Dr Caragh Behan's lecture

Hello,

I hope those who attended enjoyed Dr Caragh Behan's lecture on health economics. I've just put the actual lecture up on Blackboard. I know this covered ground you've already done in epidemiology. However it is very much within the remit of the course to cover the interaction between psychiatry and economics. There will be a follow up lecture in September by Dr Liam Delaney of the UCD Geary Institute (you can read about the Geary Institute in the blogroll to the right) which will focus more directly on economic change and mental health.

When I was a medical student at the turn of the century (how old that makes me sound...) I remember finding all these lectures on what, for want of a better term, public health type stuff very very boring. Most medical students don't go into medicine to learn about p values and cost effectiveness studies and the rest of it, but to learn how to diagnose and treat illnesses. And most of us switch off whenever we hear some combination of words like "service delivery", "stakeholder" and the like. However as your clinical career progresses (again I'm sounding an ancient fuddy duddy) you realise how important it all is. Even if it always remains less than fascinating, how the health system is structured and funded is directly relevant to your daily lives and what you can do for your patients.

Sermon over.

Lecture May 15th

2 pm, C005 - Dr Caragh Behan - "Pricing the priceless - whose business is
Health anyway?"