Re-reading some sleep advice that I had knocking around, I notice that one is supposed to sleep the same number of hours every night and if you don’t, then there will be a reckoning to come.
Added to this is the requirement that you go to bed at the same time, every night and awaken at the same time, every morning.
That sounds a great discipline and I would love to recommend it. However, I find myself utterly jiggered by close of play on a Friday and I take to bed and sleep till the gods have made off to find another planet (or for a very long time anyway).
I always found that this was my little weekly restorative and I’m sure that for many years it was. However, it does not seem to be as effective any longer and I am moderately convinced that is to do with ageing.
In the absence of changing my sleep pattern completely (and for those of you who also feel unable to do so), I’ll stick to finding restful videos that may encourage you to make the most of whatever sleep you are able to get. If you do find yourself crashing on a Friday night, desperate to make up for any lost time during the week, you now know I will not be judging you.
Today’s video is, again, taken from that deep well of videos which seemingly has no end on YouTube; the student assessment video.
Head-to-Toe Physical Assessment
The medical professional is Vivian and from the start has a very good voice. Vivian has on a top which identifies the college where presumably this is filmed but, sadly, I cannot make out what it says.
There are no notes with the video; there is one unhelpful comment and only two subscribers. This is either a journey to something new or a warning that this is not going to be that useful.
In fact, the sound is quite muted. The air conditioning is ever present (as we are used to by now) the patient is Lindsey Preston (probably misspelled), D.o.B. 03/03/97, whichever date system you use. I make that March.
There are the usual questions officially designed to check the person vs their record, but of course no record exists so it is, as usual, acting.
Lindsey (I’m sticking with that spelling now) announces that she is at Valencia Memorial Hospital (well I’m pretty sure that is what she says – it is a bit quick). Lindsey has a top on with the same appearance as that worn by Vivian it appears to say Valencia College nursing which might confirm that.
The tops worn by the nurses on that website do appear similar if in a different colour.
The college of course has it’s own YouTube channel.
Apart from the air conditioning there are no nasty intrusive noises. Vivian even seems able to move equipment around without the loud clangs that have punctuated some videos now in the Procrastination Pen archive list.
Her approach is methodical and gentle.
The video is just a short one at a little over six minutes.
The channel is Vivian Tran it contains just this one video uploaded in 2018 which is about the same date that it was filmed.
So, I’m sorry people, but that is all for this 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.
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.
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 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.
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
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.
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.
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.
Every once in a while I like to remind readers why we are here, what this series of blog articles on the Procrastination Pen is designed to achieve, and why you might want to read, especially if you suffer for sleep.
If you are privileged enough to get ASMR symptoms then you will already be familiar with the fact that certain sounds can have a profound effect. For some people, there are physical sensations (often referred to as tingles). For many, there is a sense of wellbeing or relaxation when a certain sound is playing.
The effect is now well documented and so recognised that even mainstream newspapers have articles on it (and not all of them are critical!)
For those not so gifted it is often the case that quiet and calming sounds can be more effective at promoting relaxation than absolute silence (if there is anywhere in your current environment where you can achieve true silence, then you are truly privileged in any case).
For this reason, websites now carry not just articles about ASMR but videos purported to cause such relaxation or full ASMR effects. Sadly, claims for ASMR are a bit of a stretch as it seems that the sounds that cause ASMR are as individual as the person who is listening to them.
A number of people seem to find slurping noises relaxing, some prefer scratching or the sound of running water. For others, some of these sounds are positively off-putting. One person’s ASMR sound is another person’s grating, irritating noise.
I try, therefore, to mute any claims about ASMR for this blog as I can only comment about sounds that work for me. I like quiet voices, gentle and calm behaviour. I think there is a large subset of ASMR fans who like the same thing.
There is no shortage of videos on the popular YouTube site and many of them claim to be great for ASMR. I have listened to many. I found some were interesting, very few effective, most to be irrelevant to me.
I believe that this affects many people. How to arrive at a situation where you only get to listen to those videos which are genuinely relaxing? I considered that the only method was to listen to many – many videos and to keep a record of the ones that are genuinely relaxing for me.
There are probably several people who do the same thing. We are duplicating the effort in order to arrive at playlists of relaxing videos.
I use relaxing videos to get to sleep, I am old, I do not sleep well. There are many people who are either old or who do not sleep well and some of whom who are both old and who do not sleep well.
I have found that having a playlist of relaxing videos playing actually helps. (It would help even more if YouTube would quit playing loud and intrusive adverts during the night time hours – by which I mean any time between 21:00 and 07:00 – when I assume the majority of people have some kind of sleep window. However, I do not control YouTube or have the power even to make suggestions, so I work with what I have.)
I assume that many people would profit from having a playlist like this available to them. This blog is old and hence the name the Procrastination Pen precedes this idea by many years (Perhaps now I would call it ASMR Sleeping or something – however I assume there are many similar sites out there.)
Hence the Procrastination Pen is this blog, the Procrastination Pen is my YouTube channel which contains the playlists, the Procrastination Pen is the Facebook page which links to them, the Instagram page, the Twitter account and so on and so forth…
All of which is designed to inform people that there is a consistent effort going on attempting to identify suitable videos, to create a playlist of such videos and to share the playlist so that they do not have to do the same thing.
With the many ASMR channels on YouTube, I realised that there is little margin in reviewing those (unless there is demand), so I focus instead on videos which were created for another purpose i.e. whose relaxation effects are an unintended side effect rather than the main aim.
For a while now, the focus has been any variant of a medical examination video as these seem a rich source of material. I make occasional forays into other areas.
The blog allows comments, via which you can make suggestions (sensible ones I may even consider for the playlist).
The playlist is also used by me, regularly. One upshot of which is that if I find any of the included videos are not as relaxing as at first thought they get removed.
This should ensure that the playlist remains true to its original intent which is to help people get to sleep and to drift off again if you, as many of us do, wake several times during the night.
If you are still reading this far, well done, you’ve proven that you have a great span of attention and your reward can be today’s video. Which is this one:
Abdominal Examination – OSCE Guide (Latest)
At a bit less than eight and a half minutes this is not a huge video it is a professionally produced video and so has notes, and what notes, possibly the most extensive notes I have read thus far on any of the videos so far reviewed. For this reason I am only including the edited highlights in this article:
The ability to carry out a thorough and slick abdominal examination is something every medic needs to master. This video aims to give you an idea of what’s required in the OSCE and you can then customise the examination to suit your own personal style.
Check out our other awesome clinical skills resources including:
So unusually for inadvertent ASMR videos this one pins its colours to the mast up front. It’s a medical video but the notes directly state “Some people have found this video useful for ASMR purposes”.
Comments are permitted and as expected some of these comments do not appear to be from medical students. I think we can conclude that ASMR fans are all over this. I rarely find a video where this is not the case. If there is a relaxing video a few hundred or more likely thousand ASMR fans will already have seen it and often have left some very esoteric comments. I guess it is a community thing which I do not fully comprehend.
The video is calm, quiet, methodical and is more or less perfect from our perspective.
The medical professional is “Andrew” and is a final-year medical student. It isn’t clear which course, or where, Andrew is studying.
The patient is “James Alexander” D.o.B 13/12/1989 (that’s December in case you use a different method of describing dates to the UK one). It might be that we select other videos with James in for review in this article.
There are no objectionable background noises and the introductory music is thankfully very brief. However, the abdominal sounds might prove a bit off-putting for some. It might fall victim to a future weeding process but I intend to include it in the Procrastination Pen playlist.
The channel is not an obvious one for relaxing videos (at least by inference from the name) it is: Geeky Medics and it has 1 million subscribers. This has to be something of a record for a channel reviewed on this blog. I was expecting tens of thousands of videos therefore but in fact two hundred and sixteen videos as at today’s date.
Given “James” does not appear in the comments to the video it is probable that a simple search of the channel isn’t going to pull up videos where he is the patient.
Instead, I’ll go the old-fashioned route and scroll through the two hundred and sixteen videos in the hope of spotting him from the image placeholder for the video.
There are some video shorts that feature James, however the first has funky background music and so is not suitable for what we are looking for:
The latter one features some disturbing breathing sounds and so I think we can discount that one as well:
The next video of any length to feature James Alexander is this one:
Cardiovascular Examination – OSCE Guide
The medical professional is again Andrew.
This is consistent with the last one in terms of approach, volume, startup music. The notes are almost the same as before (I’ll cease to feature the notes now as they are much the same between videos.)
This is just over eight minutes and as before is marvellously calm. However, there are some loud heart sounds which might be off-putting.
The next video is this one:
How to record an ECG – OSCE Guide
At just less than 4 minutes it isn’t huge. The startup music remains muted here. The medical professional is “David,” his voice is not as relaxing as Andrew, but it is still pretty good.
The video is predominantly quiet with limited input from participants. It is methodical and thank goodness, because the procedure looks to be a complex one. Thankfully this time there are no noises from internal organs.
The next one is this one:
How to take an arterial blood gas (ABG) – OSCE guide
This is just less than three and a half minutes and we are back to Andrew as the medical professional – welcome back Andrew.
James is a trooper. He gets asked the same questions at the start of each of these and repeats the answers without blinking.
Those averse to needles I suggest that you just do not watch but lay back and listen, it will be certain to put you off if you actually watch this.
Here we get a concluding screen that tells us the medical student was Dr Andrew Pugh.
And the patient was James Lower
Intravenous (IV) cannulation – OSCE Guide
Seriously if you do not like blood do not watch this. Andrew returns and this video might need to be archived from the Procrastination Pen playlist at some stage as I am sure I am not alone in finding blood related videos distinctly uncomfortable to watch. (It may encourage you to listen rather than watch however).
I decided to look for where Graham Bone was senior clinical lecturer and discovered that he is at South Tees NHS Foundation Trust. These support the following universities University of Hull, University of York, Newcastle University, University of Sunderland.
Therefore, it is likely it was filmed in one of those locations.
Modified Allen’s Test
This is a short extract from one of the videos we have already seen. (It’s possible many of the other shorter videos on this channel have been sourced in the same way).
Respiratory Examination – OSCE Guide (Latest)
I do get the feeling that these videos re-use material from other videos, possibly this is why James is able to blithely respond to those early questions in exactly the same way. Here we have a video just over nine and a half minutes and unsurprisingly it is very similar to those already reviewed.
This one has some quite loud (and possibly off-putting breathing related noises).
So where is Dr Gareth Hynes Respiratory Registrar and does this give us any more information about where this was filmed?
It looks like Gareth is at Oxford University Hospitals so that muddies the waters if anything.
Spine Examination – OSCE Guide
Back with Andrew and a video just less than five and a half minutes in length.
So where is Mr Tejas Yarashi Orthopaedic Registrar (ST7)?
Tejas is currently at Northampton General Hospital NHS Trust but it looks like the last time he had (ST7) as a qualifier was at the Royal Free London NHS Foundation Trust.
Lung sounds (respiratory auscultation sounds)
This is just less than one and a quarter minutes and mostly off-putting breathing related noises, I suspect we can discount this one.
So was Dr Gareth Hynes ever at Royal Free London NHS Foundation Trust? It appears not.
Heart murmur sounds (cardiac auscultation sounds)
Another short one at just over two minutes and is mainly heart related noises, again I think we can discount this one
So where is Dr Matthew Jackson Cardiology Registrar (ST6)? Well it turns out that I can’t locate him so I’m not too certain.
Shoulder Examination – OSCE Guide (Latest)
just less than six and a quarter minutes and as for the previous videos so for this one. Andrew and James again and at this rate the blog post will be encyclopaedic, I think I will split this post into many and cover all the other videos in a subsequent blog post.
An absence of strange noises on this one though makes it a great deal more appealing.
After a period of reviewing videos I suspect that availability of ASMR material within the wider medical examination video material follows something of a normal distribution. I cannot prove it but the occurrence of truly awesome ASMR material such as Hollie Berry or Shane Brun is very rare and so they must be outliers.
More bread-and-butter material occurs somewhat regularly. The huge lift in the curve is of videos which are watchable but unsuitable. They are just not relaxing enough. Right out at the other end of the curve are some rather nasty videos which, thankfully, I rarely come across.
That being the case, the discovery of another Vicki Scott is a matter of trawling through a vast number of videos to uncover the jewel in the coal mine.
You can be certain that should I discover such a person they will be featured in this blog, and no doubt (like Dr James Gill) flagged as a favourite from that point onwards.
Today’s video is at the Hollie Berry standard which is fighting talk ASMR-wise.
Alexander technique lesson with Diana Devitt-Dawson
This is just under fourteen-and-a-quarter minutes so a quite typical length for us of late. The medical professional is Diana Devitt-Dawson the “patient” is Gita (probably misspelled). The film quality is not the greatest which is probably of little concern if you are using this to get to sleep.
Diana has a really good voice for us I think. Another smile-causing aspect is the absence of intrusive background noise which haunts some of the videos I have featured.
Comments are permitted and judging by the feedback, I am not the first person to notice how good this is for ASMR. Many are rating this above professional ASMR artists (I’ve seen a few such videos, and in many cases they are correct).
The sad thing is that the channel Diana Devitt-Dawson contains only one video and this is it.
Diana appears not to have any further entries on YouTube (this has heavy echoes of my experience with Hollie Berry).
There are reiterations of the same video featured on ASMR channels, such as this one:
Legends of ASMR – Diana Devitt-Dawson
So that’s it this time, I’m afraid.
I now think that the Alexander Technique might, potentially, be a source of more ASMR material. I’ll keep my eyes open and my search fingers poised.
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.
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.
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.
I’ve realised that I could stop writing these for a period of many weeks as I have built up a bit of a backlog. Either that, or you will be subjected to them every day for a period of weeks. I have no doubt such an occurrence would cause even the most hardy Procrastination Pen reader to abandon the blog forever and flag any related emails as spam.
I am hopeful that, in fact, this means that I can keep on posting even when life makes it hard to write further articles. (This has happened before and no doubt could happen again).
Meantime, I continue trying to serve you new videos from YouTube which have some relaxing content (and which some people may consider to have ASMR effects).
We all realise that getting sufficient sleep is up there with getting your five a day (perhaps even more important).
I hope, therefore, that these small paragraphs dropping into your inbox every once in a while may provide some service towards easing your night-time passage into restfulness.
As always, if you are too tight on time to do much reading, scroll to the last paragraph where you will find the associated playlists.
My suggestion is to take the playlist URL, hop over to YouTube and watch using the shuffle function which randomises the video that you get to watch.
Today’s video is forty-six and three quarter minutes which is quite long in the recent videos we have covered. Although not the longest ever covered thus far.
A tradition of videos has developed on the Procrastination Pen of late in that a number of student assessment videos posted to YouTube (as the part of some course of study) have featured.
The clues to the student nature of this video are the domestic setting – double bed, bedside tables, soft cushions, accessories hanging on a rack on the wall.
The video is this one:
Head to Toe Assessment
It starts without music, hurray. The medical professional is Nikki Wilkins and she sounds like she can barely be bothered to participate (which might be the case of course).
The “patient” seems to be Luke it could be that the surname is Lucas but that is alliterative and so unlikely. The date of birth is in US format so 10/29/97 translated is 29/10/97 so October.
Nikki has some kind of identity badge which might give away the institution of study but it is tiny and so unlikely much can be made of it.
The presentation does not stray into loud, which is great for our purposes. The absence of huge chunks of hospital equipment allays fears of bangs and clangs resulting from moving them around.
Unusually for a student video this one has notes associated with it:
“29 Nov 2020
head to toe assessment assignment – student nurse health assessment performance”
There are also comments. As expected some of these are ASMR-related. As expected some are unhelpful, so far so usual for videos permitting comments.
Of course they have their own YouTube channel with two hundred and ninety eight videos at the time of looking.
Luke appears less than fully interested, which several commentators have commented upon. Part way through he starts yawning. I’m assuming at no stage is the assessment process of interest to him.
Nikki fortunately seems more engaged the further through the assessment that we go. There are moments of humour and moments of hesitation, so far, so normal student video.
The channel is Nikki Wilkins and has only three videos and yet has two thousand subscribers. I can only imagine that hordes of ASMR fans have located this before me and are camped around eagerly watching.
The first video we covered above, the second is substantially shorter at just over fifteen minutes:
CLABSI Project
CLABSI is central line bloodstream infection – an infection originating from introduction of a catheter and is habitually a serious infection.
This is a presentation – it looks like a presentation that Nikki presented and prepared. it is really not that useful from a ASMR perspective. However, I’m sure it is interesting to any medical professionals who are watching it.
Again, it has notes: “2 Dec 2021
This is a group project upload for my nurse leadership class. It is a quality management project that focuses on Central Line Associated Blood Stream Infections (CLABSI) and their impact on hospitals.
Thanks to my group members!”
The final video seems to be a shorter version of the first video we saw – with the same participants:
Head to Toe Assessment
Again, there are notes: “7 Dec 2020
30-minute head to toe assessment for nursing school – student nurse health assessment
Final submission for my head-to-toe health assessment class!”
The location appears to be the same as for the first video covered in this article. The camera though appears more remote. This is unlikely to impact us as most likely you’ll only be listening, and apart from this one occasion, so will I.
If anything, there seems more background noise than in the first video which could be due to air conditioning, although the recording quality is less flat than some we have heard.
Luke appears more engaged in this one – or perhaps I am just getting used to Luke. Nikki is as hesitant as she was in the first one. I get the impression (as I always do with student videos) that students have to cover a number of specific points. This often leads to the video becoming like a moving checklist of medical terms and testing performed.
It is so similar, in fact, to the first video that there might be limited purpose in both of these videos having a home in the Procrastination Pen playlist.
However, I am in generous mood so I’ll add the two videos on this occasion but it is more than likely a subsequent weeding operation will remove one of them from the playlist.
The Nikki Wilkins 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.
The Procrastination Pen 
