Sunday, 1 November 2009

1st November 2009

Horrible weather outside for the first day of November, Dundee Utd v Rangers game was called off today due to flooding, Arsenal beat Spurs 3 - 0 yesterday!

I've submitted the abstract from my BMSc to two competitions now:
The ATRIUM (Academic TRaining In Undergraduate Medicine) Society at the University of Edinburgh, and the Royal Society of Medicine Pathology Abstract competition. Fingers crossed! Not sure what I'll do if they ask me for a poster though!!

Reading in the Lancet Student today, forensic psychiatry is a speciality which links between medicine and law and involves the care and management of offenders with mental health problems. In the UK there is a good setup for the management of such individuals however in many countries in the world forensic psychiatry isn't even recognised as a speciality with offenders being placed in public jails which lack the kinds of support services these people require. The article is titled: Forensic Psychiatry: Current Status and Future Impact on Global Mental Health.

We had an email last week from the medical school about avalaibility of the swine flu vaccine.Last year only 16.5% of healthcare workers took the seasonal flu vaccine, so why should this year be any different? Reasons for people not wanting the vaccine include concerns about its safety and the low percieved threat of a pandemic. Interestingly last time there was a swine flu vaccination (1976-7), 12 per million recipients developed Guillain-Barre syndrome. Healthcare staff at the moment are being urged to take up the vaccine to help protect themselves and their patients. Deaths in young adults have occurred, but the current strain (H1N1) is a mild illness for most people. I'm pretty un-decided at the moment.

The most interesting patient who I saw this week during the opthalmology attachment was a 75 year old male with a recently diagnosed Bell's palsy. A Bell's palsy in a unilateral, neuropathy affecting the facial nerve. Opthalmic complications commonly occur due to exposure of the eye as a result of an inability to close the eyelids for protection. This patient had a painful corneal ulceration and a red eye, he was admitted for an intensive course of prophylactic antibiotics, tarsorrhaphy (surgery to close the eyelids) and a botox injection to the upper eyelid to induce a temporary ptosis.

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