Sucked in, Dennis

I like much of the blogosphere I latched onto the tale of Amina Abdallah Araf al Omari who presented herself as a "Gay Girl in Damascus", with great interest. Here was a woman who's religion and sexual politics put her in harms way and who blogged about her experiences with clarity and spirit.

I felt particularly moved when I read the post covering a night-time attempted abduction by Syrian governmental agents and how her father had saved her life with words and composure.

Then I felt the outrage only a liberal can know when I read a post from her cousin detailing Amina's abduction from the street. I felt a cold sense of dread that the next post would be a requiem, describing how her body was found in a back alley, obviously tortured and abused.

Except it wasn't.

The whole thing was a literary exercise by an 40 year old American man, studying in Edinburgh.

I couldn't have felt more angry, though I wasn't sure if I was more angry at myself for having been so credulous and breathlessly ready to repeat "her" story to coursemates, or the guy who made this story up for the untold damage he has wrought on anyone who tries to tell a similar tale (except truthfully).

When the abduction tale was posted, Syrian officials were quick to say "We've looked into, this person doesn't exist." I, like many I suspect, thought to myself "Well, they would say that wouldn't they?" Turns out they were telling the truth. And the next time another person in an oppressive regime speaks out online and provides insight to living in danger because of their political belief, sexual persuasion or whatever, well that person will have to fight that bit more to get people to heed their call.

So any number of limp, ashen-faced apologies from Tom McMaster will not appease my annoyance with him. Especially as he had the gall to chastise his readers (and subsequent critics) in the initial post where he coughed to his "brief experiment in nerd psychology".

Okay, I'm spent. Back to your regular programming.

Acceptable, again

My school has an interesting way of grading our exam results: Acceptable, Cause for Concern and Unacceptable. You also get to know the range of the class’s score and the median result. But no A’s or B’s or curving the grade.

And I’m acceptable. More accurately I’m a bit above-average. And that is something I’m entirely happy with, because frankly, I’ve needed a win for a while now. I’ve been bogged down in feeling like I wasn’t good enough to, like I should stop this nonsense and head back into nursing where I could make a buck, be good at something and not feel like I was a pretender. My grade for the mock OSCE put me a little above average which is where I have been throughout my educational career. Primary school, secondary school, A-levels, previous university life - above average. Not top of the class, not a notably able student who’s full of promise, just a pretty good student.

So I can go into revision for the next round of exams (2 and a bit weeks time) with a more positive feeling than I went into the mock OSCE. And I've just finished a weekend at the family homestead, being fed and watered, drinking someone else's booze and seeing how my father is getting along. Aside from not being allowed raise his arm above his head, he's doing just great, which has also taken a load off my mind (and his, I rather suspect - and the rest of the family!)

Which reminds me, thanks for all your continuing words of support and comfort, it's really meant a lot to me.

I hope you've all had as good a weekend as I have :)

Uh oh, part 2

Right, well then.

I guess this is going to happen more and more. I've not sworn people to secrecy, but I'm not going to mention it in class. Primarily because I don't want to be "everyone read my blog" guy in class. If people find it, read it and figure out it's me, fine.

It does raise some interesting issues around confidentiality, though. I've asked one of the ethics lecturers about my potential concerns about blogging and the impact it might have on my standing with the British Medical Association re: appropriate behaviour for a medical student. He said he'd contacted the BMA and the MDU (medical defence union) about numerous issues around breaching confidentiality and said he'd not got much in the way of a firm answer. This came up because he'd lectured us on how discussing your day with your spouse was a breach of confidentiality (at least in a literal, textbook way), even if you changed the names to protect the innocent and whatnot. I know most medical types shoot the shit in the pub after a bad shift, talking in generalities in public, and most might unload to a wife or husband or whomever at home to clear their heads - never mentioning a name or age or ethnicity or anything that might identifiable information. That this is fundamentally a breach of confidentiality, I find troubling and a little difficult to wrap my head around. So that gave me pause for thought about all of this.

Certainly within the field of blogging, we all say we anonymise patient information but there is always the chance (however microscopic) that someone might recognise themselves and decide to pursue legal advice - something no-one wants to have happen. My lecturer seemed to think that there weren't any hard and fast rulings on issues of confidentiality re: blogging because no case had come up yet, coupled with the fact that the BMA didn't want to prevent doctors (and presumably medical students, too) from what is arguably reflective practice, albeit done in public.

I have seen some people have signed up to the healthcare blogger code of ethics which I think is an excellent idea and I have every intention of signing up after I finish this post. I mean to behaviour in an ethical way and never to breach a patient's (or a co-worker's, for that matter) confidentiality. It is so essential to medical practice, so very valuable to a healthy and successful relationship with your patient or your own healthcare provider, that we should never belittle it. It is a standard that we should hold as high as any other as it reflects on us as professionals and as people, too.

As for my blogging, no-one has suggested anything I have done is inappropriate and this is something I coming to value more and more as the course becomes more demanding. So I shall keep on as I am doing until I hear otherwise, hopefully entertaining and maybe even educating y'all as I spill my brainguts to the internet at large.

Uh oh.

A Facebook message from someone in my PBL group:

Wait, what?

Ah. Okay. Guess my notional anonymity has pretty much gone, then. To his credit, my colleague has said he won't announce it to the class, so thanks for that. And, y'know, feel free to comment ;)

Entertainment, journal style.

I have a proper post for this week, but I've just stumbled across A Good Poop and it reminded me that people write medical papers because sometimes life is just too bizarre.

It doesn't look like it's still being updated, but it does have a some intriguing papers and now I've got my BMA membership, I might well celebrate by hunting through the BMJ archives for more oddities...