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Communicating with patients in 
‘Plain English’

Physicians have long been accused of using unnecessarily complicated language and impenetrable jargon as a way of maintaining their status, prestige and high earnings-potential, bamboozling the public and excluding them from meaningful discussion as part of what George Bernard Shaw...

BACO 2015: Meet the Key Brits

The triennial BACO is always a feast of academic and social activity – and BACO 2015 promises to be as busy as ever. We hear from three of the key British speakers who are making big contributions to this year’s...

Ronald G Macbeth – the instigator of BACO

The structure of BACO has changed dramatically since the first conference in 1963, but the fundamental elements of academic excellence, instructional sessions and social events have been common threads. Andrew Freeland, who worked with Ronald Macbeth, the instigator of BACO,...

Giacomo Puccini’s laryngeal cancer

Giacomo Puccini, one of the best known composers of all time, was diagnosed with laryngeal cancer and died from the disease in 1924. In this article, Rosario Marchese-Ragona and Alessandro Martini describe Puccini’s experience of the disease with quotes from...

Advances in vestibular function testing

Vestibular function testing has historically been limited by difficulties in testing individual parts of the vestibular apparatus. Jas Sandhu describes new tests available to clinicians that address this problem. Advances in vestibular function testing Vestibular function testing has historically been...

Singing after laryngectomy: Shout at Cancer

Thomas Moors is an ENT junior doctor with a background in music and singing. Combining these interests, he has set up a charity to help patients who have had a laryngectomy. He has achieved considerable public attention, and he tells...

Surgeons and swearing

We will all know colleagues who have raised the act of swearing to an art form; just as Malcolm Tucker in The Thick of It could cut a workmate in half with a well-placed swear word, surgeons can be equally...

What’s the appetite for clinical risk?

The first Professor and Chair of Medical Professionalism at RCSI and BSHS, Dubhfeasa Slattery provides an overview of how a desire for better healthcare at all levels can be harnessed and nourished, leading to a potential life-long interest in reducing...

Andrew Foster and deaf education

This article examines the career of deaf African American, Andrew Foster, and his contribution to deaf education in Sub-Saharan Africa. The history of medicine has often been guilty of attributing great revolutions to a single person (usually a white man)...

The power of mentoring

What is a mentor, and what are the benefits for mentee and mentor? Emma Stapleton and Rohma Abrar, mentor and mentee respectively, explain. The term ‘mentor’ is derived from Homer’s Odyssey, in which the goddess Athena, disguised as Mentor, guides...