The Wakley Prize 2011: all that matters

摘要

Out of a bulging (electronic) postbag of entries for the 2011 Wakley Essay Prize, The Lancet's editors have selected a winner: Jo Stutchbury of Newcastle University, UK.We asked forthe sharpest writing, and this piece-the first ever winning essay by a medical student-cuts deep. For those of us who went to medical school, the situation Stutchbury describes will bring back vivid memories. Learning clinical medicine requires a constant sense of opportunism, as well as a decent place to have coffee during the many long periods of waiting. Clinicians who have ever given a medical student the brush-off during a busy spell (and there can be few who have not, at onetime or another) will perhaps feel a little guilty. Then there is the central concern of the essay: the wellbeing of Judith, a woman with a mysterious neurological syndrome.