Home-made cleaners

All-purpose cleaner

2 cups white distilled vinegar

2 cups water

20-30 drops essential oil (optional)

Pour everything into a spray bottle. Shake before using. For really tough jobs, put in a glass container and warm until barely hot.

Creamy soft scrub

2 cups baking soda

½ cup liquid castile soap

4 tablespoons vegetable glycerin

5 drops anti-bacterial essential oil such as lavender, tea tree or rosemary.

Mix together and store in a sealed glass jar. Shelf life: two years.

Note: Glycerin is a preservative and by-product of palm- and coconut-oil production. It will significantly increase the shelf life of large batches of cleaners.

Furniture polish

¼ cup olive oil

¼ cup white distilled vinegar

20-30 drops lemon essential oil

Mix ingredients and shake well. Dip a clean, dry cloth into polish and rub wood in direction of the grain.

Laundry detergent

1 cup soap flakes

½ cup washing soda

½ cup borax

Mix ingredients together and store in a glass container. Use 1 tablespoon per load in warm or cold water.

Note: Soap flakes can be made by grating pure vegetable soap (that does not contain sodium lauryl sulfate or diethanolamine) with a cheese grater.

Washing soda is in the same family as baking soda but is more caustic. It cuts grease, removes wax or lipstick and neutralises odours in the same way as baking soda does.

Drain opener

½ cup baking soda

½ cup vinegar

Pour baking soda down drain and follow with vinegar. Cover and let sit for at least 30 minutes. Flush with boiling water.

Source: Women’s Voices for the Earth.

What Are The Possible Career Options After Graduation

1.       General practitioners.

A general practitioner attends to patients with common ailments such as cough and cold. For more difficult cases, the patients will be referred to a specialist.

2.       Specialists

There are a number of different fields that you can choose from such as cardiology, neurology and gynecology, to name a few. Becoming a specialist requires a lot of hard work and minimum training of at least four years.

However, the advantage is that you will be able to treat the patient at a level higher that what you can do if you are a general practitioner. You will be responsible for the patient’s progress right to the end.

As a specialist, you can opt to work in the Ministry of Health or join universities to become clinical lecturers.

3.       Lecturers in pre-clinical departments.

If you do not enjoy treating patients and find clinical work to busy, you can join universities to become lecturers at pre-clinical departments such as anatomy and physiology.

4.       Researchers.

If you are interested in research, you can branch into doing research in various reputable institutions in the country.

As you can see, there are many options to suit everyone’s interest and capability. The main thing is to become a doctor first. People’s interest may change with time according to the kind of exposure and working experience they obtain.

Of course, it is also determined by family circumstances. Most lady doctors try to opt for the less busy schedule such as becoming lecturers in pre-clinical departments where they do not have to be on call.

What Sort of Thinking Is Required to Become A Doctor?

Medical students should train themselves to be critical in their thinking. This is crucial as critical thinking is a skill that is required to become a good doctor.

Seeing things in a holistic perspective is one requirement of a doctor. A patient will come to you with a complaint about their health rather than a written diagnosis. The complaint may appear to come from a physical illness but it may be a manifestation of a psychological problem.

 So, if one is able to see a person a whole rather than just focusing on a symptom, then one will make a good detective at finding the underlining cause of the symptoms.

In fact, a doctor is very much like a private investigator who  is given a clue by the one symptom the patient complained of. It is his responsibility to look for the next clue to get the diagnosis using his adequate knowledge of the basic science and correlating it with the clinical signs.


Attributes of a critical thinker:

• asks pertinent questions.
• assesses statements and arguments.
• is able to admit a lack of misunderstanding or information.
• has a sense of curiosity.
• is interested in finding new solutions.
• suspends judgement until all facts have been gathered and considered.
• looks for evidence to support assumptions and beliefs.
• is able to adjust opinions when new facts are found.
• looks for proof.
• examines problems closely.
• is able to reject information that is incorrect or irrelevant.
• sees that critical thinking is a lifelong process of self-assessment.
• listens carefully to others and is able to give a feedback.

-Ferrett S (1997)-

Lower IQ Linked To Higher Attempted Suicide Risk, Large Swedish Study

A large scale study of over 1.1 million men living in Sweden that spanned nearly a quarter of a century found a link between lower IQ measured in early adulthood and higher risk of attempted suicide later in life.

The prospective cohort study was the work of Dr Finn Rasmussen, a professor in the Department of Public Health Sciences at Karolinska Institute, Stockholm, Sweden, and colleagues from the UK and Australia. They wrote a paper about it published in the 3 June online issue of the British Medical Journal, BMJ.

As well as exploring the links between early IQ scores and attempted suicide, Rasmussen and colleagues wanted to see if psychosis made a difference and also how variations in early IQ might relate to methods of attempted suicide.

Described as the largest study of its kind, they examined the medical records of nearly 1,109,500 men aged between 16 and 57 years living in Sweden.

Of these Rasmussen and colleagues found that nearly 18,000 (1.6 per cent) had been admitted to hospital at least once for attempting suicide during 24 years of follow up (after having IQ tested).

They found that men with the lowest early adulthood IQ scores were almost nine times more likely to attempt suicide then those with the highest, and there was a stepwise increase in risk across the full IQ range, which was "evident for attempted suicide by any means and for seven specific methods".

The authors wrote that while adjustment for "childhood and adult socioeconomic status and, to a greater extent, education led to a reduction in magnitude", the links remained strong.

However, for men who had been diagnosed with psychosis before attempting suicide, a separate analysis showed there was no such link between IQ level and attempted suicide risk.

They concluded that "low IQ scores in early adulthood were associated with a subsequently increased risk of attempted suicide in men free from psychosis," and recommended looking more closely at the underlying mechanisms to see if they reveal opportunities to intervene and reduce rates of suicide among men.

Speculating on the reasons behind the link, they suggested perhaps because people with lower IQ tend to have lower socioeconomic status and income, they could face more social and financial hardship, leading to their having more suicidal thoughts and behaviours.

They also mentioned that unhealthy lifestyle (eg binge drinking) has also been linked with lower IQ, and this could also affect frequency of suicidal thinking, plus other studies have also linked lower IQ with lower problem solving skills, and this could affect resilience to stress.

Another possibility is some research suggests that exposure to violence in childhood, either as a victim or a witness, can hamper IQ development as well as influence future suicide risk.

"Psychosis alters association between IQ and future risk of attempted suicide: cohort study of 1 109 475 Swedish men."
G David Batty, Elise Whitley, Ian J Deary, Catharine R Gale, Per Tynelius, Finn Rasmussen.
BMJ 2010;340:c2506 
Published online 3 June 2010
DOI:10.1136/bmj.c2506

Source: BMJ.

Written by: Catharine Paddock, PhD 
Copyright: Medical News Today