Rooting out the evidence
A FEW months ago, a pair of TGA boffins were sitting about on a slow Friday afternoon, chewing the fat.
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Dr Ron Elisha
News Articles
Just a piece of the furniture
RECENTLY in the medical press we were treated to the story of a doctor who sat on a patient.
Abandoning solo thought
I EXPENDED my youth during the ’60s. There’s no better term for it, really. Shaw opines that youth is wasted on the young — in my case, it was squandered on the prematurely cautious.
No cure for this pandemic
IN THIS digital age, when everything must be codified, reality sometimes presents us with situations that defy the best analytical efforts of medicos, academics and, yes, even theologians.
The trouble with breasts
IN CASE you hadn’t noticed, cleavage is back.
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The trouble with breasts
IN CASE you hadn’t noticed, cleavage is back. Not the demure and altogether functional crease that might have satisfied a Robert Young or a Mickey Rooney, but a deep, warm cleft of infinite promise, girdled by fecund mounds pulled upward and forward to the point where the observer expects, at any moment, to taste milk. The kind of cleavage, in other words, that inspires poets, destroys marriages and launches wars.All of this, of course, presents a problem for the modern male, particularly the modern male medico — a problem summed up succinctly by Jerry Seinfeld when he said: “Looking at cleavage ...
Is there a good way to break bad news?
A RECENT article in Patient Education and Counseling (2012;87:186-92) suggests that a ‘blunt’ approach is best when breaking bad news to patients. We at Humerus went out and observed two differing approaches: No nonsenseGood morning, doctor. How are you today? You’re going to die. I beg your pardon? You’re going to die. And I’d get that hearing checked before it’s too late. But... I’m here to get a repeat on my nasal spray. Is there any point? My nose is blocked. You’re dead a long time. There’s a limit on how many repeats I can give you. Are you sure? Trust me – a script’s only good for 12 months. No ...
The semantics of disease - or whatever you call it
APPARENTLY, it is no longer acceptable to suffer from disease (or, indeed, even to suffer).The term ‘disease’, it seems, implies defectiveness, imperfection and, to put not too fine a point on it, unpleasantness, while suffering carries with it connotations of victimhood, powerlessness, a refusal to be held accountable.Indeed, so far has disease fallen in our estimation that merely being in close proximity to it rates almost as badly as falling prey to it.A perfect illustration of the sorry depths to which disease has sunk is to be found in last year’s Diabetes Australia/AMA Victoria language position statement recommending that healthcare ...
The tragedy of the lost eternal profession
NOT so long ago, medicine was seen by many as a ‘calling’ (as was nursing and, of course, the clergy). The term has its roots in the religious notion that certain folk are drawn to a particular field of endeavour by a force greater than themselves – that they are ‘called’ by the voice of God or, perhaps, by a voice from within that embodies the spirit or the soul. The endeavour in question is usually one that involves a degree of self-sacrifice or, at the very least, sequestration from the world at large, the implication being that no sane person would ...
The end of cradle to grave medicine?
Recently I wrote an article for the MJA in which I explored the inescapable nexus between the falling status of doctors and the rise in violence against them.1 While I experienced an absolute flood of supportive emails (far more than for any other article I’ve ever written, and from across the spectrum – from registrars to retirees), there were one or two readers who erroneously interpreted my position as favouring the ‘God model’ of medicine, where the doctor is all-powerful and his/her judgement never questioned by the patient. This, of course, is not my position and never has been. Good doctors – and ...