Training to be a clinician is so much more than simply accumulating facts. It is easy to forget, for example, just how much time and energy we spend on learning […]
Year: 2009
Annabel Ferriman on questions for Margaret Chan
The spread of A/H1N1 flu has propelled Margaret Chan, director general of the World Health Organization, into the limelight. On 11 June she was on television and radio programmes across […]
Domhnall MacAuley on shared decision making
Democracy means involvement in decision making but it may not always lead to the best outcomes. With this simple analogy, Gerd Gigerenzer (Berlin), captured the potential hazards of clinical shared […]
Richard Smith on how to improve your interaction with patients by 50%
If there was a pill that would improve your interaction with patients by 50% would you take it? I imagine you would. Well, I don’t know of such pill […]
Richard Lehman’s journal blog, 17 June 2009
Richard is in Prufrockian mood as he picks out items of interest in the latest major medical journals. As well as quoting T S Eliot, he also pens his own […]
Harvey Marcovitch on censorship, squeamishness, and same sex desire
Older readers will remember when the Medical Defence Union had a telegraphic address – Damocles. Younger readers may not know that he was another of those Greek mythological characters to […]
Ulrike Schmidt on swine flu fear and loathing in Mexico…and London
My flight to Cancun, Mexico, to attend the Conference of the Academy for Eating Disorders (AED) was scheduled for Sunday, 26th of April. The day before there were several anxious […]
Tauseef Mehrali on meat free Mondays
My grandfather used to counsel my mother’s worries about my insatiable carnivorous tendencies as a child by suggesting that the only solution would be to ensure I gain a butcher […]
Domhnall MacAuley on epicurean epidemiology
Autres pays, autres coeurs? Part of the title of an early paper highlighting the relationship between dietary patterns, risk factors and ischaemic heart disease could have been the title of […]
Ohad Oren: How can medical students adapt to their ever changing profession?
“Medicine is an ever-changing science” goes the familiar message on the opening page of most medical textbooks. Judging by the rapid pace at which textbooks expand, you have to wonder […]