Emergency physicians, surgeons, and general practitioners experience the highest level of stress when administrative duties are added to their clinical work. However, adding academic duties—such as writing and research for publication—can lessen the stress of those administrative duties, according to Dr Rein Lepnurm and coauthors of the article “A measure of daily distress in practising medicine.” This could be because academic duties are viewed as advancing medicine.
Declaring competing interest is common in medicine, so why is it so rare in medical schools?
Evidence-based medicine is a significant component of early medical school curricula. At the University of British Columbia we are encouraged to critically evaluate evidence and search for bias in publications, presentations, and information presented by representatives of the pharmaceutical industry.
Why are we not supporting our colleagues in naturopathy? They have clearly done good work. Over my 22 years in medical practice I have witnessed an almost complete disappearance of formerly serious and prevalent problems such as chronic hypoglycaemia, chronic candidiasis, chronic Epstein-Barr infection, sero-negative Lyme disease, and toxicity related to dental amalgam.
It is admirable that Wiens and Cota posit an opinion advocating for a strong system of instituting, monitoring, and enforcing disclosure policies that are “in line with the standards of continuing medical education and journal submission.” In responding to the authors’ stance it is important to highlight existing mechanisms dealing with disclosure under which faculty members affiliated with UBC’s Faculty of Medicine operate.
British Columbia needs another medical school training a new type of physician! British Columbia has the third largest population in Canada. Alberta, which has the fourth largest population, has two medical schools, and Quebec, which has the second largest, has four. This disparity is reflected in the number of medical school graduates per 100 000 population by province [see Table].[1]
