Wikipedia:WikiProject Clinical medicine
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
Wikipedia 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- Some contain outdated concepts and material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)
- Provide images!! Practicing docs have copyright over images they produce, with the patient's consent when necessary
- Determine who the articles are aimed at' (see below)
- Establishing a hierarchical structure for relevant topics (specialties of medicine, drugs, procedures, anatomical features, etc. 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):
| Specialism | MediaWiki page | Wikitext |
| Medicine | MediaWiki:Medicine | {{msg:medicine}} |
| Anaesthesia (draft, needs AE form once complete) | MediaWiki:Anaesthesia | {{msg:anaesthesia}} |
| Hematology | MediaWiki:Hematology | {{msg:hematology}} |
| Gastroenterology | MediaWiki:Gastroenterology | {{msg:gastroenterology}} |
A Wikipedia-wide policy on these boxes has been proposed: Wikipedia:Article series boxes policy (proposed).
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
- Thrombotic thrombocytopenic purpura - cleanup warranted
- Disseminated intravascular coagulation - structure and more on pathogenesis (sorry Tristanb)
- Microvascular disease, Macrovascular disease - original submitter admitted to copying from a dictionary (copyright violation ?)
- Chronic Wasting Disease - need to re-format and wikify
- Rhabdomyosarcoma - a very long stub
- 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 accross 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 article is still a mess. 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 Wikipedia's present policy, the issue has been raised in different fora, each time eliciting remarkably little response. It has now been mentioned on Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions#Medicine, and a message on the Wikipedia:Village pump will follow (see Wikipedia:Village pump#The names of diseases: policy?).
Resources
- List of medical topics (a bit backdated?)
- List of diseases
- List of rare diseases (a good resource on the correct spelling of some rare disease names)
- Wikipedia:Wikipedia medicine standards (could do with improving)
- List of medical symptoms patchy
Parentage
The parent of this WikiProject is the WikiProject Health Science.
Descendant Wikiprojects
No descendant WikiProjects have been defined.
Similar Wikiprojects
No similar WikiProjects have been defined.
Participants
| User name | Talk page | Special interests |
| Jfdwolff | Talk | Hematology, Endocrinology |
| Ksheka | Talk | Cardiology |
| Kd4ttc | Talk | Gastroenterology |
| Kpjas | Talk | General practice |
| Alex.tan | Talk | Medicine (general clinical topics) |
| Diberri | Talk | Physiology |
| JWSchmidt | Talk | Pharmacology, basic sciences |
| Erich gasboy | Talk | Anaesthetics |
| Sodium | Talk | Pre-clinical |
| Alteripse | Talk | Pediatric endocrinology |
| Tristanb | Talk | Medical laboratory stuff |
| Nunh-huh | Talk | Infectious diseases |
| DryGrain | Talk | Pharmacology and general medicine |
| New user | Talk | Medicine |
Physicians and medically interested on Wikipedia 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), User:Tristanb. (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
A template article will be defined shortly
