Editor's note
Notes for primary care teachers
This issue of MFP sees the beginning of a new series focusing on medical education. The articles are invited articles written by family medicine academics, mentors from the vocational training programme and MAFPM/FRACGP examiners. The series is aimed at the beginning primary care teachers by sharing experiences, providing useful tips and highlighting additional reading materials. We wish to thank Professor SC Chan for organising this series (starting from page 22).
Learning from the past
This year, our country is celebrating the 50th year of independence. For those of us who are in the forties or less, the pre-Merdeka years, especially the hardships during the Japanese occupation period, was something only our older parents or grandparents occasionally talked about. What about the healthcare scene in those times? We can get a glimpse of that bygone era, through the eyes of six veteran medical colleagues (starting from page 38). These two articles are the remarkable effort of Dr Mimi Omar who personally interviewed four of them: Haji Mohamad bin Abdul Latiff, Dr S Sundaram, Dr Chen Man Hin, and Dr K Dharmaratnam. Furthermore, together with Dr Zailinawati, Dr Mimi Omar also interviewed Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad and Tun Dr Siti Hasmah Mohd Ali. We want to thank all the senior medical colleagues for sharing their experiences and wisdom with the readers.
Research abstracts and more…
As in the past issues, we highlight primary care research papers published by Malaysian authors: see Dr GC Chan’s papers published in the Singapore Medical Journal (pages 13) and Professor WY Low’’s papers on erectile dysfunction (pages 14). Our selection of Malaysian primary care papers is rather unsystematic and many useful papers are probably inadvertently missed. Do let us know about potentially useful papers that should be abstracted in MFP.
Photo credits
The portrait photographs (cover, pages 38-43) were supplied by those personalities featured in pages 38-43 with the exception of the youthful pictures of Tun Mahathir and Tun Siti Hasmah which were obtained from the Perdana Leadership Foundation. The photographs of the fruit, flowers and plane tree (Plantanus orientalis) and its fruit on our cover are taken from the internet (*url). It is reputed that Hippocrates (circa 460-377 BC) taught medicine under such a tree on the Island of Kos.
*url (unified resource locator)
Plane tree and fruits: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plantanus_orientalis
Flower: http://www.flickr.com/photos/29242822@N00/sets/72057594076210390/
CL Teng
tengcl@gmail.com