In 4 days I’ll be flying out to San Diego to the American Thoracic Society Conference. I’ve not been to the ATS since 2006. I’ve not been to American since then either. The ATS used to be the big meeting. It used to be THE meeting to go to, to be seen at, and to […]
Category: Musings
Confidence, the demise of the SHO, and lung cancer screening.
I have been on call this weekend. Recently in an RCPE survey the consultant body was asked specifically “Do you frequently carry out duties previous carried out by more junior roles”, or words to that effect. Many a time do I hear my colleagues saying “I do the same job today as I did xx […]
COPD, Me and the GMC
This blog has been fallow for some time, for which I can only apologise, and push on. The main reason behind the paucity of musing has been that I’ve been investigated by the GMC. That may cause a slight intake of breath from you, but it caused a lot more when I found out 5 […]
Reflective Practice, Comfort Zones, And Mistakes.
Doc2Doc user OmarhBore posted a blog this week on the futility of the current reflective practice system for junior doctors, suggesting alternative media for reflection, including poetry, amusing musings on NHS computer screens, and interpretive dance. He felt that the enforced reflections were too contrived, and there was more to be gained from reflection than […]
Uncertainty, Acceptance and Trans-Atlantic COPD
I taught some 4th year medical students last week, in my bronchiectasis. We saw a variety of patients, mostly chronic infection, but some IPF, some difficult asthma, and some lung cancer, such is the way in a small department, such as ours. The students were most interested in the lung cancer patients. We, like many […]
Eat, Drink, Smoke, Vape, Run.
It’s been an interesting week. The floods down South didn’t appear up here, but there was enough wind to blow the Tay half way across the city. And this weekend we’ve had the first proper frost of the year: -2.5 when I started to defrost the car this morning to go and set up parkrun. […]
5 Things and a Scoop
It’s New Year – Happy New Year, by the way – and the internet is full of last year’s greatest, top 10s of everything from 2013, some top 16s, worst 5 things too, not to mention the all important top 40 countdown (Does anyone else miss Top Of The Pops…), and the even more important […]
Winter Pressures
Merry Christmas to all Thorax readers, and everyone else as well. Having been mentioned in dispatches by Ian and Andy, it only seems fitting that I actually write something on this blog. I could write down here a litany of excuses for not having written missive #2, but as the majority of potential readers here […]
A new beginning, or the beginning of the end?
The Thorax Blog – an opportunity to muse on respiratory medicine beyond the confines of the print journal, and an opportunity for the readership to provide quick fire responses and feedback, and an opportunity for something a bit different. So we’ll see how this goes – post 1. The paper issue of Thorax landed on […]