Erlend Hem

27.01.2015: Medical science is developing rapidly. Much remains the same, however. We like to say that medical science is undergoing momentous development. Progress in diagnostics and treatment is providing better options for many people. A growing number can be helped, patients have better quality of life, and...

25.11.2014: We should stop talking about winning or losing the battle against cancer. We don’t need military metaphors in medicine. A few months before she died, the journalist Anbjørg Sætre Håtun (1972 – 2014) wrote a newspaper article on the use of the expressions «to lose the battle against» or «to win the...

30.09.2014: Involvement on the part of the students can be troublesome. However, it is a precondition for high-quality tuition. As a teacher of medical students I often feel that I am unable to make sufficient use of their potential and eagerness. Many of them may feel that the studies are challenging and that...

01.07.2014: Seriously ill patients should have only one doctor to relate to during their hospitalisation Last summer, Norwegian media reported about the cancer patient Jan Skåring, who had met 90 different doctors in the course of six years and four cancer diagnoses (1). Skåring is not the only patient to have...

29.04.2014: There are many reasons why a scientific article remains uncited. One of them is that the article is poor. In 2006, more than 18 000 original articles were published in 144 cardiovascular journals. Over the subsequent five years 15 % of them were uncited, and 33 % had only 1 – 5 citations, according...

10.12.2013: Have you noticed that a growing number of retirees refer to themselves as «emeritus»? Gudleiv Forr, a Norwegian journalist and author, recently pointed out that the title «emeritus» has become increasingly common in this country. One professor after another is referred to as a professor emeritus. He...

10.12.2013: Jacob Aall (Fig. 1) was from a well-to-do shipping and merchant family in Porsgrunn. He graduated with a degree in theology in 1795, but in 1799 used the money he had inherited from his late father to buy an ironworks; Nes Ironworks at Holt near Tvedestrand became his home and workplace for the rest...

26.11.2013: Many doctors are perfectionists. Is anything else conceivable? When I started my medical studies nearly 25 years ago, it was drilled into us from early on that we needed to learn to set limits for ourselves; to judge when something was good enough. We could not do everything for all our patients. If...