Secret Diary of an Emergency Registrar
Age: Start or end of shift? Status: Caffeinated. Likes: Chest tubes; Wearing runners to work. Dislikes: Describing CT brains to neurosurgical registrars over the phone. An evening shift at St Anywheres…
Category Literary Medicine
The Triage Game
One for all the ED Nurses out there: The triage game is really toughYou tell us your story and woeful stuffWe listen an take in your ridiculous guffYoull get category 5 which is really rough.There’s a chest pain inside whose…
Look on the Bright Side
Having a toothpick fish (the Candiru) take a detour up your urethra doesn't really bear thinking about. The idea of maggots crawling around under your skin sickens you. It is true, humans are afflicted by some pretty nasty parasites. At we can least be thankful for bacon. But things could be much, much worse.
A Storm is Brewing
Tim Minchin’s brilliant beat-poem “Storm” strikes a dagger in the heart of pseudo-medical flim-flammery and quackadelic mind muddling. You’ll be glad to hear that there is a new animated version…
Green and Gold Malaria
I traveled across Australia last week by air from Perth in Western Australia to Cairns in the far north of Queensland. The 3500km trip involved a brief stop in Uluru (Ayers Rock). As I looked out of the window throughout…
A Doctor’s Touch
Do you still rely on your physical examination skills or put more faith in the test you order? Abraham Verghese present’s an inspiring TED Talk on the power of the human hand in medicine and its use to touch, to comfort, to diagnose and to…
Bringing Home the Bacon
Bacon - a food item that, for anyone who needs it, surely ranks as the most essential food for use in a medical emergency.
Tourette Syndrome – a fathers perspective
It was not until two years later that the diagnosis of Tourette's syndrome was made. 1997 was deteriorating into an annus horribilis. Edward had been in hospital for weeks with a severe septic arthritis of the hip, we sold our over-capitalized house and my brother-in-law in England needed chemotherapy for non-Hodgkin's lymphoma.
Top 10 books to survive medical school
Synergistic tomes for the well-rounded physician I am drawn to an article from the New York Times extolling the virtues of literature in the education of physicians. I would like to share the sentiments of the author and add to…
Nightland – a tribute
"Are you on f*%king nightshift tonight, mummy?" ...a toddler utterance I hope to never hear again
Warm summer nights
It was summer 2006, long days and warm summer nights, and I was an intern, living by the beach and working a rotation in emergency.
Night Shift, Paying it Forward – Follow Up
The health and wellbeing of shift workers is a subject close to our hearts at LITFL - let the conversation begin