Handbook

The little girl in my ward tried and helped to do morning round for some of our cases - the duty medical officer is on leave.

I gave a weired smile after knowing she prescribed certain drug in the dose half tablet twice daily - that medicine could act for over 24 hours.

"How do you arrive at this idea ?" I asked.

"It's written in the Hospital Authority Handbook." She replied, neither haughty nor humble.

I was about to say one cannot rely on medical (hand)books written by extra-terrestrials to treat Homo sapiens - well, I swallowed that back to my throat. Of course our girl found me unbearable when I gave her copies of the relevant chapter in Harrison's and a paper from the New England.

But that's the whole reason that I'm against the idea of writing our own textbook: we could hardly make one better than those from the two sides of the Atlantic. All we achieve is, besides fulfilling whoever's ego, taking up the opportunistic cost of our students so that they would not have time to read texts by those giants.

"Think global. We've got to be international." So does our VC say.

For once I agree with an economist.