In the controversy over MTAS ( See posting on 28 March 2007), Channel 4 News reported on 20 April that a leaked document showed that the Government was considering offering voluntary work overseas for unsuccessful doctors. VSO had given information on its placements to the DoH. The document also revealed that about 10,000 doctors may be at risk. Read more...
Channel 4 News also reported on 24 April the security breach, alerted by a doctor, after an error at the MTAS website where highly personal details of thousands of junior doctors could be seen. The DoH was informed by Channel 4 News and the website was temporarily suspended amid concerns of security lapses.
The latest error of MTAS was the rejection of the application of a UK born doctor, Dr Luk who went to Cambridge University, because he did not have the "correct immigration status". Although the London Deanery has apologised for the error, he still has not had any interviews.
Doctors groups reacted with dismay and had little faith left with what they described a "shambolic" system. At the doctors conference in London last Saturday, delegates passed a motion calling for the Health Secretary Hewitt and Health Minister Hunt to resign, for NAO to investigate how much public money had been spent on the computer system and for the system to be scrapped.
The data watchdog, ICO, is to investigate the security breach that led to personal details made available online. Read more ...
Using iPods to teach doctors to recognise heartbeats
Research studies show that the average doctor identifies 40% of heart sounds correctly.
Dr Michael Barrett, associate professor and cardiologist at Temple University studied 149 doctors who listened 400 times to five common heart murmurs for 90 minutes on iPods. After the listening session, they got 80% right.
Dr Barrett believes that the key to learning heart murmurs is repetition but 400 heartbeats were too much to ask of a live patient, so he uses computer-generated simulations of "heart songs" and convert them into MP3 files that can be downloaded to iPods. His medical students listen to the recordings whenever they have the time, this will help improve their stethoscope skills.
Last month at the annual conference of the American College of Cardiology (ACC), Dr Barrett presented the findings of his study and said "cardiology can be taught by iPod …. older physicians can also benefit from adding the MP3s to their music libraries".
No comments:
Post a Comment