The visionary David McCandless at Information is Beautiful has taken some data and turned it into pictures. In this instance he has turned swine flu statistics into coloured-in maps and tables. Visualisation can often be a useful tool to help people to understand things. Certainly claims that ‘the USA have had more deaths from swine flu than any other country’ can sound worrying until you examine the ideas further. I’d really like to see more information in this format, it’s a lot easier to remember bits of red and blue on maps than tables of text. If departments of health or the World Heath Organisation made information freely available in a standardised format it would be possible to develop application programming interfaces (APIs) to make maps automatically. Hans Rosling’s Gapminder.org developed software to turn global health statistics into graphs, which turned out to be so good it was bought by Google. As a consequence, lectures at schools of medicine and public health all around the world became more interesting. If someone could make software to make maps using this precedent that would be much appreciated by students and policy makers everywhere.

With all UK final year medical students (hopefully) having submitted their applications for foundation year jobs the process begins matching them up to jobs. UKFPO have helpfully detailed the process. Question 1 is the one about qualifications and presentations, so marking it is more a case of verification that anything else. Interesting that applicants are scored by their first choice foundation school. The reason may be that applications tend to get into their first choice schools, and foundation schools tend to use UKFPO scores in sorting applicants into their jobs, so foundation schools will be more in control of which jobs go to whom. The proportion of applicants getting into their first-choice foundation school has been high but decreasing slightly year-on-year for the first three years. Last year, it dipped below 90% for the first time. The ratios can be found here. It’s possible that competitive foundation schools such as North East Thames and Severn may score more harshly than other foundation schools, although it’s also possible that they may score less harshly.

November 2009: Application forms are scored by a panel from the applicant’s first choice foundation school with the exception of Question One which will be scored by a national panel.

9 December 2009: Application results will be available to view via applicants’ online accounts.

25 January 2010: Deadline for applicants to rank the programmes available in their allotted foundation school in order of preference.

16 February 2010: Applicants will be notified of their match to specific programmes within their allotted foundation school.

Until 26 February 2010: References will be requested from two referees.

The trip to Hull York medical school in Hull is  a bit of a blur as the photo would suggest. The guys there were great and I was really busy entering people for the prize draw and giving away our tasty bags as modelled here by Ian.

St Georges is just around the corner from me so it was just a hop skip and a jump to Fresher’s there… well a cab ride actually with loads of boxes full of tasty give aways. Here is Gemma looking glamourous on the stand with the books that we borrrowed from Books and Stuff at the hospital!

So here we are at QMU in London with our friends from John’s Smiths Bookshop Mile End. We were so busy that I forgot to take the photo untill everything was gone including most of the chocolates!

So here is our table at Oxford this was the last freshers that we did and as usual everyone was great – we did a prize draw for all of these books!!

Laura from Blackwell's manning the stand

Here we are at Bristol Fresher’s with our Friends from Blackwell’s bookshop. We had a lovely time

Well we at the Naked Truth have been very busy getting out and about and meeting you guys at Freshers & Clinical Fairs across the country. So far we have been to:  St Georges, Cardiff, Queen Mary University, Aberdeen, Edinburgh, Leeds, Leicester, Sheffield and Cambridge to name but a few, but we still have plenty left to come… So why not come and say hello to us, don’t be shy, you might even get your picture in the blog!!  Here are some dates and where we will be and who from Naked Towers you can expect to find there. Just to put your minds at rest we will of course be fully clothed!

•  University of East Anglia Fresher’s – 30^thSeptember – Debs & Im Tee
• Brighton & Sussex Fresher’s – 1^st October with John Smiths bookshop – Ian
• University of Southampton Fresher’s – 1^st October – Debs & Kelly
• Hull York Medical School Fresher’s – 3^rd October – Debs
• St George’s Fresher’s 5^th October – Debs
• Bristol Fresher’s with Blackwell’s bookshop – 6^th October – Debs & Kelly
• Oxford University – 9^th October – Debs & Kelly

 We are also giving out some really super goody bags too…

More Cardiff

Top 10 Myths about Socialized Medicine 

Thanks to Suzane Smith for providing the link

Check out this excerpt from the free DVD which comes with the new 12th edition of Macleod’s Clinical Examination. Read reviews of 11th edition here. Let us know what you think of the 12th edition here and check out a sample chapter