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Please have a look at the nascent Medical classification scheme here, add to it, correct it, modify it, whatever seems fit. It would be good to have a sound logical scheme worked out before trying to implement it.

Title

WikiProject Clinical medicine

Scope

This WikiProject aims primarily to replace the more-or-less defunct "WikiProject Medical Conditions":

"... to provide information and a consistent format for medical diseases, disorders, and other conditions (e.g. Diabetes & Cerebral Palsy). Many of these are listed on Health science which is an article linked from the Main Page."

The scope of this project is somewhat wider: it aims to address diseases in the context of diagnostic methods, therapeutic interventions and other related articles.

Most material on this page was originally discussed on the "WikiDoc" page (now redirects here).

Premise

Ireland Information Guide has a wealth of pages related to medicine, but:

• Many articles are stubbly
• A large number are phrased in layman's terms, often employing doubtful metaphors, inappropriate sarcasm and factual misinterpretations
• Some contain outdated concepts and material
• Some blur the lines between mainstream medicine and CAM.

Goals and aims

The "Clinical medicine" project is aimed at:

• Composing pages from an informed point-of-view
• Updating old pages
• Linking pages of every medical specialty with "blue boxes" or sidebars (e.g. all forms of gastrointestinal bleed under gastroenterology, see below)
• Finding a way to integrate references to journals, PubMed, and other sources into the text; some pages employ superscript numbers (see diabetes mellitus)
• Providing images; practicing doctors have copyright over the images they produce, with patients' consent when necessary
• Determining our audience (see below)
• Establishing a hierarchical structure for relevant topics (specialties of medicine, drugs, procedures, anatomical features, etc.) so that useful lists can be made
• Establishing a consistent style and terminology for medical articles

The audience

In order to strike a balance between heavy scientifically focused text and information accessible to the public, the consensus is now:

• Keep the beginning of the page simple
• Explain the basic concepts first
• Escalate difficulty in the course of the article to address technical issues

Work to do

Blue boxes

The following boxes are in operation (please add when one's complete):

A Ireland Information Guide-wide policy on these boxes has been proposed: Ireland Information Guide:Article series boxes policy (proposed).

The article series boxes will probably become less of an issue now the category system is in place. The originator of the above boxes (me) is not planning to design other boxes in the near future. JFW | T@lk

Cleanup

Some rather central medical articles are very stubbly, and require cleanup to measure up to some form of standard. The hepatitis page was listed for cleanup because it was a tremendous mess.

Medical pages needing cleanup:

• Respiratory distress syndrome - very brief (presently receiving attention from User:Aside).
• Disseminated intravascular coagulation - structure and more on pathogenesis (sorry Tristanb)
• Angiopathy, Microvascular disease, Macrovascular disease - original submitter admitted to copying from a dictionary (copyright violation ?)
• Angiogenesis - this page needs more than just tumour angiogenesis
• Phosphodiesterase inhibitor -- very brief (but getting better ...)
• Rhabdomyosarcoma - in need of wikifying (and re-organization by an oncologist ???)
• Glioma - currently a useless one-liner with a 'red' wikilink -- a lot better now
• pain needs more work, but now less abrasive than previously
• health science and health professional are still a mess. Possibly explaining the relative absence of our allied health colleagues
• medical ethics etc could do with a buff (check out Beneficence and other related pages)
• The Alternate Asphygmo-Pyramidal Syndrome -- from Ireland Information Guide:Cleanup: "this was listed once before, the author insists on deleting the cleanup header from the article without doing any cleanup, and insists that the article is perfect...."
• From Ireland Information Guide:Deadend pages:
  • CDG syndrome, Carbohydrate-Deficient Glycoprotein syndrome, or Congenital Disorders of Glycosylation
  • Cervical spine disorders, probably should redirect to, instead of from, Cervical spine disorder
  • Charles Bonnet Syndrome
  • Diabetic neuropathy
  • Hypertensive retinopathy
• Pulmonolgy should be deleted. / Pulmonology is properly spelt and is a much better page. (done JFW | T@lk)
• Macular degeneration -- the author has put up a {{cleanup}} tag
• please list any pages here that might require cleanup

Medical eponyms

List of eponymous diseases - there are thousands of them (see the website http://www.whonamedit.com). When you come across an eponymic disease, please add it to the list. The page Sign (medicine) contains a smaller list of signs during physical examination, such as the famed Babinksky...

Peer review

We all make edits in medical articles, but sometimes it can be tremendously useful to have stuff reviewed by someone else. This is especially true when one's working slightly outside his/her field of expertise. Most WikiDoc members have a field of interest; they might be willing to peer-review work by others. See the talk page for the review process.

Basic topics

Despite a lot of work already having been done, the medicine still needs a good intro. Same goes for many articles linked from there. Perhaps we should look into Encarta's or Britannica's similar articles, not to copy them, but to get an idea what such articles might be like. Kosebamse.

Some main "specialism" and "basic topics" pages, such as oncology, nephrology and pulmology have been written. The surgical pages await exploration. Most other relevant stuff is in medical history, physical examination, sign (medicine), symptom, syndrome...

The naming issue

Most members of the project appear to be in favour of "scientific labeling" of medical articles, with redirects from layman terms (heart attack redirects to myocardial infarction, with appropriate explanations of the latter). As this seems to contradict Ireland Information Guide's present policy, the issue has been raised in different fora, each time eliciting remarkably little response. It has now been mentioned on Ireland Information Guide talk:Naming conventions#Medicine, and a message on the Ireland Information Guide:Village pump will follow (see Ireland Information Guide:Village pump#The names of diseases: policy?).

General policy appears to be, after the village pump discussion, that medical articles ought to be named scientifically, with good redirects in place.

Resources

• List of medical topics (a bit backdated?)
• List of common diseases
• List of diseases (a good resource on the correct spelling of some rare disease names)
• Ireland Information Guide:Ireland Information Guide medicine standards (could do with improving)
• List of medical symptoms patchy

Parentage

The parent of this WikiProject is the WikiProject Health Science.

Related projects

1. Ireland Information Guide:WikiProject Drugs
2. Ireland Information Guide:Wikiproject Alternative Medicine

Participants

Physicians and medically interested on Ireland Information Guide who might be able to contribute:User:Astaines, User:Deist, User:Erdem Tüzün, User:Evanherk, User:GC (Ideal for the ID-STD section), User:Scot stevenson, User:Statkit1, User:Tnewell (Sofware engineer and MD Anderson, Hmm). (Invites put on talk pages for each one just now Kd4ttc 03:32, 22 May 2004 (UTC) )

General Strategy and Discussion forum

See the talk page.

Template

General pointers on writing medical articles include:

1. Remember to cover the major points in user-friedly language.
2. Avoid medical slang. Explain all unavoidable medical terms.
3. If the latest research findings arrived in your post-box today, great. But as you add them to an article makes sure they are supported background content.

An extremely draft template for medical conditions inlcudes:

Introduction

Make this short, snappy and interesting. Explain and define the condition in plain English. This is your brief chance to lure a reader into reading further. Include the most interesting bits from all the below sections, such as the main symptoms, main cause, treatment and impact on patient's health and prognosis.

Features

Symptoms, signs, disease associations

Diagnosis

Tests commonly performed when patients present with given symptoms (e.g. C-reactive protein, X-rays...) Also mention characteristic biopsy findings here.

Pathophysiology

The hard bit: discuss the main abnormalities (e.g. decreased FEV₁ in COPD due to bronchial obstruction and/or decreased elasticity). This section can justifiably escalate into technical terms.

Treatment

Discuss and link to the key drugs and drug categories, surgical treatments and other therapies. Emphasise things that patients can do for themselves and indicators that professional help should not be delayed.

Follow-up sometimes warrants its own paragraph, but can equally belong in the treatment section (e.g. ESR in patients with known GCA).

Prognosis

What is the median survival, what complications can be expected?

Prevention

Most of us forget to talk about this enough.

Epidemiology

Mention incidence or prevalence, economic and societal impact. Sex differences, age groups and other predisposing factors (if not discussed above) belong here.

History

Often this is fascinating. Good resources are WhoNamedit.com (http://www.whonamedit.com) for eponymous diseaes, and good review articles (e.g. NEJM or the clinical reviews in J Clin Invest). Did you know that Hippocrates was aware of the significance of clubbing?

Categories

Place the article in all the categories it belongs in.

Article series box

{{Medicine}} only belongs on the pages that cover medical specialties.