Thursday 2 July 2009

Metaphors of Medicine... and implications for medical education

Just a short post. Last week I saw Annemarie Mol speak at COMET09 about the 'messiness' of clinical practice. Today I received an email from a colleague where we were discussiing the fact that many aspects of medicine do not "offer a script". And then through Rakesh Biswas I came across this blog of Shashikiran Umakanth, a physician and associate professor in India. His former student comments that "no patient comes in a neatly packed diagnostic disease".

So these metaphors of medicine are about its complexity and unpredictability. But do we acknowlege this in our medical courses?

What are your metaphors for medicine and how do they inform the way we prepare students to become doctors?

5 comments:

  1. Where lowland is, that's where water goes. All medicine wants is pain to cure - Rumi.

    http://tinyurl.com/m8os6m

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  2. he best way to learn medicine is through clerk ship of residency, don't know how it's called in different places in the world. So teaching by doing is the most important but based on theoretical knowledge. When they start their clinical rounds their heads are full with facts but clinical practice is indeed very different from all the theory how well educated as it might be.
    Kind regards Dr Shock

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  3. It's going back to the two keystones of education for health professionals: individual assessment and communication.

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  4. Thank you to all for your comments.

    Pam,
    To answer your question. I have never tried to listen to a patient's heart or lungs through an item of clothing... just wouldn't work. But at same time I don't always get them to fully strip.

    Next, BP is more controversial that you might think. I use an electronic sphygmo... checked on myself an through light item of clothing made no difference. I would rather take BP through a shirt sleeve that pull it up too tight around upper arm. Most of the time I use bare skin. But had a quick search and found this:
    http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=2244658

    What do you think?
    Anne Marie

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