MediaCET Ltd.

New exercise module

hitchhiker — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 11:46:38 GMT

Instructions for use.

The exercise code is placed in the post at any point, there can be any amount of individual exercises for each post.

Example:

From the options below, reconstruct the sentence:

Here is the post code that made the above exercise
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GxKjrE1K7wA&feature=related

From the options below, reconstruct the sentence:

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

So first we start with [test]

Then we type any sentence, when you want to make a multiple-choice drop-down you simply start by using a quote " . The first option you put will always be the correct answer, the following options are seperated by the | character. When you are finished with the options you close with another quote ".

First example:

[test]this is an " Example | Cat | Tree " [/test] (Don't include all the extra spaces)

Gives:

[test]this is an "Example|Cat|Tree"[/test]

Second example:

[test]this is a second "Example|Cat|Tree" with a second drop-down "list|apple|truck"[/test]

Gives:

[test]this is a second "Example|Cat|Tree" with a second drop-down "list|apple|truck"[/test]

Work process

hitchhiker — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 18:51:30 GMT

Daily routine per site

Events

Check for upcoming events, link in post, include any details you can in text, plus links to resources
Check for past events, add post with youtube videos of event or interviews

Bookmarks

Digg / bookmark any interesting threads, drop in construction chat for us all to digg

Email

Find 3 sites and email them to add a link, add the site + email in alphabetical order to the emailed sites page

Polls

FInd and add 5 polls, topical, controversial etc

Posts

Posting to all sites to increase activity

Videos

Add relevant videos to all sites

Sites

ef

Events: EFL / TEFL / TOEFL Conferences

igf

Events: Conferences,socials,tournaments
http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/results_and_fixtures/default.stm

MySmelly

Events: Animal shows, expos, fundraisers etc

emailed sites

hitchhiker — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 18:45:59 GMT

Add sites in alphabetical order so they can be searched quickly

englishforums

forodeespanol

knink

Articles

hitchhiker — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 18:40:52 GMT

Welcome to MediaCET, this area is primarily for the Mediacet development wiki. You must be a developer or admin to login to that area.

Check out the Sandbox for a demo

Community building team work process

Bomb surfing in Copenhagen

hitchhiker — Sat, 07 Jun 2008 21:53:19 GMT

This must be a fake right? - If so, it's done v.v.v.v.v.well.

Sandbox

hitchhiker — Wed, 21 May 2008 18:33:54 GMT

The Rod of Asclepius, with its single snake, is an ancient Greek symbol associated with medicine. The American Medical Association, the American Osteopathic Association, the Royal Society of Medicine, the Australian Medical Association, the British Medical Association, and the World Health Organization display the Rod of Asclepius in their logos or emblems.

Medicine is the science and [[wiktionary:art|art]] of maintaining and restoring human health through the Medical research, diagnosis, and treatment of Medical record.
The term is derived from the Latin ars medicina meaning the art of healing.

The modern practice of medicine occurs at the many interfaces between the art of healing and various sciences. Medicine is directly connected to the health sciences and biomedicine. Broadly speaking, the term 'Medicine' today refers to the fields of clinical medicine, medical research and surgery, thereby covering the challenges of disease and injury.

History

Physician treating a patient. Louvre Museum, Paris, France.

The earliest type of medicine in most cultures was the use of empirical natural resources like plants (herbalism), animal parts and minerals. In all societies, including Western ones, there were also religious, ritual and magical resources. In aboriginal societies, there is a large scope of medical systems related to religious thinking, cultural experience, and natural resources. The religious ones more known are: animism (the notion of inanimate objects having spirits); spiritualism (here meaning an appeal to gods or communion with ancestor spirits); shamanism (the vesting of an individual with mystic powers); and divination (the supposed obtaining of truth by magic means). The field of medical anthropology studies the various medical systems and their interaction with society, while prehistoric medicine addresses diagnosis and treatment in prehistoric times.

The practice of medicine developed gradually in Ancient Egyptian medicine, Babylonia#Medicine, Ayurveda, Traditional Chinese medicine, Ancient Greek medicine, Ancient Iranian Medicine, the Islamic medicine, Medieval medicine and early modern period in History of Iran (Muhammad ibn ZakarÄ«ya RÄzi and Avicenna), Al-Andalus (Abu al-Qasim al-Zahrawi and Ibn Zuhr), Syria/Egypt (Ibn al-Nafis, 13th century), Italy (Gabriele Falloppio, 16th century), England (William Harvey, 17th century). Medicine as it is now practiced largely developed during the 19th and 20th centuries in Germany (Rudolf Virchow, Wilhelm Conrad RÃ¶ntgen, Robert Koch), Austria (Karl Landsteiner, Otto Loewi), United Kingdom (Edward Jenner, Alexander Fleming, Joseph Lister, Francis Crick), New Zealand (Maurice Wilkins), Australia (Howard Florey, Baron Florey, Frank Macfarlane Burnet), Russia (Nikolai Korotkov), United States (William Williams Keen, Harvey Cushing, William Coley, James D. Watson), Italy (Salvador Luria), Switzerland (Alexandre Yersin), Japan (Kitasato Shibasaburo), and France (Jean-Martin Charcot, Claude Bernard, Louis Pasteur, Paul Broca and others). The new "scientific" or "Biomedical research" medicine (where results are testable and repeatable) replaced early Western traditions of medicine, based on herbalism, the Greek "humorism" and other pre-modern theories.

The Sumerian god Ningizzida was the patron of medicine. In the image he is accompanied by two gryphons. It is the oldest known image of snakes coiling around an axial rod, dating from before 2000 BCE. A similar image with two snakes coiling around a rod is called the Caduceus and, although historically inappropriate, appears in the logo/emblem of a significant number of private (rather than professional or academic) medical practices.

The focal points of development of clinical medicine shifted to the Germany and the United States by the early 1900s (Canadian-born) William Osler, Harvey Cushing). Possibly the major shift in medical thinking was the gradual rejection, especially during the Black Death in the 14th and 15th centuries, of what may be called the 'traditional authority' approach to science and medicine. This was the notion that because some prominent person in the past said something must be so, then that was the way it was, and anything one observed to the contrary was an anomaly (which was paralleled by a similar shift in European society in general - see Nicolaus Copernicus's rejection of Ptolemy's theories on astronomy). Physicians like Ibn al-Nafis and Vesalius led the way in improving upon or indeed rejecting the theories of great authorities from the past (such as Hippocrates, Galen and Avicenna), many of whose theories were in time discredited. Such new attitudes were made possible in Europe by the weakening of the Roman Catholic church's power in society, especially in the Republic of Venice.

Evidence-based medicine is a recent movement to establish the most effective algorithms of practice (ways of doing things) through the use of the scientific method and modern global information science by collating all the evidence and developing standard protocols which are then disseminated to healthcare providers. One problem with this 'best practice' approach is that it could be seen to stifle novel approaches to treatment.

Drug ampoules

Genomics and knowledge of human genetics is already having some influence on medicine, as the causative genes of most monogenic genetic disorders have now been identified, and the development of techniques in molecular biology and genetics are influencing medical practice and decision-making.

Pharmacology has developed from herbalism and many drugs are still derived from plants (atropine, ephedrine, warfarin, aspirin, digoxin, vinca alkaloids, taxol, hyoscine, etc). The modern era began with Robert Koch's discoveries around 1880 of the transmission of disease by bacteria, and then the discovery of antibiotics shortly thereafter around 1900. The first of these was arsphenamine / Salvarsan discovered by Paul Ehrlich in 1908 after he observed that bacteria took up toxic dyes that human cells did not. The first major class of antibiotics was the Sulfonamide (medicine) drugs, derived by French chemists originally from azo compound dyes. Throughout the twentieth century, major advances in the treatment of infectious diseases were observable in (Western) societies. The medical establishment is now developing drugs targeted towards one particular disease process. Thus Medication are being developed to minimize the side effects of prescribed drugs, to treat cancer, geriatric problems, long-term problems (such as high cholesterol), chronic diseases diabetes mellitus type 2, lifestyle and degenerative diseases such as arthritis and Alzheimer's disease.

Practise

Artificial insemination

The practice of medicine combines both science as the evidence base and art in the application of this medical knowledge in combination with intuition and clinical judgment to determine the treatment plan for each patient.

Central to medicine is the patient-physician relationship established when a person with a health concern seeks a physician's help; the 'medical encounter'. Other health professionals similarly establish a relationship with a patient and may perform various interventions, e.g. nurses, radiographers and therapists.

As part of the medical encounter, the healthcare provider needs to:
*develop a relationship with the patient
*gather data (medical history, systems inquiry, and physical examination, combined with laboratory or imaging studies (investigations))
*analyze and synthesize that data (assessment and/or differential diagnoses), and then:
*develop a treatment plan (further testing, therapy, watchful observation, referral and follow-up)
*treat the patient accordingly
*assess the progress of treatment and alter the plan as necessary (management).

The medical encounter is documented in a medical record, which is a legal document in many jurisdictions.

The components of the medical history are:
*Chief complaint (CC): the reason for the current medical visit. These are the 'symptoms.' They are in the patient's own words and are recorded along with the duration of each one. Also called 'presenting complaint.'
*History of present illness / complaint (HPI): the chronological order of events of symptoms and further clarification of each symptom.
*Current activity: occupation, hobbies, what the patient actually does.
*Medications (DHx): what drugs the patient takes including prescribed, over-the-counter drug, and home remedies, as well as alternative and Herbalism. Allergy are also recorded.
*Past medical history (PMH/PMHx): concurrent medical problems, past hospitalizations and surgerys, injuries, past infectious diseases and/or vaccinations, history of known allergies.
*Social history (SH): birthplace, residences, marital history, social and economic status, habits (including diet (nutrition), medications, tobacco smoking, alcohol).
*Family history (medicine) (FH): listing of diseases in the family that may impact the patient. A family tree is sometimes used.

*Review of systems (ROS) or systems inquiry: a set of additional questions to ask which may be missed on HPI: a general enquiry (have you noticed any weight loss, fevers, lumps and bumps? etc), followed by questions on the body's main organ systems (heart, lungs, Gastrointestinal tract, Urinary system, etc).

The physical examination is the examination of the patient looking for signs of disease ('Symptoms' are what the patient volunteers, 'Signs' are what the healthcare provider detects by examination). The healthcare provider uses the senses of sight, hearing, touch, and sometimes smell (taste has been made redundant by the availability of modern lab tests). Four chief methods are used: inspection (medicine), palpation (feel), percussion (medicine) (tap to determine resonance characteristics), and auscultation (listen); smelling may be useful (e.g. infection, uremia, diabetic ketoacidosis). The clinical examination involves study of:

*Vital signs including height, weight, body temperature, blood pressure, pulse, respiration rate, hemoglobin oxygen saturation
*General appearance of the patient and specific indicators of disease (nutritional status, presence of jaundice, pallor or clubbing)
*Skin
*Head, eye, ear, nose, and throat (HEENT)
*Cardiovascular (heart and blood vessels)
*Respiratory (large airways and lungs)
*Abdomen and rectum
*Genitalia (and pregnancy if the patient is or could be pregnant)
*Musculoskeletal (spine and extremities)
*Neurological (consciousness, awareness, brain, cranial nerves, spinal cord and peripheral nerves)
*Psychiatric (orientation, mental state, evidence of abnormal perception or thought)

Medical laboratory and Medical imaging results may be obtained, if necessary.

The medical decision-making (MDM) process involves analysis and synthesis of all the above data to come up with a list of possible diagnoses (the differential diagnosis), along with an idea of what needs to be done to obtain a definitive diagnosis that would explain the patient's problem.

The treatment plan may include ordering additional laboratory tests and studies, starting therapy, referral to a specialist, or watchful observation. Follow-up may be advised.

This process is used by primary care providers as well as specialists. It may take only a few minutes if the problem is simple and straightforward. On the other hand, it may take weeks in a patient who has been hospitalized with bizarre symptoms or multi-system problems, with involvement by several specialists.

On subsequent visits, the process may be repeated in an abbreviated manner to obtain any new history, symptoms, physical findings, and lab or imaging results or specialist consultations.

Branches

Working together as an interdisciplinary team, many highly-trained health professionals besides medical practitioners are involved in the delivery of modern health care. Examples include: nurses, emergency medical technicians and paramedics, laboratory scientists, (pharmacy, pharmacists), (physiotherapy,physiotherapists), respiratory therapists, speech therapy, occupational therapy, radiographers, dietitians and bioengineering.

The scope and sciences underpinning human medicine overlap many other fields. Dentistry and clinical psychology, while separate disciplines from medicine, are considered medical fields.

A patient admitted to hospital is usually under the care of a specific team based on their main presenting problem, e.g. the Cardiology team, who then may interact with other specialties, e.g. surgical, radiology, to help diagnose or treat the main problem or any subsequent complications / developments.

Physicians have many specializations and subspecializations into certain branches of medicine, which are listed below. There are variations from country to country regarding which specialties certain subspecialties are in.

The main branches of medicine used in Wikipedia are:

* Basic sciences of medicine; this is what every physician is educated in, and some returns to in Biomedical research#Preclinical research.
* Medical specialties
* Interdisciplinary sub-specialties of medicine, where different medical specialties are mixed to function in certain occasions.

Basic sciences

*Anatomy is the study of the physical structure of organisms. In contrast to macroscopic or gross anatomy, cytology and histology are concerned with microscopic structures.
*Biochemistry is the study of the chemistry taking place in living organisms, especially the structure and function of their chemical components.
*Biostatistics is the application of statistics to biological fields in the broadest sense. A knowledge of biostatistics is essential in the planning, evaluation, and interpretation of medical research. It is also fundamental to epidemiology and evidence-based medicine.
*Cytology is the microscopic study of individual cell (biology).
*Embryology is the study of the early development of organisms.
*Epidemiology is the study of the demographics of disease processes, and includes, but is not limited to, the study of epidemics.
*Genetics is the study of genes, and their role in biological inheritance.
*Histology is the study of the structures of biological tissues by light microscopy, electron microscopy and immunohistochemistry.
*Immunology is the study of the immune system, which includes the innate and adaptive immune system in humans, for example.
*Microbiology is the study of microorganisms, including protozoa, bacterium, fungus, and viruses.
*Neuroscience includes those disciplines of science that are related to the study of the nervous system. A main focus of neuroscience is the biology and physiology of the human brain and spinal cord.
*Nutrition is the study of the relationship of food and drink to health and disease, especially in determining an optimal diet. Medical nutrition therapy is done by dietitians and is prescribed for diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, weight and eating mental illnesss, allergies, malnutrition, and neoplasia diseases.
*Pathology as a science is the study of disease—the causes, course, progression and resolution thereof.
*Pharmacology is the study of Medications and their actions.
*Physiology is the study of the normal functioning of the body and the underlying regulatory mechanisms.
*Toxicology is the study of hazardous effects of drugs and poisons.

Specialties

In the broadest meaning of "medicine", there are many different specialties. However, within medical circles, there are two broad categories: "Medicine" and "Surgery." "Medicine" refers to the practice of non-operative medicine, and most subspecialties in this area require preliminary training in "Internal Medicine". "Surgery" refers to the practice of operative medicine, and most subspecialties in this area require preliminary training in "General Surgery." There are some specialties of medicine that do not fit into either of these categories, such as radiology, pathology, or anesthesia, and those are also discussed further below.

Surgery
Surgical specialties employ operative treatment. In addition, surgeons must decide when an operation is necessary, and also treat many non-surgical issues, particularly in the surgical intensive care unit (SICU), where a variety of critical issues arise. Surgery has many subspecialties, e.g. general surgery, trauma surgery, cardiovascular surgery, neurosurgery, maxillofacial surgery, orthopedic surgery, otolaryngology, plastic surgery, oncologic surgery, vascular surgery, and pediatric surgery. In some centers, anesthesiology is part of the division of surgery (for logistical and planning purposes), although it is not a surgical discipline.

Surgical training in the U.S. requires a minimum of five years of residency after medical school. Sub-specialties of surgery often require seven or more years. In addition, fellowships can last an additional one to three years. Because post-residency fellowships can be competitive, many trainees devote two additional years to research. Thus in some cases surgical training will not finish until more than a decade after medical school. Furthermore, surgical training can be very difficult and time-consuming. A surgical resident's average work week is approximately 75 hours. Some subspecialties of surgery, such as neurosurgery, require even longer hours, and utilize an extension to the 80 hour regulated work week, allowing up to 88 hours per week. Many surgical programs still exceed this work hour limit. Attempts to limit the amount of hours worked has been difficult because of the large volume of patients who require surgical care, the limited amount of resources (including a shortage of people willing to enter into surgery as a career) , the need to perform long operations and still provide care to all pre- and post-operative patients, and the need to provide constant coverage in the OR, ICU, and ER.

Medicine
*Internal medicine is concerned with systemic diseases of adults, i.e. those diseases that affect the body as a whole (restrictive, current meaning), or with all adult non-operative somatic medicine (traditional, inclusive meaning), thus excluding pediatrics, surgery, gynecology and obstetrics, and psychiatry. Practitioners of such specialties are referred to as physicians. There are several subdisciplines of internal medicine:
**Cardiology
**Critical care medicine
**Endocrinology
**Gastroenterology
**Hepatology
**Hematology
**Infectious diseases
**Nephrology
**Oncology
**Proctology
**Pulmonology
**Rheumatology
**Neurology
**Geriatrics

Generally, Pediatrics and Family Practice are also considered to fall under the category of "Medicine".

Medical training, as opposed to surgical training, requires three years of residency training after medical school. This can then be followed by a one to two year fellowship in the subspecialties listed above. In general, resident work hours in medicine are less than those in surgery, averaging about 60 hours per week.

Diagnostic specialties
*Clinical laboratory sciences are the clinical diagnostic services which apply laboratory techniques to diagnosis and management of patients. In the United States these services are supervised by a pathologist. The personnel that work in these medical laboratory departments are technically trained staff who do not hold medical degrees, but who usually hold an undergraduate medical technology degree, who actually perform the medical tests, assays, and procedures needed for providing the specific services. Subspecialties include Transfusion medicine, Cellular pathology, Clinical chemistry, Hematology, Clinical microbiology and Clinical immunology.
* Pathology as a medical specialty is the branch of medicine that deals with the study of diseases and the morphologic, physiologic changes produced by them. As a diagnostic specialty, pathology can be considered the basis of modern scientific medical knowledge and plays a large role in evidence-based medicine. Many modern molecular tests such as flow cytometry, polymerase chain reaction (PCR), immunohistochemistry, cytogenetics, gene rearrangements studies and fluorescent in situ hybridization (FISH) fall within the territory of pathology.
*Radiology is concerned with imaging of the human body, e.g. by x-rays, x-ray computed tomography, ultrasonography, and nuclear magnetic resonance tomography.
*Clinical neurophysiology is concerned with testing the physiology or function of the central and peripheral aspects of the nervous system. These kinds of tests can be divided into recordings of: (1) spontaneous or continuously running electrical activity, or (2) stimulus evoked responses. Subspecialties include Electroencephalography, Electromyography, Evoked potential, Nerve conduction study and Polysomnography. Sometimes these tests are performed by techs without a medical degree, but the interpretation of these tests is done by a medical professional.

Other
Following are some selected fields of medical specialties that don't directly fit into any of the above mentioned groups.

*Ophthalmology exclusively concerned with the eye and ocular adnexa. Combines conservative and surgical therapy, and has its own College.
*Dermatology is concerned with the skin and its diseases. In the UK, dermatology is a subspecialty of general medicine.
*Emergency medicine is concerned with the diagnosis and treatment of acute or life-threatening conditions, including physical trauma, surgical, medical, pediatric, and psychiatric emergencies.
*Obstetrics and gynecology (often abbreviated as OB/GYN) are concerned respectively with childbirth and the female reproductive and associated organs. Reproductive medicine and fertility medicine are generally practiced by gynecological specialists.
*Palliative care is a relatively modern branch of clinical medicine that deals with pain and symptom relief and emotional support in patients with terminal illnesses including cancer and heart failure.
*Pediatrics (AE) or paediatrics (BE) is devoted to the care of infants, children, and adolescents. Like internal medicine, there are many pediatric subspecialties for specific age ranges, organ systems, disease classes, and sites of care delivery.
*Physical medicine and rehabilitation (or psychiatry) is concerned with functional improvement after injury, illness, or congenital disorders.
*Psychiatry is the branch of medicine concerned with the biopsychosocial study of the etiology, diagnosis, treatment and prevention of cognitive, perceptual, emotional and behavioral disorders. Related non-medical fields include psychotherapy and clinical psychology.

Interdisciplinary fields

Interdisciplinary sub-specialties of medicine are:
*General practice, family practice, family medicine or primary care is, in many countries, the first port-of-call for patients with non-emergency medical problems.
*Many other health science fields, e.g. dietetics
*Bioethics is a field of study which concerns the relationship between biology, science, medicine and ethics, philosophy and theology.
*Biomedical Engineering is a field dealing with the application of engineering principles to medical practice.
*Clinical pharmacology is concerned with how systems of therapeutics interact with patients.
*Conservation medicine studies the relationship between human and animal health, and environmental conditions. Also known as ecological medicine, environmental medicine, or medical geology.
*Disaster medicine deals with medical aspects of emergency preparedness, disaster mitigation and management.
*Diving medicine (or hyperbaric medicine) is the prevention and treatment of diving-related problems.
* Evolutionary medicine is a perspective on medicine derived through applying evolutionary theory.
*Forensic medicine deals with medical questions in legal context, such as determination of the time and cause of death.
*Gender-based medicine studies the biological and physiological differences between the human sexes and how that affects differences in disease.
*Hospital medicine is the general medical care of hospitalized patients. Physicians whose primary professional focus is hospital medicine are called hospitalists in the USA.
*Keraunomedicine is the medical study of lightning casualties.
*Medical humanities includes the humanities (literature, philosophy, ethics, history and religion), social science (anthropology, cultural studies, psychology, sociology), and the arts (literature, theater, film, and visual arts) and their application to medical education and practice.
* Medical informatics, medical computer science, medical information and eHealth are relatively recent fields that deal with the application of computers and information technology to medicine.
*Naturopathic medicine is concerned with primary care, natural remedies, patient education and disease prevention.
*Nosology is the classification of diseases for various purposes.
*Preventive medicine is the branch of medicine concerned with preventing disease.
**Community health or public health is an aspect of health services concerned with threats to the overall health of a community based on population health analysis.
**Occupational medicine's principal role is the provision of health advice to organizations and individuals to ensure that the highest standards of health and safety at work can be achieved and maintained.
**Aerospace medicine deals with medical problems related to flying and Human spaceflight.
*Osteopathic medicine in the United States, a branch of the U.S. medical profession.
*Pharmacogenomics is a form of individualized medicine.
*Sports medicine deals with the treatment and preventive care of sportsperson, amateur and professional. The team includes specialty physicians and surgeons, athletic trainers, physical therapists, Coach (sport)es, other personnel, and, of course, the athlete.
*Therapeutics is the field, more commonly referenced in earlier periods of history, of the various remedies that can be used to treat disease and promote health http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-9106176?query=Therapeutics&ct=.
*Travel medicine or emporiatrics deals with health problems of international travelers or travelers across highly different environments.
*Professions complementing physicians
**Nursing specialties; Medical specialties performed by Nurses.
**Mid-level Practitioners: Performance of medical sciences by other certified people than physicians or nurses; Certified nurse practitioners, midwives and physician assistants, treat patients and prescribe medication in many legal jurisdictions.
*Urgent care focuses on delivery of unscheduled, walk-in care outside of the hospital emergency department for injuries and illnesses that are not severe enough to require care in an emergency department.
*Veterinary Medicine; veterinarians apply similar techniques as physicians to the care of animals. The original focus of veterinary medicine was primarily the health care of domestic animals. In recent years the discipline has broadened to include all vertebrate animals and even some of the more economically valuable or scientifically interesting invertebrates. Veterinary and human medicine had similar origins but diverged in the West largely under the influence of Christian doctrine which emphasized a fundamental difference between humans and all other species. The two disciplines re-converged to some degree after the Renaissance when scientific study of anatomy and physiology revealed undeniable similarities between humans and other animals. The similarities further extend into pathology and disease control leading the early pioneer in scientific pathology, Rudolf Virchow, to proclaim the doctrine of "one medicine".

Education

An image of a 1901 examination in the faculty of medicine.

Medical education is education connected to the practice of being a medical practitioner, either the initial training to become a physician or further training thereafter.

Medical education and training varies considerably across the world, however typically involves entry level education at a university medical school, followed by a period of supervised practice (medical intern and/or residency (medicine)) and possibly postgraduate vocational training. Continuing medical education is a requirement of many regulatory authorities.

Various teaching methodologies have been utilized in medical education, which is an active area of educational research.

Presently, in England, a typical medicine course at university is 5 years after secondary education (4 if the student already holds a degree). Amongst some institutions and for some students, it may be 6 years (including the selection of an intercalated BScâtaking one yearâat some point after the pre-clinical studies). This is followed by 2 Foundation years afterwards, namely F1 and F2. Students register with the UK General Medical Council at the end of F1. At the end of F2, they may pursue further years of study.

In the US and Canada, a potential medical student must first complete an undergraduate degree in any subject before applying to a graduate medical school to pursue a (Doctor of Medicine, Naturopathy or Doctor of Osteopathic Medicine) program. Some students opt for the research-focused MD/PhD dual degree, which is usually completed in 7-8 years. There are certain courses which are pre-requisite for being accepted to medical school, such as general chemistry, organic chemistry, physics, mathematics, biology, English, labwork, etc. The specific requirements vary by school.

In Australia, there are two pathways to a medical degree. Students can choose to take a five or six year undergraduate medical degree Bachelor of Medicine/Bachelor of Surgery (MBBS or BMed) straight from high school, or complete a bachelors degree (generally three years, usually in the medical sciences) and then apply for a four year Graduate Medical Program Bachelor of Medicine/Bachelor of Surgery (MBBS) program.

Legal restrictions

In most countries, it is a legal requirement for a medical doctor to be licensed or registered. In general, this entails a medical degree from a university and accreditation by a medical board or an equivalent national organization, which may ask the applicant to pass exams. This restricts the considerable legal authority of the medical profession to physicians that are trained and qualified by national standards. It is also intended as an assurance to patients and as a safeguard against charlatans that practice inadequate medicine for personal gain. While the laws generally require medical doctors to be trained in "evidence based", Western, or Hippocratic Medicine, they are not intended to discourage different paradigms of health.

Criticism

Criticism of medicine has a long history. In the Middle Ages, some people did not consider it a profession suitable for Christians, as disease was often considered God-sent. God was considered to be the "divine physician" who sent illness or healing depending on his will. However, many monastic orders, particularly the Benedictines, considered the care of the sick as their chief work of mercy. Barber surgeon generally had a bad reputation that was not to improve until the development of academic surgery as a specialty of medicine, rather than an accessory field.

Through the course of the twentieth century, healthcare providers focused increasingly on the technology that was enabling them to make dramatic improvements in patients' health. The ensuing development of a more mechanistic, detached practice, with the perception of an attendant loss of patient-focused care, known as the medical model of health, led to further criticisms. This issue started to reach collective professional consciousness in the 1970s and the profession had begun to respond by the 1980s and 1990s.

The noted anarchist Ivan Illich heavily criticized modern medicine. In his 1976 work Medical Nemesis, Illich stated that modern medicine "medicalizes" disease and causes loss of health and wellness, while generally failing to restore health by eliminating disease. This medicalization of disease forces the human to become a lifelong patient. some may be effective in individual cases. Some physicians combine alternative medicine with orthodox approaches.

Medical errors and overmedication are also the focus of many complaints and negative coverage. Practitioners of human factors engineering believe that there is much that medicine may usefully gain by emulating concepts in aviation safety, where it was long ago realized that it is dangerous to place too much responsibility on one "superhuman" individual and expect him or her not to make errors. Reporting systems and checking mechanisms are becoming more common in identifying sources of error and improving practice.

References

Head tracking

hitchhiker — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 18:10:54 GMT

Woody Allen - What Happens During Ejaculation

hitchhiker — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 11:01:37 GMT

Japandering

hitchhiker — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 10:27:57 GMT

Episode 24 of "The Meth Minute" explores the phenomenon ofHollywood stars appearing in Japanese commercials. Personally, we thinkthese are their finest performances.

Four Yorkshiremen

hitchhiker — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 00:34:22 GMT

Ahh the memories...

Armstrong & Miller - WWII RAF Sketch 3

hitchhiker — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 15:06:39 GMT

Armstrong & Miller - WWII RAF Sketch 2

hitchhiker — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 15:06:07 GMT

Great stuff from Derren Brown

hitchhiker — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 15:04:50 GMT