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 […]
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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 […]
Fashionable inequality?
Modern life in developed societies is a world away from the lives our recent ancestors lived. Better sanitation, advances in farming and food supply, the cumulative effects of public health interventions over the years, and huge advances in medical knowledge and technology have also shifted the landscape of disease. As a society, our preoccupation is […]
It’s good to talk…
When I think about my work on the acute medical unit, or my clinics, it is almost mind boggling, the number of interactions I have with other humans – trainees, consultant colleagues, radiographers, radiologists, professionals from other hospitals, biochemists, nurses, physios, therapists, and of course – patients. As Atul Gawande points out in this splendid […]
I took the road less traveled by…
Picture the scene – it’s the wee small hours, say around 0330, when the energy really ebbs on a night shift – it is still pitch black and the gentle lightening in the east is still at least a couple of hours away. You’ve been on the go since you started your shift at 2030 […]