"Why obesity is not your doctor’s problem."

An excellent article entitled "Fat City - What can stop obesity?" was posted by Dr. Karen Hitchcock in March 2013 in The Monthly.  I think it's well worth reading.  

Have you ever tried counseling obese patients about considering weight loss?  A lot of people will agree with the concept ("I don't want to be fat!"), but only a few make the effort needed to change.   

In some ways, scientific research has taken obesity outside the realm where it is a consequence of choices made by a more or less free-willed individual in a more or less free society, which nonetheless disapproves of excess. In current medical research obesity is often conceptualised as an unavoidable disease. It’s your genes, your metabolism, the chemicals in your environment, what your mother ate when she was pregnant, whether she fed you at her breast. It is everything but what you choose to put in your mouth. 

On a slightly-related note - if anyone's ever visited a McDonald's in Australia, you'd be surprised at the difference.  In terms of beverages, an Australian "large" is pretty much equivalent to the American "medium" and the "small" to the "happy meal size".  Oh and Reddit agrees.     

Shoes for the Wards

For me, clinical day shoes must fulfill a couple of requirements - namely, that they be:

1) Comfy

• Some days I'm on my feet from 7 AM - 5 PM (or even longer!) and so this is my number one requirement.

2a) Look professional

•  Technically my clinical school has a strict no 'runners' rule, but I've gotten away with wearing mine quite a few times.  In the OT though, runners are probably the better option.

2b) Match what you're wearing

• Runners fail miserably at this; conversely, ballet flats match almost anything but they also have the side effect of being bloody uncomfortable! Trust me, I have three different pairs of ballet flats that I adore but can't wear if I'm going to be on my feet for more than an hour.

3) Protect your feet

PW Minor Broadway.

• Depending on what you're doing, you want your feet covered especially when you're working with fluids or sharp objects.   

My first pair of shoes were a pair of black leather lace-up comfort shoes I'd gotten from Walmart (similar in style to the one shown on the right, but at 1/4 of the price).  They pretty much fulfilled all the criteria I had so unsurprisingly they also wore out pretty quickly.






I'd tried ballet flats for awhile but after limping home following one long day on the wards, I'd decided that it wasn't practical in the long run.

Ankle boots from DWD Shoes

I switched to ankle boots for awhile, in particular combat/doc marten-style boots.  Surprisingly, it seems like these boots are the new fashionable thing to wear these days, which works out well for me.  You wouldn't think it but they do fulfill every criteria above and if I'm particularly worried about #2a, I'd pair it with some long dress pants (boot-cut, of course) and they look great.  

 

Reflections on International Medical Schools

A lot of the information in this post is based off of forums (SDN, Premed101), friends and Google..and a minor bit from personal experience.  As you've probably gleaned from my previous posts, I was a arts/science kid in undergrad.  So I had a lot of contact with overeager premed and prelaw students.  Unsurprisingly, some of it rubbed off.

One of the biggest questions that usually crops out on the premed forums - for those thinking of applying outside North America for medical school - is "Caribbean vs. Australia vs Ireland vs UK vs Europe vs Asia vs. Etc".  Regardless of where you ultimately decide to go to, you'll be labelled an IMG if you decide to head back to North America - but that's probably best left as the subject of another blog post.  It's no secret that studying where you want to eventually practice is the best plan, but sometimes things don't work out the way you want them to.  That's life.    

Everyone has their reasons for applying outside of Canada/USA. Some want to avoid the MCAT, some because the NA schools can be rather unforgiving about their GPA requirements, some because they didn't get in despite having the stats, etc.

I'm not here to make judgements on that.  Rather, what I want to provide is a 'Pros and Cons List' of what I think these locations encompass.  Remember, these are my opinions - feel free to disagree but please don't get nasty about it. Parts of this post has previously appeared on SDN but since I wrote that post as well...