Had a haircut today. Noticed that (a normally right handed) barber used his left hand for scissors and trimmers and I wondered why. String instrument players use their left hand (ie non-dominant hand usually) for the intricate finger board or fret work – the standard explanation being that melodic memory is usually in the non-dominant […]
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How useful is resilience for doctors? By Dr George Huntington
Last month two of my Foundation colleagues wrote an opinion piece on resilience training which brought a simmering topic to boil[1]. The article itself was an interesting take and there have been many of them recently, directly correlating with worsening working conditions within the NHS. Everywhere you look, medical media is saturated with the concept […]
Sexual harassment has also not been addressed in Japan
Japanese society in general has recently supported policies against sexual harassment. Many hospitals have introduced local committees for preventing or managing this issue and physicians may have been introduced to more appropriate behaviors about sexual harassment. We conducted longitudinal surveys for Japanese physicians using clinical scenarios about challenges to professionalism, including sexual harassment with multiple […]
“But what if you get made to go to war?”
Chris Yates “But what if you get made to go to war?” This must be the most prevalent initial response I get from my NHS colleagues on hearing that I juggle being both a junior doctor and an army reservist. It is a question that I have honed my response to over the last year […]
The importance of caste!
Dr Sagarika Kamath Assistant Professor Manipal University, India Dr Rajesh Kamath Assistant Professor Manipal University, India As young doctors being trained in hospital and health administration, we had a class in Organisational behaviour where the professor began saying that caste was a very important factor in any organisation. It was important for the caste to […]
A collection of thoughts from Colorado Springs to mind
Philip D Welsby Retired Consultant in Infectious Diseases, University Teaching Fellow, University of Edinburgh Two events of medical interest occurred during a recent visit to the Rocky Mountains and Colorado Springs. I developed gout in my left little toe within one week of arrival in Denver, the “mile high” city (5,280 feet) above sea level. […]
Collusion, illusion, or delusion?
Fending Off Death 1 by wiebkefesch on DeviantArt Doctors are – in the main – trained to prevent death. Modern medicine has made huge advances, and life expectancies continue to rise. However, there remains only one certainty in this life – that we are all going to die. Patients in the last year of life […]
All in a day’s work
Becoming a doctor is a long and arduous process. It involves many years of study and more of practice. It is inconceivable that this process leaves those who go through it untouched. This process is called professional socialisation. It confers values, and behaviours on the participants, and these help to mark our profession out from […]
Turning over a new leaf
The PMJ blog has been running for 2 and a half years, and in that time I have looked at many aspects of medical practice and education that have been thrown up by papers published in the PMJ. As time has gone on, we have had several submissions to the journal which seem to fit […]
Hidden in plain sight.
Patients do not come with diagnoses attached to their foreheads. If only they did, huge numbers of hospital visits and admissions could be avoided. To overcome the ever increasing number of potential diagnoses, and the rising tide of illness encountered by our ageing populations, we rely ever more heavily on investigations to guide us […]