Sleeping With ASMR

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.

Nikki’s tunic seems to indicate that she studies at California State University San Marcos.

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.

Until next time.

Photo by Anton Darius 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