By Dr Owen Wiese I remember very clearly an incident during my community service, when I walked into the trauma unit at a day hospital in Cape Town one morning and found a patient lying on the trolley, bleeding profusely from a knife wound. I picked up the patient’s file and read: stab wound to […]
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Posted inHealth
What has alternative medicine got that modern medicine has lost?
I remember talking to the wife I had just met of an old friend whom I had not seen in twenty years. She was an avid avoider of medical doctors, preferring to take her family to alternative health practitioners. Learning I was a doctor, and to my dismay, she began telling me about her fantastic […]
Posted inHealth
Looking for the perfect doctor?
There’s been a lot said by me in this and by others in other forums about what modern medical doctors should and shouldn’t do or be — and this is an essential debate — one that needs to be held as the medical profession adapts to rapidly changing technologies, demands and expectations. So I thought […]
Posted inHealth
Beyond the ‘House of God’ – how medicine hasn’t really changed at all
In 1978, as I neared the end of high school and readied myself for medical training, a book called House of God (HOG) was published by a doctor under the pseudonym Samuel Shem. By the time I read it as an intern eight years later it had become a cult classic among doctors. Everyone I […]
Posted inHealth, Lifestyle, Tech
So, someone you know wants to become a doctor?
Every now and then someone young approaches me for advice on choosing medicine as a profession. They are all extremely bright, capable and enthusiastic semi-adults, with strong desires to change the world and to “make a difference”. With on average 6 000 applicants for 250 places at a medical training university, the odds are against all […]
Posted inHealth, Media
The trouble with Dr Google
Things have been a bit tough of late, the bad economy is starting to bite, and you’re feeling the pressure. To top it all, your body has been acting strangely in ways it never has before. Your muscles twitch in funny areas for hours at a time, you tire easily, and you have fleeting pins […]
Posted inGeneral, Health
Pins and needles – a lesson on communication
A welcome break from medical politics – I wrote this a long time ago … it still applies just as much now as it did then. All a doctor’s knowledge, skill, patience and dedication are valueless without intuition. When all else lets us down, all the tests and special investigations, it is often the small […]