There is a restaurant in London where dinner is served in the dark. Not dim light or occasional infrequent light, but absolute pitch black darkness. Apparently the aim is twofold; to better appreciate the quality of the food as the...
“And Cain said unto the Lord, my punishment is greater than I can bear. Behold, thou hast driven me out this day from the face of the earth; and from thy face shall I be hid. And Cain went out...
The Lakota Sioux people of Dakota have one of the best preserved Native American cultures in the United States and when people think of the ‘American Indian’ it is to the culture of the Lakota Sioux that people mostly turn....
Rudyard Kipling was a very wise chap. He was in San Francisco towards the end of the 19th century and noticed that in some bars and saloons the house was giving away free lunches for every patron who first purchased...
I wasn’t on call and my bleep went off. I knew without looking that it was the directorate office. Immediately my heart sank, for these calls were always about bad things. They never called to say “well done Gwyn you’re...
It is one of the great trials of medical life trying to get things published. Where once upon a time a few case reports and being eighth author on a paper or two was more than sufficient to secure a...
When I was starting off in ophthalmology my then boss had a standard spiel after completing a cataract case. It did not vary and I do not recall an instance of it not taking place. “The operation went well and...
My father used to say that humanity is divided into those that see the world through a moral framework and recognise their place within it, and Tories. When a concerned mother came to the paediatric clinic bearing literature from the...
The crowd is gathering at the watering hole in the Serengeti that is Friday teaching at the Major Teaching Hospital. Would there be enough different species of consultant present or would there be insufficient numbers? If a critical mass of...
There she was. Sitting in the waiting room with her arms crossed, tut-tutting to herself and shaking her head mournfully every few minutes. We gazed at her from a safe distance while one of the nurses confirmed what we already...
I am interested in the stressful nature of cataract surgery from the surgeon rather than the patient’s perspective. It is an issue that has quite literally kept me awake at night. Part of getting to grips with a problem is...
There is a song by the Amateur Transplants called ‘Finals Fantasy’ which describes in humorous detail how stressful clinical exams can be. Having not done any viva or objectively structured clinical examination (OSCE) style exams for many years indeed I...