Like most doctors I have read and am a fan of Samuel Shem’s House of God, with my favourite Rule being Rule 10: “If you don’t take a temperature you can’t find a fever.” If you don’t intend to treat...
One of the highlights of the medical retina fellowship programme at Moorfields is the Tuesday morning 8am fluorescein round. It is both exhilarating and terrifying. Exhilarating because they are slick presentations of the most interesting cases that each of the...
When I worked as a registrar at Newport many years ago I remember a no-nonsense corneal consultant railing about the way the tragic case of Lucie Linforth was being reported in the media. Lucie was a toddler taken into a...
I asked to do theatre lists at Moorfields as part of my timetable. The medical retina fellow jobs are a bit odd in that the vast majority of the different rotations lack a regular theatre session. This might suit some...
The Medical Defence Union (MDU) runs courses on various medicolegal topics. I would guess people only ever attend these courses if they have an exam or an interview approaching as the subject matter is exceedingly dry for clinicians. I myself...
There is a restaurant in London where dinner is served in the dark. Not dim light or occasional infrequent light, but absolute pitch black darkness. Apparently the aim is twofold; to better appreciate the quality of the food as the...
“And Cain said unto the Lord, my punishment is greater than I can bear. Behold, thou hast driven me out this day from the face of the earth; and from thy face shall I be hid. And Cain went out...
The Lakota Sioux people of Dakota have one of the best preserved Native American cultures in the United States and when people think of the ‘American Indian’ it is to the culture of the Lakota Sioux that people mostly turn....
Rudyard Kipling was a very wise chap. He was in San Francisco towards the end of the 19th century and noticed that in some bars and saloons the house was giving away free lunches for every patron who first purchased...
I wasn’t on call and my bleep went off. I knew without looking that it was the directorate office. Immediately my heart sank, for these calls were always about bad things. They never called to say “well done Gwyn you’re...
It is one of the great trials of medical life trying to get things published. Where once upon a time a few case reports and being eighth author on a paper or two was more than sufficient to secure a...
When I was starting off in ophthalmology my then boss had a standard spiel after completing a cataract case. It did not vary and I do not recall an instance of it not taking place. “The operation went well and...