Commentary on the Internet is notoriously stupid. Pick pretty much any Youtube video and you will see questions being asked about the content which is clearly answered in the description on the right-hand side, or at best a simple Google away. And then asked again. And then asked again. Or you may encounter trolling in its most basic form, where people sitting in front of computer screens freed from their built-in social constraints of politeness and fear of reprisals unleash pure vitriol in the form of typing before they’ve had any time to think. People’s genuine opinions approach sheer ridiculousness in these situations. Indeed, Poe’s Law of the Internet states that “Without a winking smily or other blatant display of humour it is impossible to create a parody of Fundamentalism that someone won’t mistake for the real thing. “Speak you’re branes” is a good example of a blog (there are others) which is dedicated to offering up the prime cuts of un-thought-through commentary from the dregs of the Internet.

Billed as the ‘easiest food diary’ you’ll ever keep, Tweet What You Eat aims to make it simple^. It is notoriously difficult for patients to remember to take their tablets. Having been a participant in a clinical trial before I realise this. It must be even harder if you have to keep track of what you eat without a dedicated nurse there to do it for you. Sunshine is the best disinfectant and openness is essential for transparency. From a trial diary of what you have been doing, it is not possible to see if entries have been made days after when patients may have ‘forgotten’ or indeed genuinely forgotten what they have eaten. It is not possible to edit what has already been posted on Twitter unless you are some kind of super hacker. Once information is there, it is there, and in the public domain. Although looking at what people are eating at the moment, I don’t feel that encouraged…

I never really appreciated the full use of the many of the add-on tools that can be used in conjunction with PubMed. PubMed remains more reliable than Google Scholar and all other pretenders to its throne as the best place to look for papers i.e. it’s the gold standard for finding medical research and hence for making evidence-based decisions. However, although it contains all that the most brilliant academics and the most cutting-edge consultants in the world know, it has not always been easy to find this information. It comes equipped with online training, which I do find myself coming back to now and again. Ben Goldacre has published a very quick guide to using Hubmed, which I did not really understand before. It is reasonably simple to use PubMed by itself to create RSS feeds from customised searches, but it seems to make a lot more sense with HubMed. If nothing else, it is a less forbidding front-end to the sum of human knowledge.

JANE stands for Journal/Author Name Estimator. It is one of a series of novel tools coming online to help researchers get their work published. Its primary use is to find which journals are most likely to publish work, so is aimed at a researcher holding a completed manuscript, or nearly completed manuscript and aiming to have it published in a journal. The primary use is typing in keywords, then a list of appropriate journals will be listed alongside. There are additional options which can be completed. The Biosemantics Group is the result of a collaboration between two Dutch universities: Erasmus University Rotterdam and Leiden University Medical Center. Work besides JANE done by the group includes the EU-ADR project to create a Europe-wide system to detect adverse drug reactions (ADRs) and INFOBIOMED to look at synergy between bioinformatics and medical informatics at a European level. Medical informatics describes use of information technology in medicine, and bioinformatics describes use of information technology in molecular biology, so really this is related to the use of IT in Medicine, which is only going to increase in coming years.

Until now songs about swine flu had focused on the effects of the illness itself. The balance has now been redressed by a song talking about the side-effects of the treatment. This is not a vaccine. One paper in the Lancet is titled “Possible harms of oseltamivir – a call for urgent action”. Due to unexpectedly good containment of swine flu, various government subsequently downgraded their orders of oseltamivir and the developed swine flu vaccine. It seems that six people must be treated for one of these people to reduce their change of becoming infected with swine flu, but more than of these people will have side effects. The swine flu vaccine was quite quickly developed, and can safely be given at the same time as the seasonal flu vaccine. Although it does seem to have produced more side-effects, which reports of some flul-like symptoms and pain in the arm.

The National Patient Safety Agency is running an essay competition for medical students. This is the first time that such an essay prize has been run in the UK. The essay title is as follows:

‘The world of patient safety through the eyes of a medical student.’
a. Three prizes will be awarded at the annual Patient Safety Congress.
b. The winner will receive £500 and the two runners-up £200 each.

The closing date for submission is 15th December 2009.

Please send all entries by email to:

Mrs Barbara Wilde,
PA to Dr. Kevin Cleary,
Medical Director, NPSA.
Telephone: 020 7927 9500
E-mail: barbara.wilde@npsa.nhs.uk

If you have any further queries please do not hesitate to contact Dr Vivian Tang, Clinical Adviser to the Medical Director on  vivian.tang@npsa.nhs.uk

Elective scholarships are available through the British Medical and Dental Students Trust (BMDST), a charitable organisation. MDDUS members can apply for awards of £100 and £1000. The MDDUS is an independent organisation offering legal advice and professional indemnity for doctors, dentists and other healthcare professionals. The deadline for applications is 31st January for electives taking place between April and September.  Grants were in the past granted in March and September, but are now simply granted in March of every year.  Figures for the variation in applications and grants given can be found in this table. The overall success rate is around 20%. The BMDST is working on its own website, but for now a page is hosted by the MDDUS. It is largely funded by the world’s biggest pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline. This resource is underused at present, and is a great opportunity to find funding to make the most of a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

The UKFPO questions for 2010 application have been released. The deadline for filling them in online is next Friday 23rd. Get on it, final years. I still can’t believe they changed the West Midlands Foundation Schools at the last minute without any consultation. The following questions are scored at 10 points each and have a 200 word limit. They are numbered 2-6 as question 1 is simply filling in previous academic qualifications.

Question 2

Describe a case from your clinical experience that you have observed in the first 24 hours from hospital admission. How did members of different professional teams interact and how did this contribute to effective patient care? What did you learn from this that will influence your future practice as a new doctor?

Question 3

Describe a memorable experience of being taught and how this has shaped your thinking about teaching. Identify a particular situation in which you might be teaching as a doctor in the future. Describe how you might apply what you have learned to maximise the effectiveness of your teaching.

Question 4

You are one of two foundation doctors on a ward round. The registrar identifies a minor error made by your colleague and makes inappropriate critical comments in front of the patient and the healthcare team. Your colleague is visibly distressed. What actions would you take and how would you prioritise these? What actions do you believe your colleague should take in relation to these comments? How might you address a minor error made by a more junior colleague in the future?

Question 5

Describe one example from your medical training when you received feedback on an aspect of your performance. Explain how that feedback altered your subsequent practice. How will you use this experience to develop a specific aspect of your foundation training?

Question 6

At times, the patient and the medical team have different ideas on the management of the patient’s illness, because of personal, social or cultural views held by the patient. Describe a clinical case where you have observed this. Identify the factors that contributed to these differing views. Why is it important to understand these differences in your practice as a foundation doctor?