we’ve seen at a bit more than sixteen and a half minutes.

Neurological Assessment

There are moments of humour at the start including knocking on a surface to mimic entry. The patient is introduced as Mr Hoffman – which probably isn’t the correct spelling. The medical professional “Nancy” is from Harper College.

As we’d expect Harper College has its own channel the duty of which, I suspect, is to tell you that Harper College is fantastic, which no doubt it is.

Our purpose though, is the pursuit of restful videos. This one starts well by ignoring funky startup music. The Air conditioning noises are de rigueur for this sort of thing now, it would almost be rude to have a video without them.

Surprisingly for a professional video, there are no notes at all. There are plenty of comments, lots of strange comments as expected, but no obvious ASMR comments. Sometimes this does not bode well for the video.

Nancy does not have a classically restful voice; in fact, Mr Hoffman seems to have the better voice here. Thankfully, Mr Hoffman gets a fair amount of talk time in this one. The air conditioning is obviously a session musician paid by the volume, it is more intrusive even than we have come to expect.

The president at the time is Obama, so sometime between 2009 and 2017. The video was posted in 2015, so possibly shortly after it was filmed.

I think he refers to the medical professional as Nancy Haborector, that is so unlikely to be correct but it is what it sounds like. I think it is more likely Nancy Haberichter apologies Nancy if you are reading this.

Mr Hoffmann also talks to “Amy” who is behind the camera. That is a slightly off-putting event, in that I am used to dismissing the camera person from consciousness as if the filming was automatic and the interactions just between two. Amy, from that point onwards, makes a few contributions.

There are loud equipment noises in this as well.

Watch out around fifteen and a half minutes. Mr Hoffmann is obviously extremely ticklish and eventually the camera woman (Amy), Mr Hoffmann and Nancy are all taken up with laughter which fortunately brings the video to a conclusion.

The channel is Nursing Assessment and Skills, there are thirty-two videos and no playlists at all. So the normal mechanism of thinning out videos under review by using a convenient playlist is not available.

It turns out that Nancy is in the majority of such videos and Mr Hoffman is in a fair subset of them. So thinning by that mechanism isn’t looking too great either.

I notice that it appears that Mr Hoffmann is in thirteen of the videos and this is just too many for one post. So arbitrarily I am going to limit this post to three videos and we can come back again in a future blog post.

Basic Patient Assessment

This has the same two participants and is just over fifteen minutes. However, it is much more recent and it has notes “8 Jan 2019

This is the basic assessment that nursing students will perform at the bedside.  You will notice that the lights go out when upper extremity assessment is started.  So just keep watching.  Nurses must be able to adjust the plan when necessary.”

Again, there are a variable set of comments around the video, but no obvious ASMR comments.

Here the volume seems to be more appropriate, and the air conditioning is keeping it in reserve for the last music set. This time, Mr Hoffman introduces himself as Mr Reagan. I’m used to him as Hoffman and so he will stay Mr Hoffman for this article.

Nancy seems to be more muted as well, which actually works, and this instantaneously feels a better video for us than the last one.

Again, they are filming at the Harper Hospital, the president is Donald Trump who was president from 2017 to 2021. The video was posted in 2019 which could therefore have been shortly after it was filmed.

General Survey

This is a whole lot different. Firstly the setting – domestic not hospital, secondly length – the video is just two minutes long. No notes, no ASMR related comments. There is relatively little background noise but it starts a bit loud.

However, it is amazing how much influence that air conditioning noise has. It is easy to disregard how loud it is until it isn’t there and then I really want it to be absent all the time.

Although short, this video is the best in terms of restful of the three in this post. In the end it might be the only one to survive the regular weeding process. We shall see.

The Nursing Assessment 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 Jennifer Uppendahl on Unsplash

Sleeping With ASMR

If you’ve woken from another Nytol-fuelled sleep and feel like a bear was sitting on your head all night, it might be that you will be better off trying to relax into sleep by yourself without the aid of chemicals.

For many of us this is far easier said than done. I have found that falling asleep with other people’s noises all around – cars on the road, breathing of my partner, mice in the loft overhead, or bird squabbles in the hedges nearby are sufficiently distracting to put off sleep for quite some hours.

In this atmosphere the masking of those noises with a level of background noise seems to be moderately effective. The Procrastination Pen playlist may be effective for you in that it provides a number of videos taken from YouTube selected for their calm talking, lack of extraneous noises, and potential ASMR effects (in those people lucky enough to get ASMR effects, in any case).

Today’s video comes from a perennially useful source for us which is the student medical exam video. This blog would probably run out of steam quite quickly if this kind of video did not exist. Sadly, the quality of such videos is often, at best, variable, such that many videos get evaluated and few are chosen.

Today’s video is this one:

Head to Toe Assessment

The medical professional is wearing a very large identity badge indicating that she is Julianna and that she is an undergraduate student.

There are no notes with this video. However, comments are permitted and, as expected, ASMR fans have been here long before me.

It is just over thirty-five- and three-quarter minutes, so moderately substantial in terms of videos that we have recently seen on this blog.

Julianna announces that she is Julianna Cook, a Family Nurse Practitioner. I think the institution mentioned is “Auburn University” (it’s spoken rather quickly).

Auburn has a college of nursing and so it sounds like it might be a good fit for a video of this type.

Its channel reveals that it has a brand very similar to the icon on the badge that Julianna is wearing, so it seems very probable this is where Julianna is presenting from.

Julianna appears to have left Auburn in 2020 the video was posted in 2019.

The class is 7116 Advanced Nursing Assessment.

The patient seems to be in tip-top shape (better numbers than I am able to deliver for example). The normal question and answer session must have occurred prior to this video so there is no clue as to who the patient is.

The camera angle is a little strange in this one. Probably so that it could be set out of the way of the participants. But the net result is that they are some distance from it. This is not important if you are simply listening, but sadly, it has some effect on the audio as well which is itself a bit flat and distant. Not as notably, as in some other videos that have featured in this blog.

There are some moments where progress is slowed by the medical professional failing to remember. However, overall, the assessment seems moderately efficient (if thirty-odd minutes can be thought of as efficient).

We are here for the sound which is not excessively loud, no loud bangs of moving equipment for example. There is of course the ever-present air conditioning noise which seems to be a feature of these videos.

There is a fair amount of humour in the video which is perhaps less restful than might otherwise be the case (laughter can be a bit loud). I don’t think this precludes it from membership of the Procrastination Pen playlist but it might cause it to be a victim of future weeding.

There are moments of actual gentleness in this but only a video editor would be able to make this a truly superior video, and of course, the video isn’t mine to do that to.

The channel is Julianna Cook. There are four videos, including the one above, and eight hundred and fifty-seven subscribers as at the date I am looking at it. There is no video posted more recently than three years ago.

Julianna’s Greatest Show

This is just less than five and a quarter minutes, and has some notes. It states it is “NURS 7246 Pharmacology Project”. 7246 appears to be another course at Auburn.

Unlike the previous video no ASMR fans have commented on this one.

This starts loud, and I think is designed to be a presentation. There is loud music in it, I think it is supposed to be entertaining but not restful. It does make interesting viewing. I think the chances of falling asleep to it are out there with winning the lottery.

Not a Procrastination Pen playlist candidate but I imagine a good fun video if this is your area of interest.

7226 NP Roles Video

This is a presentation, it is quite loud, it isn’t really restful. There are no notes. There are no comments from ASMR fans, which given the content is perhaps not surprising. The most interesting elements are interviews with people apparently from the public. Herman Cook for example has quite a good voice. However, the background noise is a tad off-putting. It is louder even than we are usually used to.

James Warren’s interview has so much extraneous noise associated with it that I’m surprised it is included. I’m guessing filters are not a thing.

Virginia Cook has a great voice but she is swamped by background noise.

Stephanie has a section with minimal extraneous noise but her voice is quite a lot louder and so not helpful from our perspective.

Linda Condon has a good voice but I think they videoed her footage beside the M25, boy it is loud.

All in all, this video isn’t going to work for us and it will not go into the Procrastination Pen playlist.

The last (and newest) video is this one:

Croup Presentation

This is just over five minutes and it starts loud. It continues loud. It is a presentation after all.

This one is just not for us.

Just the one video this time then.

More time for you to get on with your work. More next time.

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 Milada Vigerova on Unsplash

Sleeping With ASMR

For those people who actually read my blog articles at intervals, yay, welcome readers. You will notice that I am drawing again at the well of a popular channel for this blog. This site is designed for education purposes. However, it turns out to be pretty good in terms of relaxation as well.

Judging by the comments I am confident that I am not the only one to think so.

The video is this one:

Examination of the Spleen (Stanford Medicine 25)

The great advantage is that it already comes as part of a playlist i.e. this one

Stanford Medicine 25: Abdominal Exam

I also notice that all of the videos in this playlist are short ones, so this is not going to keep you for very long.

This first video is just over three and a half minutes long so blink and you’ll miss it, in comparison to some we have covered.

Initially the video starts quietly but just when I was ready to give thanks for the lack of startup music, some startup music begins. Fortunately, it is brief.

The person giving the examination (and commenting at the same time) has an excellent voice for our purposes. In this case it is Dr Verghese – who we have encountered before.

The next video in the same playlist is this one:

Percussion of the Spleen (Stanford Medicine 25)

The notes for these videos are very similar to those for the Stanford Medicine 25 videos that we have previously featured:

“17 Mar 2014

This Stanford Medicine 25 video was created in conjunction with Stanford’s AIM lab teaching the percussion of the spleen.

The Stanford Medicine 25 is a Stanford School of Medicine initiative to teach and promote the bedside physical exam. Here you will find videos teaching bedside physical exam techniques.

Please subscribe, like and visit our websites:

Main Website: http://stanfordmedicine25.stanford.edu/

Blog: http://stanford25blog.stanford.edu/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/StanfordMedi…

Twitter: https://twitter.com/StanfordMed25

Google+: http://goo.gl/UBM7SP”

It is an advantage of professionally produced videos that they tend to have notes and, in a number of cases, the notes are even helpful.

Again, we have startup and tail end music, which I’d prefer wasn’t there, but isn’t hugely intrusive.

The last video in this playlist is this one:

Diagnosis Anterior Cutaneous Nerve Entrapment Syndrome (ACNES) with Carnett’s Sign – Abdominal Pain

This time narrated by Dr George Meyer Gastroenterology the University of California, Davis.

This time the startup music has a life all its own and just will not be suppressed. It is louder, longer and more energetic than previous videos in this article. There’s also an introductory narrator who is too loud and therefore not at all restful. In an ideal world this front part of the video would be cropped right off. The reason it is worth persisting with is that Dr Meyer’s voice is every bit as good as that of Dr Verghese.

The video is just over three and a half minutes so you haven’t got a great deal of time to enjoy the experience.

It’s quiet, methodical, instructive (should you want that) and then goes and spoils it all by having the peppy startup music repeat at the end and to top it all that loud narration, followed by a jarring copyright announcement as well.

Despite that I like Dr Meyer’s voice so I am going to give all three of these a try in the playlist.

The Stanford Medicine 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 Luiza Sayfullina on Unsplash

Sleeping With ASMR

Sadly, as I regularly prove, sometimes nothing at all is going to work in the drive to get some sleep. Some switch in the brain seems to resist getting thrown into the correct position and although you are tired, sleep just will not come.

These kinds of occasions used to drive me up the wall as I fought to get control and tried with increasing vigour to gain that blissful rest. It doesn’t work. The only option is to just let go, 5am is coming round and you’ll still be looking at the ceiling when it does. It is better to fill the time with something restful. The Procrastination Pen playlist is designed for just such an eventuality.

Today’s video is another professionally produced one:

Hip Examination – Orthopaedics

In common with a number of professionally produced videos it has notes with it: “28 Nov 2012  Clinical Examinations

This video – produced by students at Oxford University Medical School in conjunction with the faculty – demonstrates how to perform an Orthopaedic examination of the hip joint. It is part of a series of videos covering Orthopaedic examinations and is linked to Oxford Medical Education (www.oxfordmedicaleducation.com)

This video was produced in collaboration with Oxford Medical Illustration – a department of Oxford University Hospitals NHS Trust. For more information, please visit www.oxfordmi.nhs.uk.”

So it tells us where it was filmed.

Comments are permitted (brave that) and it turns out that other ASMR fans have been here before me (which is not unexpected).

The video at just over nine and a quarter minutes is not a huge one. There is (thankfully) no introductory music. It begins with narration but no clues as to the participants, the narrator has quite a good voice. The same person talks throughout the examination proper such that we do not hear the voices of the actual participants. This makes their participation seem like that of a mime act or worse some kind of puppet, it is a little surreal. However, if you are listening rather than watching none of this will be obvious.

The channel is Oxford Medical Education. This has thirty two videos and 142k subscribers on the day I am looking at it.

With thirty two videos it seems likely that we would be here a while. There are nine playlists, our video appears to be in a playlist called Orthopaedic Surgery which consists of only three videos including the one I first covered. I’ll focus on this playlist in order to narrow down the choice available.

All three videos exceed nine minutes and are less than ten minutes – I’m guessing there was a target in terms of running time.

The next video in the playlist is this one:

Knee Examination – Orthopaedics

A bit over nine minutes so similar to the last one. Like that one it has notes “28 Nov 2012 Clinical Examinations

This video – produced by students at Oxford University Medical School in conjunction with the faculty – demonstrates how to perform an Orthopaedic examination of the knee joint. It is part of a series of videos covering Orthopaedic examinations and is linked to Oxford Medical Education (www.oxfordmedicaleducation.com)

This video was produced in collaboration with Oxford Medical Illustration – a department of Oxford University Hospitals NHS Trust. For more information, please visit www.oxfordmi.nhs.uk”

Again, the entire video is narrated. I would say the voice is marginally superior to the last one for our purposes.

Shoulder Examination – Orthopaedics

Nine and a half minutes so slightly longer and in this one the patient changes. In the previous two the patient was the same and the medical professional changed. Now we have a patient change and a medical professional change.

The notes are very similar to what has gone before so I will not repeat them.

The narration is not quite as good for our purposes as the last one. However, as is usual with professionally produced videos, they are amazing in their consistency. In this one (at last!) the medical professional gets to speak for himself and we find that his voice is not at all bad. Part way through, the video goes all sepia in appearance briefly. I’m not clear why, but given you will only be listening this will not be too distracting.

The Oxford Medical Education 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

I have now been listening to the Procrastination Pen playlist for so long that I have realised that some elements of it are appearing in my dreams. Recently, I was arguing with a person I work with (in the dream) over their rights to reuse the entire text from a video from Moran Core, having convinced myself that it had been lifted wholesale and reused for an education purpose. (In fact, I suspect it was simply playing at the time and I overlaid my dream content with that from Moran Core).

On that basis, I had better be cautious about the material that I incorporate into the Procrastination Pen playlist or some of you may be having nightmares.

Today’s is another video drawn from a rich resource which we have covered before. This is the nursing student video, created as some element of their course. The clues are all present – domestic setting being the main one of course. In this case the use of a dining chair for the patient to sit on, we have seen a sofa even what appears to be the student’s own bed.

At just shy of eleven and a half minutes this is a nice length for one of the videos we commonly see. This one has no comments (phew) the downside of which is that we do not know if the ASMR community has happened across it as yet. (I would hazard a guess in the affirmative).

There are no notes – this happens with professional videos occasionally but more usually is a symptom of an amateur video as we have seen before.

The “patient” introduced as “Mr Evans” and the title of the video is:

S. Evans Thorax/lung Assessment

It is probably sensible to assume the husband of the medical professional involved.

Mrs Evans (I’ll guess that is who it is) starts a little loud.

Matthew Evans is the patient DoB 06/07/1984 (i.e. July in case you are reading this whilst located in the US or are using the US method of describing dates). So, if Matthew is the patient, S Evans must be the medical professional.

This is another one of the videos which has comedy “privacy” at the beginning – i.e. miming providing privacy when none is provided.

In fact, Matthew seems to have a better voice for our purposes than Mrs Evans does and fortunately he gets to talk a reasonable amount (he is subjected to a battery of questions). Interestingly there is no attempt to explore the answers which seems to show the student obeying some hidden checklist as to what has to happen in an examination, rather than using the information for anything useful.

Part way through a baby starts crying in a remote room, which is a tad distracting. I kept hoping that someone would go and find out what was wrong with the baby.

The channel is MGA Nursing, it has just forty subscribers which is to say the least odd. However, it has forty-three videos on it and all of them look to be medical examination videos – i.e. this is good news for us.

Fortunately, the videos are all labelled using an identifier for the medical professional. In this case we have a number of videos for S Evans.

The other videos for S Evans are as follows:

S. Evans Neuro Part 1

This is nearly sixteen minutes long and so it is a bit chunkier there are no comments and no notes so that might well be a theme for all of them.

Again, Matthew has a better voice but here we find out the medical professional is called Susan. Again, the “patient” Matthew is subjected to a barrage of questions and it is, again, not clear why.

Mrs Evans continues a bit loud; it is possible all of these videos will be marginal in terms of the Procrastination Pen playlist. I’m quite active in terms of weeding recently so we’ll see how long they last in the main list.

Susan seems to be consulting a checklist throughout the examination which reinforces the view that a series of steps have to be covered to comply with the purpose of the video (i.e. a requirement of the course in which Susan is involved).

We are quite fortunate in this video in that Matthew gets to talk a great deal more often and his voice is a much more restful one than his wife’s voice.

It is interesting to see Matthew fail some of the tests. This is something not seen before in one of these videos but, again, it isn’t clear what is going to be done about it.

S. Evans Neuro Part 2

This is much shorter at a little less than seven minutes. The setting is relocated to a domestic bedroom this time.

Again, it is a little loud to start. It is interesting that some of the vibration tests just do not seem to work (either that or Matthew is considerably more honest than some participants we have heard in the past).

During the actual examination things are a good deal quieter, however I still rate Matthew’s voice over Susan’s.

S. Evans Abdomen Assessment

This seems to be quieter at the start, there is the comedy privacy mime again, which this time occurs off camera. Again, Matthew is subjected to significant interrogation at the beginning.

At just over eleven and a half minutes this is similar in length to the first one we saw in this blog post. However, it is much better in terms of volume for us I think and makes a better candidate for the Procrastination Pen playlist.

All in all, a more gentle examination than the ones that we have seen previously in this article.

S. Evans Eye Assessment

A little under eleven minutes and we are back to a dining room chair for the patient. Again, with the initial questioning. The great thing is that Matthew gets more time speaking.

However, at points Matthew is a bit loud which makes this less useful from an ASMR perspective.

After this one I am making some guesses because the video titles cease to contain any reference to S Evans. However, I believe that these videos contain the same two participants so I have included them below.

IMG 3025

I would say that this is the same two people, it is just less than nineteen and a half minutes long – but the standard of title naming seems to have been lost. This just looks like a default naming system used by a recording device such as an iPhone. So perhaps this was just uploaded from such a device and no modifications were made to it.

We are back to the bedroom as a setting. This is reasonably quiet and is similar to videos we have already seen in this article previously.

This, again, contains the baby crying which was so off-putting in the first one of this series. No one seems to jump and run, so potentially there is someone else in the house responsible for the baby’s care (or the baby is next door and has blast furnace bellows for lungs).

IMG 2916

Again, this is the same two participants. At the time the video is being shot we learn that although Obama is president Trump has started campaigning. Although Trump became president in 2017, he started his campaign in 2015. It is quite likely therefore the video was shot in 2016 which also fits with when it was posted (September 2016) so the dates line up. This time we have notes (perhaps to compensate for the absence of a useful video title): “26 Sept 2016

S. Evans. Physical Assessment- General Survey September 25, 2016”

Matthew also confirms the date.

The video is a little less than three minutes and so is a very brief one for us.

Matthew gets a reasonable amount of talking time which is good.

IMG 2934

This is slightly over four minutes so again is very brief. It has the same two participants and starts a little loud, I think. Again, Matthew gets to talk a reasonable amount. The actual examination is quite quiet and gentle.

There are baby noises in this one too, and this time the baby sounds to be in the self-same room that the participants are in. I’m assuming that someone nearby is doing the baby soothing, bouncing on knee, or what have you because neither of the participants seems at all bothered by this.

It does get to the level of loud in this one which I think is sufficiently distracting that this one cannot be included in the Procrastination Pen playlist.

Assessment: Ears

The quality isn’t great here but I am making the guess that this is the same two people.

This is a little under eight minutes and so is back to a better length. It has a moderately quieter start than some of the previous videos considered.

Again, there are baby noises but the baby is back to a remote room. I think we can conclude that the baby is in the same house. But possibly not Susan or Matthew’s responsibility.

So overall more the “acceptable” rather than outstanding in terms of relaxation for sleep purposes. I’ll trial them in the Procrastination Pen playlist but the weeding of it continues apace so some or all of them maybe flushed out in a future weeding process.

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 Kristin Brown on Unsplash

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

A minor deviation in terms of videos this week. Still on a medical theme, so I have not wandered too far from the fold. However, this one is for people involved in sports. Presumably an area with a great propensity towards injury, given there is an entire discipline dedicated to it.

The video is this one:

Examining The Wrist: A Guide for Sports Physicians and Physiotherapists

As we have established previously professional videos have a higher tendency towards having associated notes. We’ve also established that within a playlist on a channel of this type all the notes have a tendency to follow a theme.

The notes with this video state “

199,898 views 10 Dec 2013

Roger Hawkes, Chief Medical Officer, European Tour Performance Institute, and Doug Campbell, Wrist and Hand Surgeon, Leeds Teaching hospitals NHS Trust, guide you through examining the wrist.

Having studied the wrist on the European Tour (golf) for the last four years, they show the simple tests to use in day-to-day practice, and the common pathological findings.

For further resources, see the BJSM special edition on the wrist: http://bjsm.bmj.com/content/47/17.toc

Chapters:

– Taking the history (1.26)

– Initial inspection of the wrist (3.00)

– Assessing the range of movement (5.00)

– Anatomy (5.55)

– Assessing flexibility (7.16)

– Locating pain (8.12)

– Assessing stability of the distal radial ulnar joint (9.22)

– The extensor carpi ulnaris tendon (10.27)

– De Quervain’s tendonitis (13.00)”

The video permits comments and there are a number of those. As expected, ASMR fans are here well before me. I wonder if there is some secret channel where all of these videos are already listed and I am merely repeating in an amateur fashion the indexing work of some ASMR-associated professional.

The video is slightly over fifteen minutes, so not huge, and it has the bugbear of all ASMR fans, startup music. Worse, energetic startup music. This is not immediately a video designated to assist you off to sleep. The first presenter Roger Hawkes Chief Medical Officer European Tour Performance Institute starts off a bit loud. Whilst he is talking the music is still hanging in there like yesterday’s intransigent flu symptoms.

The second Presenter is Doug Campbell Consultant Hand and Wrist Surgeon Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust. 

As soon as Doug starts to speak, we feel we are on a surer footing ASMR-wise as he has a substantially more gentle voice. If only the start of the video hadn’t been ambushed by marketing and brand identity.

Still, we have given videos a try with more challenging beginnings.

At one and a half minutes into the video the examination begins and for me the entire video should have begun here. It would then have been much more suitable for ASMR. However, so far I have not found a setting for truncating videos so that the startup nonsense can be dispensed with.

As expected, the portion of the video in which Doug appears is much more relaxing than the portion in which Roger presents.

For ASMR purposes it would be great to take the video and chop out of it the extraneous loud bits. However, I do not own it, and so sadly we’ll have to run with it as is.

Including the equally jarring tail-end music.

The channel is British Journal of Sports Medicine (BJSM), which has one hundred and thirty five videos – a fair number to cover I’m sure you’ll agree.

There are twelve playlists and a number of those contain only one video.

Our video is contained in one of these, a playlist called Examining the wrist.

Checking through the remaining one hundred and thirty four videos we find that neither Doug, Roger nor the “patient” appear in any further videos on the site, so it appears this is the only one this week.

Why not use the time to get some more sleep.

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 Ray ZHUANG on Unsplash

Sleeping With ASMR

Recently I had occasion to browse YouTube using a smart TV. The app for YouTube browsing turns out to be a cut down of the version available via a web browser. For a start the shuffle function does not exist, the ability to skip adverts does not crop up and it took some searching to find the Procrastination Pen channel at all.

However, I am pleased to report that despite all that, the playlist still stands up pretty well even when forced to play each video in order. Some of those early videos have become like old friends now.

It also gave me the chance to identify the odd one that is ripe for weeding and push it over into the archive list – by this mechanism does the main Procrastination Pen playlist keep being refined and improved.

Today’s video is this one:

Head-to-Toe Assessment NR 304

Comments are permitted and we can see that ASMR fans have already been here and done that. NR304 turns out to be a nursing exam. The online references to it appear to come from Chamberlain University College of Nursing but that is not to say it is the only university to offer it.

The video is twelve and three quarter minutes long so a good average length for a medical examination video. And this seems to be again another video produced by students as part of their course. (we have a great deal of experience of this now and the results can be somewhat variable).

There is some background noise. There are conversations happening nearby both are quite distracting.

The medical professional is “Nadia”. She has a great voice which is somewhat overshadowed by the other conversations just off camera.

The “patient” is Jackie Santiago (almost certainly misspelled) with DoB 6/9/97. However, thereby is a trap for the unwary, this is the US dating system so almost certainly 09/06/1997, so June therefore.

Each of the participants has a tunic with a crest on it which is just a little too fuzzy for me to make out the name of the institution.

However, the Chamberlain University College of Nursing has a very similar logo.

So it could be that this is the location.

Chamberlain appears to be in Addison Illinois and unsurprisingly it has its own YouTube channel.

This is filled with the kind of promotional videos we have come to expect from such channels.

The channel is Nadia Hussain. This has just one video posted there years ago at the time I am looking at it, yet despite this there are four hundred and two subscribers. This is quite amazing and possibly speaks to the ASMR-y nature of this video.

I would completely be in accordance with that if the extraneous noises were not punctuating this video. It is also a shame, given the nature of her voice, that Nadia did not post any further videos.

In the brief intervals where no conversations from elsewhere are overheard this is a very good video. It even lacks oppressive air conditioning noises (which is very rare as we know).

Sadly, there is no more from Nadia, she does not seem to have any other channel, so presumably she went on to make good her career and never looked back. Good luck Nadia, but very sad for us.

So until next time then.

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 yongzheng xu 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