Doctors have a long and proud history of involvement in the arts. There are classic tomes published by doctors – The House of God (Shem), Sherlock Holmes (Conan Doyle), The Story of San Michele (Munthe), The Master and Margarita (Bulgakov). The profession has also produced a number of playwrights (Chekov), and poets (Keats). This […]
Medical stereotypes are a well known, ranging from the hippy-esque GP, to the man-mountain of an orthopaedic surgeon, via the suave and sophisticated plastic surgeon. I’m not entirely sure what the stereotype of a chest physician is, but I would be grateful if you could let me know… These stereotypes, and perceptions of who goes […]
The rigours of life as a junior doctor are well described, both in popular modern classics like House of God by Samuel Shem and the television series Scrubs, but also in lesser known works, like A Country Doctor’s Notebook by Mikhail Bulgakov. There are common themes – imposter syndrome, fear of killing patients, bullying […]
Clinical curiosity is a key trait amongst learners, and in clinical practice, curiosity is necessary to reach a diagnosis of even the most simple nature, but particularly so to diagnose cases that do not readily fit the heuristics that one brings to bear in everyday clinical work. However, clinical curiosity can be supressed by the […]
There is a phrase in medical education which often gets aired at the welcoming lecture to medical school: “50% of what we teach you over the next five years will be wrong, or inaccurate. Sadly, we don’t know which 50%” Quite why those welcoming students to a rigorous, physically and mentally demanding degree course would […]
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 […]