Friends, Likers and supporters of Tartoos. It has been our mission to have our product be accessible to as many individuals as possible! This is why we are very organically grown, without investor help as to keep our pricepoint low and stay on track with our mission! However, we still need to get the word out there- the goal for the next 30 days to get noticed by the Dr. Oz show! Help us out - letters, Facebook posts and the like, share our story!
Rachael
Wednesday, May 29, 2013
Monday, May 13, 2013
Up and Running!
I am so excited to announce that
myvisualmedical.com is up, running and ready for Tartoos orders! We have had a
bunch of wonderful press this past week and have been received so warmly by our
audience. It remains a top priority for Visual Medical to keep its products
easily accessible, so please let us know about your charity walks and runs,
non-profit missions and fund raisers. We would like to continue to give back to
a community that has supported and held us on their shoulders as we continue
with our hopes of making chronic disease management a little easier.
rj@myvisualmedical.com
Friday, March 22, 2013
Thank you!
A very big -Thank You- to Chris Leach and Insulin Nation for featuring a story about Tartoos! Since, we have had very diverse interest for our little product and are getting geared up for product to consumer launch in early May. I am learning, learning , learning and am adjusting business time lines accordingly as I originally relayed that we would be up and running by UMMMM, March :). Here's to a busy April!
Rachael
Rachael
Thursday, March 14, 2013
First Press Coverage!
Please check out Visual Medical's - Tartoos first press coverage on:
http://insulinnation.com/a-tattoo-even-mom-will-love/
Thank you everyone for your continuing support!
Rachael
rj@myvisualmedical.com
http://insulinnation.com/a-tattoo-even-mom-will-love/
Thank you everyone for your continuing support!
Rachael
rj
Monday, March 4, 2013
Other Factors....
I work hard to understand injection site management issues across disease states, lifespan, socio-economic classes and cultural categories. It’s challenging to grasp the multi-faceted issues that stem from injectable medication administration. In researching complications from injection therapy, such as scar tissue accumulation and infection, I bristle at how many times medical literature label patients with these complications as “non-compliant.” The use of this word clearly is meant to imply a willing disobedience or an intentional mismanagement of one’s health. HMMMMMM…..
Barriers to optimal self-care are much different than indifference or laziness as some professionals and others may choose to believe. Barriers (in my opinion) include those life circumstances that compromise or complicate our ability to care for ourselves or loved ones. These may include finances, lack of support systems, other priority health issues, grief, stress, physical limitations etc…. Ironically these may be the type of life circumstances that are rarely taken into consideration when formulating a patient treatment plan. Assumptions can easily and erroneously be made about patients’ motives about how effectively they are managing their self-care and various dynamics in their lives.
Case in point: Around the same time my husband, Craig, was going through chemo therapy treatment for stage 4 lymphoma, our oldest son, Carter, was diagnosed with Graves disease. The medication Carter was on to treat his wonky thyroid had a host of side effects, including a depletion of his immune system. Strict parameters were put on Carter’s care from the physician and he was to go in for blood work anytime his temperature would rise over 100 degrees or a sore throat was present. I was also on fever watch with Craig. The side-effects of chemo left him with no immune system and he was continually in danger of developing a life-threatening illness. I carried around thermometers as if they were in holsters on the sides on my pants so I was ready to catch any fever that may be lurking around our neck of the woods. Sleep deprived and emotionally exhausted, I was not as vigilant as I should have been one evening as Craig became sick. A fever went unchecked and my husband ended up in the hospital with a raging infection in is blood stream. The hospital personnel asked me a myriad of questions I could not answer because I was overwhelmed at this point. I was asked, “When did the fever start,” and “How high has it gotten?” If the staff had asked these questions the week before when I was fresh, alert, and not a walking zombie, I would have been able to answer all their questions with steely certainty, but not during this snapshot moment of my care giving.
As Visual Medical moves forward, it is a deep running part of our mission to educate OURSELVES on the strengths and needs of others. We seek to look beyond the clinical application for our products and take into consideration the complexity of our clients’ existence. Thank you once again for reading!
Wednesday, January 30, 2013
Your Story
Taking a quick departure from injection site management to update on Tartoos product development! Our fingers are crossed that our inventory and e-commerce site will be up by the end of February with the completed Tartoos product ready for purchase! As we are committed to offering the most well refined products for chronic disease management; Visual Medical would love to hear your stories of empowering strategies used in daily health management. A continuous, strong, open dialogue is needed to help support other's in our community, please share your journey with us! The comment box at the end of this post can be utilized or email directly at rj@myvisualmedical.com.
Wednesday, January 16, 2013
Why injection site managment?
In my different vocational roles, I have had the privilege of working along side clinical educators who have instructed on a variety of health related issues. However, I credit one education experience as being the catalyst for why I have a particular interest in injection site management.
As staff escorted a family who had a newly diagnosed little one with Type I diabetes to our education room, I gathered my materials for what would be presented to them in our session. I heaved the 100 plus page family education binder onto the table and started surveying the scene.. Syringes, alcohol wipes, anatomical charts, blood glucose meter, monitoring strips and insulin pens littered the table where this family would learn in all its complexity what it really takes to now care for their child. Tired, the parents listened to another 2 hours of instruction and diligently practiced pulling up syringes of saline to mimic insulin administration. Holding the syringes up to the lights, the parents would squint, examine them for microscopic differences in dosage, look to the educators for a nod of approval and practice over again and again to make sure it was emblazoned into their memory. Rote learning was used to teach the importance of technique, selecting an injection site, pinching the skin, cleaning and making sure to choose a different site for the next injection. Over and over this sequence was preformed; however, one concept was routinely highlighted as unclear. How to ensure that injection sites were adequately rotated was never fully realized and understood. You see, the teaching tools for this consisted of anatomical charts with grid - like patterns (Figure 1). Frankly, it is a confusing display in my opinion as the image is not to individual scale of the child and does not offer any real world systematic approach. The best suggestion offered to the parents was to use imagination: "Pretend there's a clock or calendar on your child's abdomen, place injection's at 12,1,2," and so on. As I was trying hard to remember if I had fed the dog that morning, I wondered if I would be able to execute this if my child needed this level of care.
(Figure 1)
My thoughts drifted back to when Carter received his autism spectrum diagnosis. The expectations that were placed on the level of care he would need included, speech, occupational and physical therapies, accommodations at school, medication to control his neurological ticks, anxiety and ADHD, home behavior interventions, and so on. It was assumed by the medical staff who cared for him that Carter's needs were the only priority issues in our family. Important? Yes! VERY, but not ONLY. It had to be taken into consideration that our family was complex, with many needs and different dynamics.
Focusing my attention back to our session, my ear caught yet another parent asking, "How do we keep track of where this injection was placed?"- I knew then, this was not a lack of understanding on part of our clientele- it was on us, who were utilizing methods and tools to teach that were not effective.
As staff escorted a family who had a newly diagnosed little one with Type I diabetes to our education room, I gathered my materials for what would be presented to them in our session. I heaved the 100 plus page family education binder onto the table and started surveying the scene.. Syringes, alcohol wipes, anatomical charts, blood glucose meter, monitoring strips and insulin pens littered the table where this family would learn in all its complexity what it really takes to now care for their child. Tired, the parents listened to another 2 hours of instruction and diligently practiced pulling up syringes of saline to mimic insulin administration. Holding the syringes up to the lights, the parents would squint, examine them for microscopic differences in dosage, look to the educators for a nod of approval and practice over again and again to make sure it was emblazoned into their memory. Rote learning was used to teach the importance of technique, selecting an injection site, pinching the skin, cleaning and making sure to choose a different site for the next injection. Over and over this sequence was preformed; however, one concept was routinely highlighted as unclear. How to ensure that injection sites were adequately rotated was never fully realized and understood. You see, the teaching tools for this consisted of anatomical charts with grid - like patterns (Figure 1). Frankly, it is a confusing display in my opinion as the image is not to individual scale of the child and does not offer any real world systematic approach. The best suggestion offered to the parents was to use imagination: "Pretend there's a clock or calendar on your child's abdomen, place injection's at 12,1,2," and so on. As I was trying hard to remember if I had fed the dog that morning, I wondered if I would be able to execute this if my child needed this level of care.
My thoughts drifted back to when Carter received his autism spectrum diagnosis. The expectations that were placed on the level of care he would need included, speech, occupational and physical therapies, accommodations at school, medication to control his neurological ticks, anxiety and ADHD, home behavior interventions, and so on. It was assumed by the medical staff who cared for him that Carter's needs were the only priority issues in our family. Important? Yes! VERY, but not ONLY. It had to be taken into consideration that our family was complex, with many needs and different dynamics.
Focusing my attention back to our session, my ear caught yet another parent asking, "How do we keep track of where this injection was placed?"- I knew then, this was not a lack of understanding on part of our clientele- it was on us, who were utilizing methods and tools to teach that were not effective.
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