Category: Article
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How can I be certain?
Uncertainty: the state of not knowing. Being a health professional: realising you cannot know everything and adapting to the state of uncertainty as appropriate for the context. Uncertainty is a state in which I spent much of my time as a general practitioner. As a medical student my scientific training led to my seeing education as moving…
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‘Interprofessional’ as a marker of quality
Humpty Dumpty, Lewis Carroll’s egg-shaped character, said to Alice when she was through the looking glass that when he uses a word ‘it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less’. There are many words and phrases in health care whose meanings depend on context and have no single agreed definition.…
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I’m looking for a long-term relationship
Finding and sticking with one health professional you can trust is an important part of health care. With the move to a more team-based approach in many health services, is this still possible and what are the implications for long-term relationships? How is the tension between quick access to health care when needed (or wanted) consistent with…
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Is every health care team unique?
‘The patient at the centre of the team’ is a much-used phrase when discussing health care. It derives from the concept of patient-centred care for which there is no consensus or succinct definition. Does being at the centre of a team give the person team membership? In which case there is a unique team with each patient. In…
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Team-based care: who’s on my team?
There are more than 250 different health professions according to one source,[1] though I would be hard-pressed to list that many. I do know that the healthcare workforce is diverse and the professions within it have many different roles and responsibilities. Each person during their lifetime will interact with several of these professions, the number typically increasing with…
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What does it all mean? A handy guide to health professional qualifications.
Health professional qualifications may be difficult to understand even, in my experience, by health professional students. In this post I consider these questions and others: What do all my doctor’s qualifications mean? Why are some surgeons referred to as Mr/Miss and some as Dr? Why is my English doctor not an MD but my American one…
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#menopause: there’s a lot of it about
Hot flushes are trending. One British celebrity has registered to trademark the term ‘menopausing’ to complement her book.[1] Scotland’s first minister has referred to the stigma surrounding the climacteric, admitting anxiety about coping in her public role once symptoms intensify.[2] In the last month the Guardian has published 8 articles on the menopause ranging from the possibility of…
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Thoughts on becoming a doctor: part 2
An important question for health care practice is ‘who becomes a doctor’ or more specifically ‘who chooses and who is chosen to enter medical school’. Medical schools can support only so many students due to the size of facilities and, particularly, access to clinical learning spaces such as hospitals, clinics and general practices. Some countries have…
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So, why did you want to be a doctor?
Thoughts on becoming a doctor: part 1 I must have been asked why I wanted to be a doctor several times during the process of applying to medical school in the 1970s. My chemistry teacher advised that this question was sure to pop up in interviews and that a reply including ‘I want to help people’…
Health professional education and practice 