I use a three phase cycle when teaching medical students and doctors. Phase one is the story. Phase two, making sense of the story. Phase three, a therapeutic action. All doctors have been trained to start with the patient’s story. Sounds simple, and at one level it is, but what makes it complicated is that [...]
Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category
What can a doctor do?
Posted in Uncategorized on May 14, 2012 | Leave a Comment »
Tit for tat and taking turns
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged vfs on March 15, 2012 | 1 Comment »
In Lynne McTaggart’s The Bond she has a chapter entitled “Taking Turns” which describes multiple experiments designed to test the way people use either competitive or collaborative strategies. One of the most well known of such experiments is “The Prisoners’ Dilemma” (google it if you want the details). Another one, which is also fascinating, is [...]
Never unconnected
Posted in from the reading room, philosophy, science, Uncategorized on February 16, 2012 | Leave a Comment »
We live with a view of ourselves as separate entities, made up of tiny, distinct, independent parts. This idea, this kind of atomism, has been around for centuries. Now, however, we’re coming to understand that reality isn’t like that. Lynne McTaggart writes in “The Bond” The universe contains an indeterminate number of vibrating packets of [...]
Enjoying, discovering, creating and sharing
Posted in Uncategorized on January 5, 2012 | Leave a Comment »
Four of my verbs in one day! Had a trip to Franschhoek – an amazing, French culture wine growing area in South Africa. Took lots of photos like this one – And used Photoforge 2 to create this image from it -
2011…..ebbing away
Posted in Uncategorized on December 30, 2011 | 1 Comment »
People not processes
Posted in Uncategorized on November 24, 2011 | 2 Comments »
It seems like there’s one story after another at the moment about vulnerable old people being neglected in hospitals, “care homes” and even in their own homes where home “carers” are failing to provide the “minimum standards of care” – even, according the most recent reports, to the extent that their are breaches of basic [...]
The verbs of a good life
Posted in Uncategorized on November 17, 2011 | 6 Comments »
I was wondering the other day what makes the difference between a good day and a not so good day, or, frankly, a bad day? It’s tempting to think its to do with external circumstances, like the weather, or with other people – what other people say or do. But I don’t think that’s a [...]
The sad reality of over-prescribing
Posted in Uncategorized on November 11, 2011 | 2 Comments »
Does this bother you? British GPs’ prescriptions for opioid painkillers have risen sixfold since 1991 to 1.4 billion a year, according to the National Treatment Agency for Substance Abuse. More than 500 million prescriptions a year are written for sedatives, sleeping pills and tranquillisers, and the prescribing of benzodiazepine tranquillisers for anxiety has also risen. [...]
Life path
Posted in Uncategorized on July 21, 2011 | 2 Comments »
Wanderer, the road is your footsteps, nothing else; wanderer, there is no path, you lay down a path in walking. In walking you lay down a path… Anotonio Machado (translation by Francisco Varela)
July, the month of rest
Posted in Uncategorized on July 2, 2011 | 1 Comment »
July is the month of rest. I don’t mean by that that you should settle into a hammock and not stir for a month! What I mean, is why not make this a month to consider the importance of rest. Not just physical rest of the kind we consider the opposite of exercise or activity, [...]
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