As you embark on several years of study, you will spend most of your waking hours engaged in writing, reading, revising, placements and lectures. And yet we rarely hear a sermon on work. So here are four things for you to take into your studies: your work doesn't define you...
implications of new in utero surgery for fetuses with spina bifida In October 2018, in utero spinal surgery was performed in the UK for the first time on two fetuses with spina bifida. (1) In February, the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, Matt Hancock confirmed that the...
How did a little nun become a Nobel Prize winner, the most admired person of the 20th century (1) and 'the greatest Indian' since Gandhi? (2) All these were bigger feats given that she was born Albanian, with the less memorable name Anjezë Gonxhe Bojaxhiu. She renamed herself after Therese...
So 'naming', creating definitions and classifications is a basic human activity mandated by God. How might medical language illuminate or distort our view of people? how do you know? There are two main schools of thought about knowledge. At one end, there is positivism which relies on hard sciences to 'read'...
what is addiction? 'Can you control your drinking?' a colleague innocently asked a circle of doctors, at the bar at 5pm, followed by: 'and why do you think you need to control it?' The issue of control is at the heart of addiction. I will look at psychoactive substances...
Other students always love to point out that Oxford and Cambridge preclinical students have three eight week terms, which (in theory) equals twenty-eight weeks holiday! Not everyone gets quite such a generous entitlement. But wherever you study, the summer holidays during the early years of medical school are the longest...
My name is Alex and I'm a workaholic. Perhaps you are too? Try this mental test. Close your eyes. Imagine you feel all that God expects of you, what the world needs from you, and what the church lays on your shoulders. List those duties. Do they feel light or...
Social action is the alleviation of human suffering and injustice, exploitation and deprivation. It has been a feature of Christian mission from the start. The apostles James, Peter and John urged Paul when he launched his mission to the gentiles: 'All they asked was that we should continue to remember...
What do you see as the end or goal of history? Many Westerners hope for the establishment of liberal free market democracies around the world. Others despair at the looming environmental catastrophes threatening to convulse the planet. Many atheists assume that humanity is an accident of nature heading for extinction,...
Mission. What do you associate with that word? David Livingstone dispensing quinine under a baobab tree? Let Nucleus expand your horizons: Ted Lankester shows us why mission today is as diverse as your skills, and a medical degree is a passport to virtually every place on the planet. The Saline...