PRIMARY SURVEY
Primary survey
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Thinking, not doing (for once)
It’s good, once in a while, to take a moment to explore the philosophical issues that often lurk unseen in our rather frenetic specialty. Rick Body and Bernard Föex provide the basis for many such moments in their thoughtful piece on diagnosis and utilitarianism. Starting with a description of our positivist approach to diagnosis they argue that it is an untenable proposition. Passing by Oslers’ ageless wisdom they touch on Baysean concepts and discuss whether "doing no harm" is possible in a world of false positives and false negatives. Then they describe utilitarianism and explore its place in modern medicine. If you didn’t know that the Greeks had three different terms for knowledge and if you want to indulge in a bit of thinking and reflection then read this excellent article (see page 238).
3 minute predictor
In an interesting preliminary paper Andy Pan and colleagues, from Ottawa, report on the
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