I came away from this year’s meeting of the African Journals Partnership Project (AJPP) with a healthy respect for the multitalented, multitasking African editors who are involved in the initiative. In addition to all of the usual duties of a medical journal editor, they also have to worry about such things as internet connectivity, the […]
Category: Editors at large
Wim Weber on the implementation of research in European clinical practice
On May 11, in the centre of Berlin, the European Science Foundation presented “Forward Look – implementation of medical research in clinical practice.” Forward Looks are consensus reports with a long term view of research and they aim to define research agendas at national and European levels. This one was developed under the tireless and pragmatic […]
Domhnall MacAuley: Middle aged man
Roddy Doyle nailed it. The unspoken aimlessness of middle aged man. His collection of short stories, “Bullfighting,” was frightening in its ordinariness, the drifting banality of a forgotten tribe. What is left after fatherhood, football coaching, and family? Stories that feature invisible men whose children have grown up, work has plateaued, declined, or disappeared, and stories where the […]
Domhnall MacAuley: Enjoying exams
Waking to a hint of bacon frying as the morning sun slanted shadows on the croquet lawn outside. It was the day of the clinical examinations at the MSc in Sports Medicine at Trinity College Dublin. One of the perks of being an examiner is to stay in the beautifully appointed guest rooms overlooking a […]
Elizabeth Loder: The medical conference of the future
There’s nothing like a gigantic medical meeting to make one feel inconsequential. I certainly did as I milled about the cavernous San Diego convention center with thousands of other doctors at the 2011 American College of Physicians (ACP) meeting. Tolstoy would have approved: “How good it is to remember one’s insignificance.” The ACP is the […]
Peter Lapsley: Compassion in dying
Over the past fifty years or so, science and medicine have been remarkably successful in extending people’s lives. But health professionals, focused on curing illness, or preventing or delaying death, have been far less successful in respecting people’s wishes with regard to the nature of their deaths – where they wish to die and the […]
Domhnall MacAuley: Palliative care
Dying is not much fun. As a GP I have seen a lot of it. Its not the very end bit that bothers me. The last breath is, paradoxically, often serene and peaceful. What I find most difficult is that wretched time that starts when hope is torn away and illness sates its unrelenting hunger. The […]
Domhnall MacAuley: The day the brakes went on
The consortia dream screeched to a halt. As I watched breakfast TV in the airport lounge on my way to the GP forum, the controversial health reforms were unravelling. The forum meeting was entitled “Commissioning Consortia: Examining the comprehensive business and clinical issues for a successful practice-led future” and suddenly, it seemed inappropriate. The health […]
Peter Lapsley: Acne on the web
It is good to be able to report good news from time to time, and this week brought with it some very good news indeed – the launch in London on Tuesday 29 March of The Acne Academy, a web-based resource both for health professionals and for people with acne. That may sound inconsequential to […]
Sally Carter: Films, fistula, and an illiterate surgeon
One of the world’s most experienced fistula surgeons is illiterate. I found that out when I went to a screening of a short film called Fistula Hospital: Healing and Hope at the Frontline Club in Paddington. Her name is Mamitu Gashe, and she was a patient at the Addis Ababa Fistula hospital. After her operation […]