September

The traditional view of dementia experienced in later life has focused on a unitary disease causation, most often Alzheimer disease (AD). Traditional teaching has led to the diagnosis of AD through excluding items in a long and daunting list of other dementia causes. Previously, the outlook for modifying disease onset through the treatment of risk factors was bleak, resulting in diagnostic and therapeutic nihilism.

The following letter was sent to the College of Physicians and Surgeons of British Columbia and copied to the BCMJ.

Dr Ashley Krisman speaks with authority when he decries the transfer of medical and nursing education from the hospital bedside to the university and college classroom (BCMJ 2003;45[5]:210). He has experienced both systems and witnessed the transition when the Honourable Ralph Loffmark moved nursing to BCIT in the late 1960s and made it a division of the Department of Education.

Every year, usually in February, I am taken aside and reminded by the BCMJ staff that I have to write an annual report. This is something I actually enjoy doing because it gives me an opportunity to praise, in print, a group of people who do an amazing job for our publication.