Hi there. Rhona here today. This week has been a bit manic and I have not had a chance to tell you about the Shared Planet conference I was speaking at last Saturday. Organised by People & Planet - a UK Students campaigning organisation on world poverty, human rights and the environment, 100s of students gathered in Sheffield, UK,  to learn more about these issues and get energised and enthusiastic about campaigning. It was all very encouraging. People & Planet have some great campaigns going just now around trade justice, HIV/AIDS, and the environment, which you may want to check out.

Now to new content on the site: Anna Shore discusses her elective in Nepal where she worked at a leprosy hospital and we have a letter to a new medical student from Daniel Sokol, a lecturer in medical ethics and law. The reviewers and I thought this was definitely worth publishing as it is a useful reminder to to remember what’s important even if you are not a “new” medical student. His message is basically this: “Do not yield to this temptation, however strong, but take the ethical issues in medicine as seriously as you do the technical ones. This doesn’t mean devouring textbooks on medical ethics. It means simply seeing ethics as integral to the proper care of your patients. Just as you want to increase your understanding of the factual aspects of medicine, so should you want to deepen your moral understanding. Your ability to perceive moral issues, to reason through ethical problems in search of a solution, and to act upon your decision is inextricably linked to your future success as a doctor. ” Spot on! Rhona

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This entry was posted on Thursday, November 22nd, 2007 at 5:23 pm and is filed under Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can trackback from your own site.