Olaf G. Aasland

25.11.2014: A hundred years ago, district medical officers made house calls. Now, patients tend to go to the casualty clinic. However, house calls may be crucial for appropriate treatment and follow-up. For a district medical officer in the late 19th century, a house call could last several days (1). People did...

13.05.2014: Practice and experience are fundamental to surgery. But isn’t talent important, too? Among the professions, it is only practitioners of medicine who regard their work as an art – the art of healing. The German philosopher Hans-Georg Gadamer (1900 – 2002) points out, however, that doctors are not...

03.06.2011: Norwegian doctors work longer weekly hours than most other professions (1, 2), but are also on the whole quite satisfied with their jobs (3). A comparison of Norwegian and German hospital doctors showed that the Norwegian doctors were more satisfied with their working hours than their German...

28.08.2008: These days a doctor is almost always a specialist, and the specialty status is a crucial component of any individual doctor''s identity. Nevertheless, many doctors find that their choice of specialty is somewhat arbitrary. In 1997, the median time from receiving qualification as a medical doctor to...

28.08.2008: In 2002, the ownership and responsibility for running 250 Norwegian health institutions was transferred from the county level to the state level through five regional, and 34 local, health trusts. The reform also involved new principles of organisation and management. Before the reform, the...