You are what you read.....
My pal Eddie, and I, set up a Reading Group 20yrs ago. We invited some friends (seven of them) to join us. We have been meeting every couple of months since then. Some of the spouses have described it as a ‘beer drinking club, thinly disguised as a reading group’. As if!
It used to be the case that if I were to choose myself a book to read I would just choose the latest John Grisham novel. As a result of being in the group, however, my reading range has been far wider.
Our next read is a really thick book. Its a bit intimidating! I would never have chosen it myself, but I'm stuck with it, and I bet I'll enjoy it!
This makes me think about what we read professionally. If we limit our work-related reading narrow to our field of training, we will retain a very narrow view of our patients' health. However, reading a wide-ranging and up-to-date journal packed full of the latest medical information can be super-interesting.
The best move I ever made was to subscribe to the British Medical Journal (£184 per year). I get an email from the BMJ every week with that week’s content . This makes it really quick to see whether there is anything that interests me. There are often up to date clinical summaries of conditions very relevant to my work. Whilst I accept that it is a medical view of patients, it is nevertheless often really helpful to know what that latest medical thinking is. It helps me to patch up the (large) gaps in my knowledge. I often use the journal to get up to speed with a condition or a drug that a patient has mentioned, that I am a bit hazy about. This last week I read about the pain-crisis associated with Sickle-Cell Disease (1). I must admit to not knowing much about this previously. Actually nothing at all, if I’m honest. Now I feel a bit more knowledgeable about it. I know I’ll forget, but there will be some sort of reference to it in future journals.
Second on my list is JAMA a lot of which is free. In this weeks JAMA Neurology there is a great demo of crossed clonus in a patent with cervical myelopathy (2):
Our latest reading group book is ‘The Famished Road’ by Ben Okri. It’s a thick book, and I’ve got four weeks left before we meet up again, so I had better crack on with it! (yes, pun intended)!
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