Getting through the key safe is often a major accomplishment on home visits. Once you’ve achieved that, you can be pretty sure you can manage what lies beyond. Today I was going to see a lady with a palliative brain tumour*. I’d been part of her admitting hospital team and had remarkably come across her […]
Category: Junior doctors
Sioned Gwyn on sexism and women in medicine
Sir Tim Hunt, British biochemist and Nobel Laureate, had until recently enjoyed relative anonymity outside of scientific fields. Recently, at an international conference of science journalists in Seoul, he was invited to speak at a meeting for women in science and delivered as part of his speech an extraordinarily ill judged few sentences which have […]
Neel Sharma: We need to improve feedback to medical students
The other day I made a point of observing the number of people walking whilst using their mobile phones. I am sure we have all made a similar observation of people staring down at their phones. The vast extent of the problem has even been characterised clinically as “text neck.” I recall the days of […]
Neel Sharma: Validation in medical education—from classroom to curriculum
In clinical research there is typically a transition from cell based analysis, animal work, and human involvement before any form of intervention, be it diagnostic or treatment based, is deemed valid in a clinical setting. One example I can relate to currently is the use of image enhanced endoscopy which my colleagues and I are working on […]
Neel Sharma: Reforms in medical education—are we missing something?
Medical education has seen significant change over the past decade and more. Advances in teaching, learning, and assessment strategies are vast. The didactic lecture form of teaching is no longer the flavour of the month it seems with more and more emphasis on problem and team based learning. Classrooms are seeing the use of mobile […]
Daniel Barrett: Will a seven day NHS push primary care recruitment from crisis to catastrophe?
I listened with personal interest as the new conservative government re-launched its grand plan to deliver a “seven day health service.” In a little over a year I will be beginning life as a junior doctor along with thousands of others, all starting to question where our careers are heading. The answer for many of […]
Neel Sharma: Getting the right medical students comes with time
Last month, Richard Schwartzstein authored his perspective on poor communication skills among medical students and beyond (1). I read this with great interest and wanted to share my insights as a doctor in training. In the UK, it was also noted that allegations about doctors’ communication skills had risen by 69 per cent in the […]
Ahmed Rashid: Should junior doctors accept pharma support for clinical research training?
Junior clinical researchers know that there’s really only one way for them to comprehensively get on the academic ladder and prove their credibility. Those three letters that contain years of effort and soul searching that make all the difference. The essential and the impossible. The mountain. The PhD. But, of course, once you’ve made the […]
Sanna W Khawaja: At a crossroads in medical training
I am in the recruitment stage between interviews and offers. At this moment in time, when I look to August I can see myself as both in training and not in training. I can see myself as employed and as unemployed. Perhaps it is the task of ranking potential future jobs, or the desire to […]
Rebecca Stout: To apply or not to apply? Why some junior doctors are taking years out instead of going straight into training
A recent news article in The BMJ told us that the figures from the UK Foundation Programme Office show that the number of foundation year 2 (FY2) doctors applying straight into a training post has fallen again: “in August 2014 (it) was 59%—down from 64% in 2013, 67% in 2012, and 71% in 2011.” As […]