MedEd Connect Blog: Exploring Medicine Based Careers

Public health has always been humanity’s quiet backbone, but in an era of pandemics, climate change, and widening health inequities, it is no longer a background function. It is the front line. At its core, public health asks a deceptively simple question: how do we keep populations well before they ever become patients? The answer, however, is anything but simple. Infectious diseases do not respect borders, air pollution does not stop at customs, and misinformation spreads faster than any virus. COVID-19 exposed this reality with brutal efficiency, revealing that weak public health systems threaten health security everywhere. Globally, preventable conditions still dominate the burden of disease. Non-communicable diseases such as diabetes and cardiovascular illness are rising sharply in low- and middle-income countries, while underfunded sanitation systems continue to fuel outbreaks of cholera and other water-borne diseases. These are not failures of medicine; they are failures of poli...

           It seems as though where someone lives, truly determines whether they deserve to live. This is especially true for cancer: a collection of over a hundred different diseases frequently associated with words such as "incurable" and "hopeless". Nevertheless, the persistence of those in the medical field has resulted in the creation of a medical specialty which diagnoses, treats, and manages this condition called "oncology".       Common forms of treatment and management towards cancer include personalised treatment plans: immunotherapy, chemotherapy, and even collaborations with surgeons and radiation specialists. There have even been new advancements in techniques and technologies, with the rise of artificial intelligence's integration into medicine, and the emergence of more advanced drug delivery systems (e.g. nanotechnology). Despite these optimistic outlooks, we must not turn a blind eye to suffering just to gaze upon succes...

                                                             Orthopedics  - Eliza Russell                                An exciting new study out of Balgrist University Hospital’s Department of Orthopedics in Zurich, Switzerland, has started looking at the association between increased tibial tubercle torsion and the risk of developing lateral patellofemoral osteoarthritis.  Osteoarthritis (OA), a progressive degenerative disease, causes a progressive loss of articular cartilage. Knee OA, specifically, is a major cause of a lesser quality of life and creates an initial reliance on non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) and may eventually even require surgical intervention. Knee OA is an incredibly ...

  Cardiac surgery is definitively considered one of the most progressive areas in medicine, widely renowned for its great complexity and cutting-edge innovations in the modern era. As a field, it focuses on the specialized surgical treatment of the heart and blood vessels, aiming to restore proper function, blood circulation, and mitigate disease. However, as we push the boundaries of what is clinically possible, we bring to light three major global disparities: translational, technological, and socioeconomic accessibility.  To start, the translational gap found amidst the discipline’s vast advancements is a force of delay, one that is especially fatal. Life-saving research is oftentimes confined to academic discussion rather than bedside application, leaving an avoidable suffrage unattended due to a lack of proactivity. Instead, we should seek to convert insights and experimental data into tangible interventions through scheduled communication between research institutions, i...