BMJ  2003;327 (22 November), doi:10.1136/bmj.327.7425.0-h

Editor's choice

Beyond doing

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

We all love action. We want to do. Thinking, in contrast, can be so irritating—going round in circles, confusing each other, and wasting time in mental cul de sacs. "We're too busy around here to think" may be said with more pride than shame, but thinking hard is fundamental to medicine.

It must be hard to think in the middle of a battle, and the pressure to help those who are severely injured is extreme. Deaths in war occur in three phases, write Jon Clasper and David Rew, who served in the 2003 Gulf war (p 1178). About half of those who are going to die do so within minutes from non-survivable injuries. Medicine has nothing to offer. About a third die within hours, mostly from hypoxia and hypovolaemic shock, and a fifth die days later from sepsis, multiorgan failure, and other complications. Those who die within hours . . . [Full text of this article]

(rsmith@bmj.com)

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