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Contents page (PDF)

Cover Image

Editor's choice

Winds of change

Frontiers

The month in research

Editorials

Give us back our BNF
Sam Leinster argues that the Department of Health's decision to stop providing for free a drug formulary to UK medical students sends out the wrong signals

Diagnosis using search engines
It may herald a much more sophisticated web resource, argues Martin GardnerSee

News

Outsourced

news bites

Education

Mistaken identity
Cancer is really a stem cell disease, argue George Murphy and Malcolm R Alison

Renal failure after cardiac surgery
A 52 year old non-smoking black man presented with a two week history of dysuria, malaise, fever, and rigors. In the past he had had recurrent urinary tract infections requiring antibiotic treatment.

Anaesthesia: Introduction and preoperative assessment
In the first of a four part series, Jonathan Behar and colleagues tell us how to assess patients in the lead up to an operation

Series: Lab medicine in primary care Biochemical liver function tests
W Stuart A Smellie and Stephen D Ryder consider two common scenarios of "abnormal" liver test results that may be seen in primary care

An unusual cause of abdominal pain

Careers

Strike a chord
Mimi Mo asks whether music therapy has practical applications in clinical practice

So you want to be a rock 'n' roll star?
Rick Fraser argues that early training in rock music will put you in good stead for a career in youth psychiatry

Seven tips for a new job
Algenes Alphius Aranha and Rachel Hooke give survival tips for before you start a new job as a junior doctor

Obstetrics and gynaecology
Dharani Hapangama and Melissa Whitworth  explain the possibilities in the exciting field of obstetrics and gynaecology in the light of the changing world of Modernising Medical Careers

People

Dolly, human cloning, and bioethics
Ian Wilmut was behind the cutting edge research that gave rise to Dolly the sheep, the world's first cloned animal. Christos Tziotzios finds out about his take on science, religion, and the bioethics of cloning

Papers

Can Google help you to diagnose patients' problems?
This month Trish Groves takes you through a cross sectional study that tried to find out whether the internet search engine Google is useful as a diagnostic tool

Life

Medicine, multiple sclerosis, and me
What's it like being a medical student with multiple sclerosis? Jenna Louise Duffy hares her experiences

On the front line: The Somalia diary
As the tension heightens in the Horn of Africa, Geraldine O'Hara recounts her experiences of working with Médecins Sans Frontières in Somalia

Uncomfortable experiences
Sometimes the only way we can learn is through experience. But Ben W Griffiths wonders whether we should expect patients to share all with medical students

Autopsy around the world
Claire Chambers wonders whether autopsies should be compulsory in undergraduate medical education

Trading places
In a transition like no other, Sonia Wolf describes her experiences of being a medical student, then a patient, and back again

Letters

AIDS: mother to child transmission

Support all students with children

Domestic violence in pregnancy

The menace of quackery: examples please

Reviews

GBS

High altitudes

Medics who mentor

While there's moonlight and music

Yes, I'm Asian

Eyespy