Are you a neurophobic?
Neurophobia is the fear of neuroscience and clinical neurology.
The term was coined by Jozefowicz in 1994.
Jozefowicz RF. Neurophobia: the fear of neurology among medical students. Arch Neurol. 1994 Apr;51(4):328-9.
About 1 in 2 medical students suffers from the condition.
Neurophobia results in an aversion to neurological cases in the clinical setting. This is a problem as ~30% of patients passing through medical casualty have a neurological problem. All medical graduates need a basic level of competency in neurology.
Cyriac Athappilly recently completed an intercalated BSc, in Medical Education, at Barts and The London, on neurophobia. He concluded that we need to do the following to address the issue of neurophobia in medical students:
To introduce neurology to students as soon as possible in the medical curriculum
To include it in all years of study
To make sure neuroanatomy is taught well and in sufficient detail
To arrange more one-to-one teaching
This blog is part of an experiment to provide asynchronous clinical neurology teaching to help address the issue of neurophobia. It will be used as a tool to bridge theoretical and clinical neurology teaching. It will be combined with a neurology teaching wiki that will provide more context to the postings on this blog.
The information will be provided on three levels:
Level 1: medical students and general practitioners
Level 2: medical specialist registrars and medical consultants
Level 3: neurology registrars and neurology consultants
The success of the blog will depend on your participation; i.e. registering for email notifications and posting comments.
We hope you enjoy it!