I love the story of how Archie Cochrane, founder of
the Cochrane collaboration, first gained notoriety as a very junior staff member at the massive Department of Health in London. This was recounted to me by his friend, another great Scotsman, health economist Prof Gavin Mooney…
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How Archie Cochrane flipped the medical world on its head
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Locum days
In my heady days of youth, I spent 18 months avoiding a steady job and worked as a locum. This involved a serious commitment to helping out GPs in their week of need, then running away. My CV screamed like a real estate billboard: location, location, location…
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Naked Doctor strikes again
Justin’s column on overtesting, overtreatment and over-diagnosis sits on the new-look Croakey website. He has been proselytising around the country to anyone awake enough to listen, including the RACGP GP12 convention and the National Prescribing Service AGM. This web post has just saved you a plane fare.
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It’s all History
Justin’s writes a monthly Medical Observer column. Recently, he reckons himself a medical historian after reading one book. Well, most of the first two chapters. But the book WAS so historical it was quite tattered.
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Recalling tragedy
Justin remembers a stormy night in the Emergency Department in his first year as a doctor.
A nurse taught him the first steps towards equanimity.
One night two ambulances came back from the Queenscliff road, where a driver had swerved to avoid a dog and had hit a tree… Read more
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The Naked Doctor is IN
OVERDOING IT!
Even useful things can be overused. Sometimes in medicine, ’doing nothing’ is the best option.
Justin has had a career-long interest in the pitfalls of over diagnosis and over treatment. He has started a new blog hosted on the Croakey website. Titled the Naked Doctor, it contains no raunchy author photos, largely because that would be an oxymoron. The blog probes those areas of medical practice which would be better stripped bare.
The modern doctor seems to have an intervention for every occasion. He or she wears a magician’s coat of surprises, each more incredible than the last… Read more
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Tagged croakey, naked doctor, overdiagnosis, overtreatment
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Life in the ordinary lane
Justin featured in the Courier Mail’s Ordinary People column on 28 May 2011 and he’s not quite sure why. There’s an audio and a few pics on their website: story by Amanda Watts.
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Brisbane floods and a wet grand piano
Justin’s damp tale of neighbourly solidarity after the Brisbane floods was published in the Big Issue, the Medical Observer and the international magazine Street News . It became Medical Observer’s most tweeted article ever.
I live half way up a steep street whose end is now dipped in the Brisbane River… Read more
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Why would an ordinary fella like me get a job in a Centre of Excellence?
The RACGP website and magazine Good Practice published an article on why Justin chooses to work in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health.
When Willie Sutton was asked why he kept robbing banks, he replied ‘Because that’s where the money is!’ … Read more
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If medical writers usually forage alone or in pairs, what happens when they leave the safety of their computer?
Justin has just posted an article on Croakey, describing the AMWA annual medical writers’ conference in Sydney.
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