Tag: The Wall Street Journal

Reading of the Week: Should Medical Education Stay in Its Lane? Goldfarb Argues Yes; Also, Problems in Youth (BJP) & Medical Memoirs (Lancet Psych)

From the Editor

What’s the best way of training future doctors?

Medical education has changed much over the years – schools across the country embraced the McMaster model, then cooled to it; efforts have been made to revisit core curriculum topics and add in more timely ones.

In the first selection, the University of Pennsylvania’s Dr. Stanley Goldfarb – a former associate dean of curriculum at the Perelman School of Medicine – bemoans the state of medical education. Controversially, he argues in The Wall Street Journal: “Curricula will increasingly focus on climate change, social inequities, gun violence, bias and other progressive causes only tangentially related to treating illness.”

Is he right? We discuss the essay and responses to the essay.

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In the next selection, we look at a new British Journal of Psychiatry paper. Drawing on a large dataset, the University College London’s Jessica Deighton and her co-authors study the rate of psychiatric problems among youths. “Findings reported here indicate the scale of mental health problems in children across many schools in England is much higher than previous estimates…”

And in the third selection, Dr. Linda Gask, a British psychiatrist, considers autobiographies written by physicians. “These stories can, in turn, inspire, impress, inform, engage, and even shock through the sharing of personal conflict and confessions…”

DG

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Reading of the Week: The Pill That Talks to Doctors, & More

From the Editor

The pill. The criticism. The question.

Readings have covered everything from new books to political speeches. This week, we consider a few thought-provoking pieces. Is there a common theme? Maybe this: the world of mental health care is changing – and fast.

In these three selections, we look at: the pill that talks to doctors and family, the criticism of digital health, the question about the true nature of schizophrenia.

Enjoy.

DG

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Reading of the Week: Drugs, Drugs, Drugs – Vermont Tries To Break The Addiction Cycle, and Minister Philpott Weighs In On Opioids

From the Editor

“I don’t think that we can sit back and be complacent for one moment,” said Toronto Mayor John Tory in a media interview in which he called for an ‘all hands on deck’ approach to dealing with opioids.

It’s a comment on our times when the mayor of Canada’s largest city is focused on the use (and abuse) of opioids. And so are others – opioid addiction has sparked conversations across North America, from big city Canada to rural America. In 2014, Peter Shumlin, governor of the second smallest state in the U.S., devoted his annual address to the opioid problem striking “every corner” of Vermont.

Vermont: hills, lakes, opioids

How we deal with opioids is complicated, touching on everything from drug regulation to clinician education. But the legal response is particularly interesting – the intersection of the law, addiction, and public policy. And so, in this Reading, we look at the Green Mountain State. In a Wall Street Journal essay, reporters Jennifer Levitz and Scott Calvert discuss Vermont’s experimentation with mandatory treatment for minor drug-related crimes – and the struggles of a young user.

We also consider federal Minister of Health Jane Philpott’s recent essay on the opioid issue, which ran in The Globe and Mail last week. She calls on us to address the roots of the issue – which “are tangled and deep.”

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