Judging from the albeit small number of votes on this week’s poll, it seems that the least useful aspect of what you find here are journal articles. This is not surprising: you are still learning the basics, so why should you bother with journals? Those of you who came to the Fresher’s week introductions might recall my statement: “Welcome to the first day of the rest of your life”. It has taken most of you 2-6 years to get here, doing A levels and in some cases a first degree.
William Osler said “To cover the vast field of medicine in 4 years is an impossible task”. Think about the size of medical knowledge: There are 11,000 diseases and 3,200 drugs listed in Diagnostic Pro. If I wanted to brush up my knowledge it would take me 30 years, if I learned about one disease each day. Over 500,000 new articles enter Medline each year (1,500 per day), and 30,000 randomised controlled trials are published each year (95 per day). So how do we cope with this information overlaod? The answer was given clearly by Prof Cacciattolo at this year’s TRD: learn to read the literature, learn to sift the wheat from the chaff. But, I hear you ask, how should we learn this? Will this be taught in our medical course? Is there a course we can take, maybe something online? I have no idea (but you could start looking). I helped to run a course on Evidence Based Medicine together with a couple of family doctors a couple of months ago. If you are interested, post a comment here and we will see what can be done. In the meantime, keep a log book of answerable questions and read an evidence based journal.
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4 comments:
During the summer months I did get interested in trying to read medical news. I started browsing the various JAMA, NEJM, BMJ, The Lancet, Annals of Int. Med. and the list continues on and on and on. I was overwhelmed by how much new info gets published continuously and how many really specialised journals exist; one could spend his entire lifetime just reading this stuff! Eventually I rationalised (recalling my former philosphy studies) that a single person cannot be familiar with all Knowledge. One has to acquire what he needs because, as I always say, one shouldn't be Jack of trades and master of none.
As regards to the poll, it was due to the impossibilty for the blog to give a representative view of medical advance that I didn't vote for news. However do continue with this activity. Thank you for your dedication.
Medicine is vast. Why bother? I was wondering whether it has ever been thought to give the opportunity to medical students to choose some area of specialisation immediately after the pre-clinical years. I think this could create professionals who would be really expert in a particular field.
I was doing some research for the physiology project... and though I sometimes would rather have a break or do or study something else, it's interesting to learn new stuff... This is especially because the topic I chose is something I am interested in... a bit more than gross anatomy; for example.
I just came across the site of the public library of science which just in case you haven't heard about is: www.plos.org. It is full of free peer-reviewed, open access scientific and medical journals. Each month there is an issue on each of the following: Biology, Medicine, Computational Biology, Genetics, Pathogens, General Science & Medicine and Neglected Tropical Diseases.
Enjoy!
Thanks for creating and maintaining this blog.
Dear Anonymous
Funny you should ask, but I have often thought about this question. The medical curriculum is designed to create general doctors that are safe to practice, and not super-specialists. It's a little early for you to appreciate this, but eventually you will realise that all of what you learn during your medical course interfaces somehow or other with everything else. The trick is figuring it all out. The best way to do that is to keep an open mind. If you are going to read only one journal, choose an evidence based one.
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