Crossing borders always presents the potential for a hold-up. When I prepared to cross the border from Macedonia (or Skopje if you are Greek), into the tiny nation of Kosovo, preparation was the key. I had one mission: to visit the hospital in the capital, Pristina. I travelled by car to the border where a contact of mine in Macedonia had arranged for another car to meet me and drive me across to the other side. I would be travelling with an ethnic Albanian who was well-versed in dealing with the officials. Macedonia has experienced its war wounds in recent years but in Kosovo these wounds are healing but very visable. Lines of hardship tell the story of the past across many faces that I saw. more…

In this guest posting, Dr Ravi Shankar tells us how a FAIMAR Fellowship help him to develop and deliver a medical humanities curriculum in Nepal. Ravi writes…

Dr. Badyal, my good friend during my postgraduate residency e-mailed me in late January 2007 informing about a FAIMER fellowship in South Asia. At that time my knowledge and ideas about FAIMER were nebulous. I knew that it was an American organization involved in international medical education. more…

The latest issue of Medical Humanities, published on December 1st, features an original paper in which KG White argues that tuberculosis, and not Addison’s Disease, may have killed Jane Austen, one of the world’s favourite authors. The popular appeal of stories about Austen was evidenced by the rapid take up of this story by the world’s press with newspaper and broadcast media keen to report this latest twist in the tale of an altogether remarkable women.

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This one day conference is the brainchild of Dr Sam Guglani, a clinical oncologist who specialises in the treatment of patients with breast, lung and brain cancers. You might think this would be enough to keep him busy, but working with people at such a vulnerable and formative time in their lives has clearly left him wondering how to best understand and encapsulate all the things his patients have taught him and that so rarely appear in medical textbooks and research papers. more…

Over the weekend, mixed with the harrowing coverage of the loss of soldiers’ lives in Afghanistan, and for news cycle reasons I’ve inadequate information to understand, the fate of London’s homeless population prior to the 2012 Olympics was discussed on television and in print. The organising committee of the London Games had apparently committed itself to ensuring that no one would be sleeping rough on London’s streets by the time the world’s elite athletes arrived. The question of the weekend was whether this goal would be achieved and at what price, both economic and in terms of human dignity. more…

If you’re in the London region you might be interested in this symposium on medicine and the humanities. Focussing on literature, art and music it features some excellent speakers. In keeping with other RSM events, lively debate is sure to follow.

http://www.rsm.ac.uk/academ/hsg106.php

Venue: The Royal Society of Medicine, 1 Wimpole Street, London, W1G 0AE

Speakers to include: Stephen Golding, Aileen Adams, Richard Hull and Anne Hargreaves.

Helen Garner’s The Spare Room (published by Canongate) is an exploration of the emotional and practical turmoil engendered by caring for someone who is grasping at straws to evade the terminal truth of their illness.

The narrative probes a friendship between two feisty women when it is taken to new levels of intensity by a clash in ideology. Helen (who deliberately shares the author’s name) starts off with noble intentions. She prepares her spare room with due consideration for longstanding-friend Nicola’s feng shui inclinations, hoping to strike just the right balance between practicality and homeliness. Nicola, riven with cancer, is coming to Sydney to spend a small fortune on alternative therapy at the Theodore Institute. Predictably, the Institute proves fantastically adept at sales talk but medically deeply dubious. Nicola emerges from intravenous Vitamin C treatment and ozone cupping weakened and wracked with excruciating pain, but she holds out against morphine until she – and, more particularly, Helen – can bear it no longer. Nicola is coaxed into reengaging with orthodox medicine by her outraged and exhausted friend. more…

I’m fond of referring, in talks and in discussions about medical professionalism, to the midnight meal. It’s a metaphor that I borrow from Dr Jerome Lowenstein, a friend and colleague who wrote an essay of the same name. In that essay he recalls a time when the medical team would meet in the hospital restaurant, in the middle of the night, to deal with the emotional leftovers of the day. With shift working, and an increasingly busy and technological approach to medicine, there is all too often neither time nor space for a midnight meal. He suggests that medical humanities might offer an alternative way, create an alternative space, to pick over the remains of the day and so be ready to face another day.

The essay is simply and beautifully written, and so I was pleased to be given a copy of Dr Lowenstein’s first novel, Henderson’s Equation, to read. Pleased but also a little daunted, because I have to admit that physiology was never my strong point. more…

In these uncertain economic times there seems to be a growing nostalgia for the more simple things in life. Home baking and dressmaking is on the rise and many families are anticipating a less commercialised festive get together. Although some of this return to basics is undoubtedly driven by economic imperatives, anecdotal evidence seems to indicate that this enforced trip down memory lane can be strangely comforting. 

Which might, in part, explain the increasing appeal that comics or graphic novels have for grown-ups as well as children. In this posting Dr Ian Williams explains how far from being “just for kids”, graphic novels can actually be good for everyone’s health. His posting not only makes interesting reading but also provides a handy excuse over the holiday season to Simpson’s fans around the world. 

One last thing: Ian Williams can, alas, accept no responsibility for any enjoyable moments or unanticipated sniggers experienced by visitors to the site. These are strictly unintentional. Remember, fellow professionals: this is work, not play.

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http://www.munch.museum.no/content.aspx?id=15

This week a leading national paper in the UK broke news  of what has been rightly called a medical scandal. They revealed the existence of a report into the systemic inadequacies of management systems at Birmingham Children’s Hospital. The impact of these failings on the standard of care provided by the hospital are now the subject of a further report, deemed necessary once the contents of the first report were made public.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2008/nov/09/royal-college-surgeons-birmingham-childrens-hospital-scandal-report

The report was commissioned by the local Primary Care Trust (PCT) for whose patients the hospital provides care. Rather than being commissioned because  of identified negative impacts in terms of increased patient morbidity and mortality, the report is, instead, the result of the PCT’s response to a collective and anguished cry for help from the world class doctors at Birmingham Children’s Hospital and other local hospitals. No longer able or willing to stand by whilst their reasoned arguments about patient safety, duty of care, and the ethical imperatives inherent in their role as both care givers and patient advocates fell on deaf and ignorant ears, they looked elsewhere in the hope that reason and integrity would prevail.  more…