Smoking and lung cancer paradox in Kerala: An Epidemiological Epiphany In this blog post Professors Kesavan Rajasekharan Nayar and Raghu Ram K. Nair highlight the emerging smoking-lung cancer paradox in Kerala and posit some tentative explanations. The BMJ played a historical role in establishing the relationship between smoking and lung cancer way back in the […]
Category: Blog
Want Trust in Science? Think Common Sense
by Austin Lam, medical student at the University of Toronto Want Trust in Science? Think Common Sense. Trust in science is not a new topic. Yet it remains an important area of discussion, with potentially serious consequences for public health, particularly with vaccinations. The larger underlying issue here is the idea of science that people […]
Flash Mob in Medical Education – What Can Go Wrong? And is it Wrong?
Blog by Dr. Aneesh Basheer and Dr. Magi Murugan A flash mob refers to a group of individuals who gather at a common place to create awareness or sensitize an audience to some topic usually with no prior information to the latter. Flash mobs have become common in several fields including social awareness programs, business, […]
Celebrating Gounod at Tavistock House on his Bicentenary
This blog post is from Prof Desmond (Des) O’Neill, a geriatrician and cultural gerontologist. O’Neill is a Professor in Medical Gerontology and co-chair of the Medical and Health Humanities group at Trinity College Dublin, Ireland. Wikipedia is a marvellous source of information but its open structure leaves it vulnerable to practical jokes. An entertaining example […]
Encouraging Patient Narrative as a Humanitarian Act of Kindness
This blog post comes from Catherine Kelsey, a nursing lecturer at the University of Bradford. The ability to tell our stories is as crucial to human life as the air we breathe, the food we eat and the functioning of our senses (Robertson and Clegg, 2017). The communicating of stories can help us to create […]
Dear X: A Letter to Chronic Fatigue
Today’s blog post comes from Louise Kenward. Her background is as an artist, currently writing, with a career in the NHS as a psychologist and psychotherapist specialising in Cognitive Analytic Therapy (as a therapist and a supervisor) in East Sussex. She is seeking to find ways of drawing on all of these aspects of her […]
Medicine the Musical
This blog post comes from Michael Ehrenreich, a physician who has also written the music and lyrics for Medicine the Musical, a new play about medical school to be staged off Broadway in November. ‘Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know,’ wrote English poet John […]
Trippy Yoga: A Short History of Psychedelics and Flexible Minds and Bodies in the 1960s
Today’s blog post comes from Dr Lucas Richert, who is a Lecturer in the Centre for the Social History of Health and Healthcare, University of Strathclyde and Matthew DeCloedt, a PhD student in Constitutional Law at CEU. Americans were receptive to new thinking and practices in the 1960s. People mobilized. A human rights movement […]
White Coats Need Color
This week’s blog post comes from Caroline Christianson, a second year medical student at the Sidney Kimmel Medical College at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia, PA. ‘Write down something about yourself that has to be put on hold while you train in medicine.’ During what had so far been a passive group exercise, this prompt […]
In the Mood for a Melody
Today’s blog post comes from Shoshana B Weiner who is a fourth year medical student at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, New York, and will be entering a pediatrics residency at NYP Weill-Cornell in June. I had just finished STEP-1, the infamous 8-hour medical board exam, and my brain was foggy. With months of prep suddenly coming […]