Medicine could once be practised in isolation – indeed, young doctors often found themselves working alone – a situation evocatively described by Bulgakov in his ‘Country Doctor’s Notebook.’ Nowadays, it is almost impossible to work in isolation, and team working is the norm. Atul Gawande wrote about the different approaches of Cowboys and Pit […]
Category: Medical Education
Exercise in older adults – time for a New Year’s Resolution?
Exercise is good for you – but then we sort of know that already – The Earl of Derby had it right back in 1873 pointing out that ‘Those who think they have not time for bodily exercise will sooner or later have to find time for illness.’ Take a look at this brilliant […]
Is that a smartphone in your pocket?
Smartphones are almost ubiquitous on the wards nowadays. In a departmental meeting the other day a question popped up about the commonest reason for admission to hospital acute medical services. Out came my smartphone, and after a search, and a tweet – almost instantly (and quickly enough to furnish an answer by the end of […]
Proper preparation and planning…
There is a basic assumption that medical schools prepare medical students to become doctors. One might expect that medical schools prepare medical students to broadly similar standards, and that by extension, their students would be broadly prepared for practice when they emerge blinking onto the wards each August. In a fascinating paper, Goldacre, Lambert and […]
See one… go on a course… do one…
The apprentice model of medical education is ingrained in the traditional lore of medical practice, and heuristics like ‘see one, do one, teach one’ are still commonplace. As with all skills – medical procedures have a learning curve. Some learning curves are longer than others – a hernia repair is not the same in terms […]
Scribes and scribbles
Poor communication is often at the root of complaints about clinical care (see here and here) Poor communication with patients is concentrated on in a number of spheres of medical education – the CSA exam from the Royal College of General Practitioners is an example where consultation style and communication is assessed as a key […]