Published 8 January 2009, doi:10.1136/bmj.b23
Cite this as: BMJ 2009;338:b23

Editor's Choice

All about letters

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

If you are busy in this first full week of the new year and have time to read only two pages, then make it the Letters. In a short space they illustrate well the range of issues that preoccupy doctors—and our pages: core clinical skills, the use of technology, doctors’ duties to society, improving the way services are delivered, and despair at non-evidence-based practices.

Thus Stephen Hayes urges the importance of teaching primary care doctors the key clinical skill of detecting melanomas (doi:10.1136/bmj.a3138). In doing so he bemoans the lack of teaching in dermatology received by most British undergraduates these days. That lament is echoed in Rebecca Coombes’ news feature on Pfizer teaching pharmacology and therapeutics to undergraduates because medical schools now neglect such subjects (doi:10.1136/bmj.a3179).

Minoo Irani also makes a plea for going back to basics. Commenting on the case of Baby P, who was . . . [Full text of this article]

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