Reflection by Aleksi Raudasoja In the end of my training in medical school, I was having an identity crisis as a medical doctor. In medical school, I was taught to follow practice guidelines and many times told how they represent the best available evidence. Nice, I thought, sounds like I’m not going to make mistakes […]
Category: Reflection
The History of a Superstition
Reflection by GL Krishna (The ministry of AYUSH, Government of India, recently issued an advisory that reiterated its long held official view that “the principles, concepts and approaches of ayurveda are not at all comparable with those of the modern medical system.” This view of an absolute dichotomy between the two systems implicitly disputes the […]
To Be or Not to Be: Is TB Elimination Possible in India Through a Humanistic Approach?
Reflection by Kesavan Rajasekharan Nayar India is one of the few countries where Tuberculosis is still widely prevalent. One of the oldest of human diseases in recorded history is still inhumanly ravaging lives despite India developing one of the most human-centred National Tuberculosis Programs way back in the sixties.1 It gave primacy to the people […]
Leçons De Ténèbres
Dr Mohammad Razai trained at University of Cambridge and is an Academic Clinical Fellow in Primary Care at St George’s University of London. When the time came, I was called to witness the anguish of his soul, as he slipped in and out of consciousness. His pulse was withering away. He exhaled one last gasp […]
How Reality Hit Home as a Junior Doctor Resuscitating a Drowned Child
Dr Mohammad S Razai trained at University of Cambridge and is an Academic Clinical Fellow in Primary Care at St George’s University of London. In the blink of an eye, the tide had become too high and the wind too strong. The child, who was playing moments earlier in the sandy devon beach, had disappeared […]
Temporary Measures
What some call “burnout” is really an epidemic affecting future doctors, and short-term fixes aren’t the answer. By Amitha Kalaichandran, M.D. “It’s just a temporary measure,” the nurse told me. We were wheeling the patient – a teen girl – from her room in the intensive care unit (ICU) to the CT scanner on the […]
When Horizons Intersect: Reflections on Collaborative, Patient-Centred Care
by Austin Lam While ‘patient-centred care’ is an often used phrase, the question bears asking: what underlies such a broad concept? As a medical student with a background in philosophy, I have endeavoured to integrate my journey in medicine with a philosophical sensibility. Part of that has led me to reflect on the meaning of […]
Who needs their hands? Reflections on being a patient
I have a confession to make: up until a month ago I was a surgical virgin, never having experienced anything more intrusive than four unwanted wisdom teeth removal Boise. Which meant that when I signed up to have operations on both my hands I didn’t have a clue what was in store, but comforted myself […]
Dr Arati Bhatia describes her own humbling experience with cancer and chemotherapy
The drainage tube and the negative pressure bag were my constant companions for sixteen days. I was not always respectful of them, even bouncing them around occasionally. I had an intense sense of relief when we were finally parted. They had served their function well. The wound had healed, and there was no collection or […]
Stories of the Land
Having recently visited some of the most modern hospitals in the world, I have been struck by the style of their architecture. There seems to be a changing face of medicine, whereby the expressions of the building housing the body of medicine mirror certain conceptualizations of the human body. I began to wonder how does […]