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This Week
QUOTES OF THE WEEK
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CHINA The annual written exam medical students take to receive their doctor’ s licence had an unusual participant this year— a robot that passed the test with flying colours. The robot used deep learning to create a massive database of medical textbooks, clinical guidelines and medical cases. The robot will be used for medical education and training.
Journal Talk
Michael Woodhead
SNAPSHOT
Is there space for alternatives in med school?
SHOULD teaching complementary medicine be added to the already overcrowded medical school curriculum?
I’ m guessing the answer will be a firm‘ no’ from those who say there’ s no such thing as alternative medicine( only medicine that works, right?).
But now there’ s a push from those in the academic sector of complementary medicine for integrating their subject into the medical school curriculum.
In Collegian, Dr Kate Templeman( PhD) from the National Institute of Complementary Medicine at Western Sydney University, says medical students are already learning about complementary medicine, especially during clinical placements. However, the lack of a formal teaching framework makes for a piecemeal and fragmented approach.
In a qualitative study, Dr Templeman and colleagues presented feedback from 30 medical students who revealed they were learning about complementary medicines, but only in the context of specific diseases: fish oil in cardiology and St John’ s Wort in psychiatry. There were no formal lectures on complementary medicine and it wasn’ t an examinable subject.
Students said they had received some tuition on complementary medicine as part of problem-based learning and case-based learning, but even in these situations the discussion tended to be around the lack of evidence or the potential for interactions and adverse events.
However, during clinical placements, students began to learn more about complementary medicine after being exposed to its wide use by patients.
“ Sometimes we come in contact with a GP who is right into complementary medicine, but even if this isn’ t the case, we come across it purely from the acquired patient choice perspective. At various GP practices, we get to deal with a lot of patients coming in requesting complementary medicines,” one said.
STI SPIKE Annual diagnoses of common STIs have increased by more than 60 % over the past decade, new data show.
NEW DIAGNOSES PER YEAR
2007 2016
Gonorrhoea 7,643 23,887
Syphilis 1,434 3,367
Chlamydia 52,047 71,751
Nevertheless, most of the clinical placement discussion and tuition regarding complementary medicines still tended to be informal and“ off the books”.
Dr Templeman says the feedback suggests that medical students adopt a more positive and less sceptical attitude to complementary medicines after they see how widely it is used in the real world. And they want to learn more about it.
She concludes that her findings“ suggest that a higher quality of compendious complementary medicinerelated medical education is needed in the pre-clinical curriculum,” adding that clinical placements should be used to offer teaching on the“ practical relevance and applicability to future clinical practice”.
If the Australian Medical Council decides that acupuncture should be taught alongside auscultation and traditional Chinese medicine alongside ECGs, it could make for a very long medical degree. Collegian 2017; online.
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“ I didn’ t feel the teeth going in. It felt like I was smacked. It felt like a hand grabbing me [ and ] shaking me.”
Dr Charlie Fry describes being bitten by a shark while surfing at Avoca, NSW, only two months after arriving from the UK to work in Australia.
“ Every hospital specialist doctor ought to spend at least one month per year in general practice.”
Dr Thomas Abraham, a UK GP, says problems occur in patient care because specialists lack insight into how GPs work.
“ Perhaps the freer expression of sexual desires around the community may have contributed.”
Mildura GP Dr John Dyson-Berry says the rise of dating apps may be driving a rise in gonorrhoea.
“ There are tricky issues but I have no doubt we will see more transgender athletes competing in sport.”
Dr David Hughes, chief medical officer of the Australian Institute of Sport, says a new framework will address concerns about possible unfair advantages of transgender athletes.
Source: The Kirby Institute, HIV, viral hepatitis and sexually transmissible infections in Australia Annual Surveillance Report 2017
www. australiandoctor. com. au 24 November 2017 | Australian Doctor | 31