#Medical Writing

[camilleisback]

Since some of us have noticed a lack of cardiophilia centered/heartbeat related prompts on this site, I've come up with a short, non-exhaustive list to boost your writing!

Text version under the cut:

CARDIOPHILIA/HEARTBEAT RELATED PROMPTS

SOFT:

accidental listening

"your heartbeat is soothing"

hand to one's chest while kissing

falling asleep to the beat of one's heartbeat

feeling one's heartbeat through the clothes

sometimes, home is two arms and a heartbeat

after exercise heartbeat

"can you hear it/feel it? It beats just for you"

tired after a long day

reacquainting with someone's heartbeat

WHUMP:

collapsing after strenuous exercise

bad fit of tachycardia

"fuck, my chest hurts"

cardiac tamponade

overdose

medicines don't work/failed healing magic

heart disease

defibrillation/cardioversion

heart torture

cardiac arrest

NSFW:

drugged heartbeat

self-stething

comparing pulses

playing doctor

lazy morning

heated fuck

making out while hooked up to an EKG

"I wanna make your heartbeat run like rollercoasters"

electrical stimulation

chemically induced arrhythmia

GENERAL:

"I think there's something wrong with my heart"

open-heart surgery

grounding after a panic attack

skipping beats

broken heart

"your heart sounds so strong..."

medical check-up

love confession

research project

dagger/bullet/dart to the heart

experimental treatment

close monitoring

shortness of breath

"the only sound I hear is my own heartbeat"

the telltale heart

self-stething [nonsexual]

"do you want me to take a listen?"

bedside vigil

clockwork machine

bad at managing medicines

[thegreatwicked]

Medical Writing Resources

I've been away for a while, and I've missed you all! I hope your holidays were fun and peaceful! While perusing my stuff to see where I left off, I browsed through my liked posts, and wow, I liked a lot of resources, so it's time to organize those for you all! And because we enjoy hurting our fictional darlings, I think it's time to make a new list!

If you've been tagged more than once, I apologize, I just want to make sure that credit is given where it is due. With that, enjoy these resources. Go show the original posters some love, and go write your story because no one else will.

Stages of Decomposition by @literaryvein-reblogs We write about death a lot and this is a great breakdown of life after life. Including descriptions of each stage and the proper names.

10 Non-Lethal Injuries to Add to Your Writing by @hayatheauthor I've hever had a broken finger but now that I think about it I have no idea how that works but I can't think of a more inconvenient injury, may as well get it right.

Writing Notes & References by @literaryvein-references This is a complication of a lot of resources but rahter than cut it up I'll probably just list it in a few resources. It includes things like color blindness, autopsy, bruises, drowning, pain, poison ivy. Go check it out.

How to Draw (Some) Burn Scars by @saszor and reblogged by @cripplecharacters. It is a drawing resource but sometimes visualizing it can help with descriptions.

Hospital Lengths of Stay by @macgyvermedical good references for simple things you might use in your writing if one of your character has to stay in the hospital. This is also an amazing blog.

Writing Tips - Fevers by @pygmi-says-hi Fevers are simple thing sbut if you're looking to make it more complex then you have this to help you know where to start.

Stop Doing This in Injury Fits by @pygmi-says-hi another good mention! Bleeding,s tab wounds, concussion, and symptoms!

The Anatomy of Passing Out by @hayatheauthor I've never written a character passing out and always wondered about it but here we are, maybe I'll have my characters pssing out more now that I know how to write it!

Addiction by @novlr Addiction is a disease and deserves better representation.

Disability Writing Guides by @whumpinggrounds Disability etiquette, wheelchairs, writing chronic pain, low vision. Great stuff here!

A Glossary of Medical Terms by @mylonelybraincell Invaluable! Absolutely invaluable!

Resources for Writing Injuries by @wordsnstuff Very comprehensive list of general information

The Writers Guide Authentic Wounds and Fatalities by @hayatheauthor check out this MVP here giving us these amazing resources.

Basic Sutures for Writers and Artists by @squidlife-crisis Never known how to describe these but seeing them is super helpful!

A Little Revolution's Dwarfism FAQs by @a-little-revolution Oh, now this is a gem!

Well, that's a good start for this new list! Go show some of these creators some love, and go write amazing things!

[justkidneying]

Why the Spleen Sucks

The spleen is a really shittily placed organ, making it prone to injury. This injury is usually severe and can lead to death if not properly managed. We're going to look at the function of the spleen, what happens when it is damaged, and how to write about.

Where is the spleen? It's in the upper left quadrant of the abdominal cavity, nestled right against the ribs (typically 9-11) at the midaxillary line. It's behind the stomach and is considered intraperitoneal. The main thing is that the spleen is very vulnerable. It is literally right up against the ribs without much protecting it. It's shaped like a little bean and is purple in humans. It is fed by the splenic artery, which comes off of the celiac trunk (which sticks off of the abdominal aorta).

What does the spleen do? Its main job is to filter out old and malformed red blood cells. It also holds immune cells. Certain diseases can cause the spleen to enlarge, including cirrhosis of the liver (it's connected to the hepatic portal system), sickle cell anemia (RBCs are stuck in it), and autoimmune disorders. The spleen also holds about 250 mL of RBCs in reserve in case you need them.

What happens when it is injured? The spleen can be ruptured and lacerated kinda easily. Blunt trauma to the ribs can cause it to rupture, and this is seen in contact sports and car accidents mostly. Because of those giant gaps between the ribs, it's also prone to injury from knife attacks. Gunshot wounds are another common cause, as well as broken ribs penetrating it (broken ribs are very sharp, like way sharper than you imagine). Rupture is more likely when someone has splenomegaly.

When the spleen is damaged, you're going to get a lot of intraperitoneal hemorrhaging. The spleen filters a lot of blood and has blood in it, so there's going to be a lot of blood in the abdomen (obviously). This will lead to distention, guarding (abs are tense), and hypovolemia. The left upper quadrant will be painful, and there can also be referred pain to the left shoulder (Kehr's sign).

If the patient has a small laceration, the symptoms aren't always as dramatic. Sometimes they'll just have low hemoglobin (which is on RBCs), maybe some thrombocytopenia (lots of platelets in the blood).

How do you fix this? If the injury is small and the patient is hemodynamically stable, they can usually be given a blood transfusion and the spleen can heal itself. Sometimes surgery is also performed to clamp a vessel or repair the outer layer of the spleen.

If the injury is major, then surgery will be performed. If the patient is less critical, they may go in and try to fix the problem. If it can't be fixed, they may do a splenectomy (remove the spleen). In a critical patient, they might forgo the nice pretty incision on the left side, and instead just split the patient down the middle. In these situations (in my experience), there isn't a lot of time to waste. One thing that we aren't going to waste time on is anesthesia, for example. This is with a lot of very critical surgeries, at least from what I have seen. Like the surgeon will start cutting as they are working on knocking out the patient, but usually they are in so much pain that they don't even register it.

If you remove the spleen, the patient is more at risk for infections, but with modern medicine and vaccinations, it's not as much of a big deal as it used to be. The patient will probably be fine.

Writing tips: (new section idea, hope you guys like it, lol) As with any injury, you have to make sure that you are giving them an acceptable mechanism of injury. With the spleen, this is either blunt trauma or penetration/laceration. Getting tackled, getting stabbed, getting shot, all great MOIs.

Second thing, present the appropriate signs and symptoms. A sign would be like bruising, hypotension, tachycardia, etc. A symptom would be LUQ pain, Kehr's sign, etc.

Next, figure out what you're going to do and where you're going to do it. In the field, there probably isn't much you can do. The most would probably be a laparotomy and clamping the splenic artery, but I mean, when I was an EMT, we were not doing this. There's a lot of stuff you can theoretically do, but never gets done. But I mean you can write it. If the patient makes it to the hospital, I think it would be more fun to do emergency surgery and just split them right down the middle. There's going to be a lot of blood in the greater omentum, very high stakes and exciting.

Anyways, hope you guys liked this, please let me know if I got anything wrong. I wrote this off of my personal experience and a few good textbooks, but there can always been mistakes in things.

[sunflorall]

Physiology of a distant lover's heart

In our physiology class last semester, i learned the mechanism and functions of the heart. Your memory enters the right atrium of my heart through Vena Cava. Too heavy for it to keep. I open the doors of my heart, but there's no me. The tricuspid valve allows the memory to flow into the right atrium preventing the backflow when the ventricle contracts. I open the doors of my heart, and there's no love. Right ventricle, unable to keep the whole of it (for it is too heavy for a single chamber of the heart to keep), pumps it into the lungs through a pulmonary valve. I open the doors of my heart, and there are no doors. Your memory enters and turns everything red. Your memory enters and leaves no place for me to be. The lungs intensifies your memory. The lungs fill your memory with life. As if it's not just a memory. As if you're present in my life. The memory brought back to life comes to the left atrium and then to left ventricle through mitral valve. I open the doors of my heart, and there's no heart. The memory scatters in the whole of my body through aortic valve. I open the doors of my heart and there's only you. - sanawar fatima saeed

[rantsramblesandrandomthougts]

attention murder mystery writers (or the like)

i have been informed my friend (bio chem major and emt) that you CANNOT kill some one by injecting them with a syringe full of air.

i've seen that going around online, because apparently it can mimik a heart attack

but

you would need a very long syring with a lot (a lot) of air in it to kill some one (if it's an air bubble in an IV, the bubble would have to be more than a foot long for it to cause damage)

[heartcollectioncupcake]

You can’t be worse than “professional” medial shows. When someone flatlines, don’t shock them 😭

if anyone feels bad that their fic might contain medical inaccuracies, be comforted to know that whatever creative liberties you take with your medical scenes can never be worse than the one I just read. where one character tries to stop the bleeding on their friend's head wound by putting a tourniquet around their neck

[ddregpharma]

When a US-based biopharma company faced an FDA clinical hold due to preclinical toxicology concerns, DDReg stepped in.

Our regulatory and toxicology experts conducted a deep-dive review of IND data, identified dose-justification gaps, and developed a scientific response package that led to conditional lifting of the hold.

Result? The sponsor resumed its Phase 2 trial without derailing development timelines or investor confidence.

This case study highlights how expert toxicological insight and regulatory strategy can turn a major obstacle into continued progress.

🔍 Explore the full case study: https://tinyurl.com/mvty7b5t

#RegulatoryAffairs #ClinicalTrials #FDA #DrugDevelopment #Toxicology #Pharma #DDReg #RegulatoryStrategy

[techcommgeekmom]

New listings added today! (5/5/25): So, where do we go from here? That's the main question following the closing of STC. Here are some suggestions that I've gathered: #techcomm

[cro-services]

Biostatistics Help in Medicine at Clinfinite Solutions

Introduction

In the world of medicine, numbers are very important. They help doctors, scientists, and researchers understand diseases, medicines, and treatments. This study of numbers in healthcare is called biostatistics. Biostatistics helps in finding out if a medicine works, how a disease spreads, and how many people are getting better. Clinfinite Solutions uses biostatistics to help in research and make sure that medicines and treatments are safe and helpful.

What is Biostatistics?

Biostatistics is the use of numbers and math to study health and medicine. Scientists collect a lot of information from patients, hospitals, and medical studies. They then use biostatistics to understand this information.

For example, if a new medicine is being tested, scientists will collect data on how many people feel better after taking it. If most people get better, the medicine is good. But if many people get sick after taking it, the medicine is not safe. This is how biostatistics helps in making better decisions in healthcare.

Biostatistics is also used to study diseases. If a new disease is spreading, scientists use numbers to find out how many people are getting sick and how fast it is spreading. This helps doctors and governments take action to stop the disease.

Why is Biostatistics Important?

Biostatistics is important because it helps in understanding health problems. Without biostatistics, doctors and scientists would not know if a treatment is working. It also helps in making good choices in medicine.

One important use of biostatistics is in clinical trials. When a new medicine is tested, scientists collect data on patients who take the medicine. They look at the numbers to see if the medicine is safe and helpful. If the numbers show that the medicine works well, it can be approved for use.

Biostatistics also helps in finding patterns in diseases. For example, if doctors see that many people in one city are getting the same sickness, they can find out why. Maybe the water is dirty, or maybe there is a virus spreading. By looking at the numbers, they can stop the disease and keep people safe.

How Does Clinfinite Solutions Use Biostatistics?

Clinfinite Solutions uses biostatistics in many ways to help in medicine and research. They collect and study data to understand how medicines work and how diseases spread.

One big way they help is in clinical trials. They look at all the numbers from patients who are testing a new medicine. They then analyze these numbers to see if the medicine is working. If the numbers show that the medicine is safe and helpful, it can be approved for use.

Clinfinite Solutions also helps in studying diseases. They look at how many people are getting sick and how the disease is spreading. This helps doctors and health experts make better plans to stop the disease.

They also use biostatistics to improve hospitals and treatments. By looking at hospital data, they can find out what treatments work best and help doctors make better choices for their patients.

Conclusion

Biostatistics is a very important part of medicine. It helps doctors and scientists understand health problems and make better treatments. Without biostatistics, it would be hard to know if medicines work or if diseases are spreading.

Clinfinite Solutions plays a big role in biostatistics. They collect data, study numbers, and help in research. Their work helps in making better medicines, stopping diseases, and improving healthcare for everyone.

[justkidneying]

Blocking the Neuromuscular Junction

Neuromuscular blocking agents (NMBAs) stop transmission at the junction between nerves and muscles, which will cause partial or complete paralysis. Why do we want to do this? The main reason is to cause paralysis for starting endotracheal intubation (relax throat muscles), surgery (keep the patient still), and for putting people on ventilators (stop them from fighting against the machine).

You might also give someone an NMBA if they are coughing up blood, having a severe asthma attack, have high intracranial pressure, or are shivering with hypothermia.

There are two types of these drugs and they work two different ways, though they are all given intravenously.

Depolarizing NMBAs

So to initiate muscle contraction, our body uses a transmitter called ACh. When this binds to a receptor, some ions move around and the muscle contracts. This is called depolarization. After some time, the cell can repolarize as ACh is digested by the enzyme AChE.

The main depolarizing NMBA is Succinylcholine. This also binds to the same receptor, causing muscle contraction. However, it is not digested by AChE, so the cell cannot repolarize. The muscle will keep contracting until it runs out of calcium ions and relaxes. The muscle is paralyzed after that because the receptor is still blocked. Only when the serum enzyme BChE digests it can we reactivate the muscle.

Succinylcholine is mostly used for intubation. It only lasts for a few minutes, which is good because once you trach someone you don't need to paralyze their throat anymore.

The main risks of this drug are hyperkalemia (potassium exits the cell when the muscle is depolarized), muscle pain, hyperthermia, and increased intraocular pressure. Succinylcholine is contraindicated in burn patients.

Nondepolarizing NMBAs

These drugs also act on the ACh receptor, though they do not activate it. The most common ones are atracurium, cisatracurium, vecuronium, and rocuronium. I'll go through a few important notes on each one.

Atracurium (an isoquinoline) is metabolized into the active laudanosine, which has a stimulating effect on the central nervous system and can cause seizures. It also increases histamine, which can cause flushing. Cisatracurium is also an isoquinoline, but it does not cause an increase in histamine or break down into laudanosine. Both of these can be reversed using neostigmine to up the concentration of ACh and outcompete them at the receptor.

Rocuronium and vecuronium are both aminosteroids. Rocuronium has a quick onset and is great for rapid sequence intubation. It also does not require dosage adjustment for those with renal impairment. Vecuronium is slower, and needs to be adjusted for those with renal and liver impairment. These can both be reversed with sugammadex, which will form a complex that can be pissed out. The only thing with sugammadex is that it can cause bradycardia, decrease the effectiveness of contraceptives, and increase the risk of bleeding.

The adverse effects of all of the nondepolarizing NMBAs are apnea, hypotension, and electrolyte imbalance. You also need to increase the dose for those with burns and trauma. These drugs also interact with volatile anesthetics, increasing their effects. However, this is actually a favorable effect, as it lowers the dose of anesthetic required.

Using These Drugs

The main thing to remember here is that NMBAs do not cause sedation or amnesia. You must use them with things like propofol, midazolam, benzodiazepines, opioids, etc. I will repeat: DO NOT USE THESE DRUGS ALONE. The patient will be paralyzed but CONCIOUS and AWARE. For the love of medicine, please. The reason I say this is because I have seen paramedics give "problem patients" a paralytic without a sedative in some sick sort of revenge. Fuck them. I don't care what a patient did, that is not okay to do. Still makes me mad just thinking about it.

Anyways, so these are one part of the drugs required for surgery. If you just sedate someone, they'll still move around, and you don't want that while you are cutting on them.

Writing Tips

There isn't too much to say here, but I think it is important for people to know these drugs exist and only paralyze, not sedate. So shit, if you wanna write some crazy horror stuff happening, you can just have someone be paralyzed. Or also this is how people can be aware during surgery. I think there was a big case about this a few years ago. Sensation is still intact when these drugs are given alone, so go forth and torture people I guess (??) - IN FICTION

Anywho, that's all, thanks for reading. Maybe I will write soon about intubation, sedatives, and other stuff like that. Kinda neuro (which one the poll).

[saggitary]

There is no greater bond than the one between a person and the fictional character they’ve written 50k+ words about

[daisywords]

One of my biggest nitpicks in fiction concerns the feeding of babies. Mothers dying during/shortly after childbirth or the baby being separated form the mother shortly after birth is pretty common in fiction. It is/was also common enough in real life, which is why I think a lot of writers/readers don't think too hard about this. however. Historically, the only reason the vast majority of babies survived being separated from their mother was because there was at least one other woman around to breastfeed them. Before modern formula, yes, people did use other substitutes, but they were rarely, if ever, nutritionally sufficient.

Newborns can't eat adult food. They can't really survive on animal milk. If your story takes place in a world before/without formula, a baby separated from its mother is going to either be nursed by someone else, or starve.

It doesn't have to be a huge plot point, but idk at least don't explicitly describe the situation as excluding the possibility of a wetnurse. "The father or the great grandmother or the neighbor man or the older sibling took and raised the baby completely alone in a cave for a year." Nope. That baby is dead I'm sorry. "The baby was kidnapped shortly after birth by a wizard and hidden away in a secret tower" um quick question was the wizard lactating? "The mother refused to see or touch her child after birth so the baby was left to the care of the ailing grandfather" the grandfather who made the necessary arrangements with women in the neighborhood, right? right? OR THAT GREAT OFFENDER "A newborn baby was left on the doorstep and they brought it in and took care of it no issues" What Are You Going to Feed That Baby. Hello?

Like. It's not impossible, but arrangements are going to have to be made. There are some logistics.

[confuzing]

Street kid Luo Binghe makes the mistake of letting some weirdo get a hold of him and finds himself locked up in a windowless room somewhere.

The only bright spot in this shit situation is that there's another boy in there with him. Shen Yuan is clearly in considerably worse shape than Luo Binghe and he says he's been here for a very long time. But he's so kind to Binghe and deliberately draws their captor's attention to himself (and away from Binghe) whenever he can.

He also, after Binghe's been there about a month, steals their captor's keys, unlocks the restraints they're both in, and then shoves Binghe out the boarded up window he's been prying open when he had time.

Shen Yuan is too big to fit through the window, he says. They both know that's not true but they can also both hear that their captor is coming-he must have noticed the keys were missing- and Shen Yuan intends to stall him while Binghe gets away.

Binghe promises to come back with help and SY just smiles and nods and shoos him away.

He runs as fast as he can, and once he's far enough away from the house he escaped from he starts asking for help- but no one is listening to him. And he knows if he goes to the local guard he'll probably be handed back over as a runaway slave... And then he sees two men who both seen almost to shine in the dirty city streets... they must be cultivators, they must. If anyone can help him now it will be them. So Luo Binghe throws himself at the taller of the two men and starts begging for help.

Shen Qingqiu is absolutely positive this kid is trying to lure them into an ambush, but Yue Qingyuan- who invited himself along on SQQ's mission without asking him- doesn't think so.

YQY goes with LBH, and SQQ follows, complaining that this is a trick the whole way- up until they discover that yes actually the local nobleman does have a secret room he's been imprisoning children in and there is indeed an almost beaten to death SY in there.

YQY sends SQQ off with SY- gotta get that kid medical attention ASAP- while he and LBH stay behind to Politely Ask Some Questions.

When YQY and LBH arrive back at the sect SY is still in the medical ward but isn't dying and is even awake! LBH is relieved and refuses to leave him again.

YQY fills SQQ in that not only were both boys not slaves, SY was actually the son of the nobleman's first wife she had as the result of an affair. He disappeared from the household around the time the first wife died and all the servants assumed their Lord had sold the boy or killed him outright.

But now that the nobleman has died a sudden and painful and extremely mysterious death it looks like SY has inherited the estate. YQY will have someone from An Ding go sort out the details since SY can't.

SQQ watches YQY smile at the little urchins they've rescued and talk in a way that obviously means he intends them to stay and says, internally 'Fuck no Qi-ge you don't get to replace me with a Shen you actually did manage to save. Absolutely not!'

Out loud the conversation goes:

SQQ: I want the older boy.

YQY: What?

SQQ: You intend for them to stay right? I want the older boy for Qing Jing Peak, you can keep the little one if you want.

YQY, pleased and assuming SQQ and SY must have bonded while he and LBH were away: Of course.

SQQ and SY have not bonded, and once they get back to QJ Peak things are tense. SQQ is low-key kinda jealous of SY and also reminded much too much of himself by the boy. Except he was never as naive and stupid as this kid is! Why is he so nice? How?? And the little shit isn't even afraid of him!

SY, deeply sarcastic: Oh nooo. I'm going to be beaten? Such a thing has never happened to me before! *Coughs because his throat is permanently messed up from being nearly strangled to death*

SQQ, aware that if he hits the kid now he loses: You're not allowed in the library for a week.

SY: What!

SQQ: The next words out of your mouth better be "yes Shizun, sorry Shizun" or it'll be two weeks.

SY: ...yes Shizun, sorry Shizun.

Meanwhile LBH and YQY are having a magical adventure in becoming a found family and are bonding over their obsessions with their respective Shens. They absolutely come visit QJ Peak at least twice a week much to SQQ's displeasure and SY's delight.