Printed from: https://archive.cmf.org.uk/resources/publications/content/?context=issue&id=6020
Medicine is not a pure science like physics, rather an applied one like rocket engineering. It uses science to pursue goals. This is beautifully expressed in the motto of the Royal College of General Practitioners, my own: 'Cum Scientia Caritas' – 'with science I care'. A central innovation of...
In February 2009, national attention was drawn to the case of Caroline Petrie, a community nurse suspended after offering to pray for a patient. (2) She was subsequently offered her job back on the proviso she asked patients about their spiritual needs first before offering to pray for them. Her...
The days of Sir Lancelot Spratt are long past. Sixty years ago Richard Gordon's preposterous surgeon in Doctor in the House dealt with cases rather than people and taught medicine by aphorisms and bullying. (1) Physical mechanisms of ill health and its cure were central to clinical practice. Students were...
Medical school is a critical time for students. Many will be away from home for the first time, exposed to new ideas, lifestyles and temptations. Most will make life-changing choices of career; some will make eternal-life-changing decisions of faith. They are ready to learn and discover deeper truths for themselves,...
Mark Lee: supporting medical students in Armenia Mark is a palliative care consultant in Newcastle . 'It all started at an ICMDA conference in 2001, when some medical students asked my prayer partner Chris Richards to run a summer camp in Armenia and he asked me to help....
You used to moderate the CMF Forum on the big doctors-only website, doctors.net.uk, so presumably you've been a fan of electronic communication for a while? GC: Yes – it's rapid, cheap and reaches many people at once. That of course has its dangers: hastily written emails, replied 'to all' are...
In 2006 Triple Helix asked whether single Christian doctors should embrace twenty first century dating techniques. (1) Stephanie (2) is a consultant physician in her forties who read the article and subsequently registered with a couple of the introduction agencies featured. Through one she met James (2), an engineer a...
This excellent little book tackles ten assertions made by Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens and others in recent polemics against God. Each chapter considers a different topic, convincingly demonstrating the limitations of atheist arguments about faith, memes, evidence, types of explanations and the nature of science. Sometimes, the illustrating stories are not...
The paradox in the title draws the reader into this book. Horsfall draws on his extensive experience of training to provide guidance for sustainable Christian life. He uses the example of Jesus' meeting with the Samaritan woman at the well in John 4 as Jesus 'working from a place of...
This book was written from the author's experience of having a critically ill newborn and the years of isolation, hospital admissions and operations that followed. The spiritual wilderness and lack of spiritual support Philo experienced spurred her to write these simple meditations on caring for a critically or chronically ill...
Grasping Heaven recounts two great adventures in the life of Tami Fisk, a brilliant young Christian doctor from the USA. Despite her gifts for medical research, Tami chose to serve and love the marginalised poor in a mountainous area of southwest China where both medical facilities and living conditions were...
This is a sobering story for those who think that sexual abuse of children takes place only outside the church, or mainly in one sector of the church, if the church is involved at all. It happens in evangelical churches too. It's a courageous book on many levels. The author writes...
We have a problem. Look at most scientific papers.While the paper starts with a question and proposes an answer, it ends by recommending further work.Although it has increased our bounty of known knowns, it also identifies some new known unknowns, and gives us a sense of other unknown unknowns out...
Many parents are uncomfortable with relationships teaching delivered from an overtly secular standpoint that promotes a strongly liberal morality. This is a four-part interactive lesson resource for school years 5 and 6. Focusing on a couple who are engaging and relaxed as they discuss their marriage in a positive but realistic...
The 2010 general election, with its television debates and hung Parliament leading to a Lib-Con coalition engaged a public, normally bored with politics, like no other in living memory. Perhaps predictably, the economy and immigration were the issues that most captivated media attention. Several weeks of preparing the public...
'Could kindness heal the NHS?' This moving Personal View by portfolio GP Angela Jones is about lack of caring in the NHS: 'I regularly treat acutely unwell elderly patients in need of hospitalisation who beg me not to send them in. I know sensible people who have given up going to...
We never consciously set out to have a theme for this edition of Triple Helix, much less one about relationships. But that's how the material – commissioned and contributed spontaneously – came in. We've considered whether QOF's box-ticking damages the doctor-patient relationship, what really matters in parentprofessional relationships when a baby...
It is a typical busy hospital day on call and the bleep is going off incessantly. Urgent reviews, angry or upset relatives, drug chart changes, abnormal blood results or cultures – the list of jobs to juggle on top of our normal day to day activities can seem endless. It...
The article summarising four GP members' approaches to abortion 'referrals' (Easter 2010:14-15) stimulated two new contributions and a second bite at the cherry. Philip Davies, an STI training in general practice in Birmingham: I often look to other Christians both as role models and to seek advice from them. I...
CMF File 41 on 'Climate change' triggered opposing responses. London SpR in Public Health Helen Barratt: Thank you for the excellent CMF File. Climate change has been described as 'the most important public health challenge of the 21st Century'. (1) As readers will be aware, the NHS and the wider...
12 May 2010 saw the close of the Scottish parliament's public consultation on the End of Life Assistance (Scotland) Bill, expected to be voted upon at the end of the year. This Bill was put forward by Margo MacDonald – Scotland's only independent MSP – who suffers from Parkinson's disease. ...
In June 2010, mission leaders, theologians and church leaders from Protestant, Pentecostal, Catholic and Orthodox traditions met in Edinburgh at the Centenary of the historic 1910 Edinburgh Missions Conference. They worked to forge new alliances and new vision for mission in the 21st century, to open up a new conversation...
On 24 May Marie Stopes International (MSI) broadcast for the first time on British TV an advertisement for its abortion services. However 'sensitive' Are you late? may or may not have been, British women surely are sufficiently aware of how to access abortion services. Television is a powerful medium for...
Disabled people's leaders launched a new campaign in Westminster on 3 June calling for better support and opposing any change in the law to allow 'assisted dying'. Not Dead Yet UK's (1) 'Resistance' campaign (2) has been prompted by fears that calls to legalise assisted suicide and euthanasia are likely...
