by Chiemezie Madu | Apr 5, 2024 | Society & Culture
One of the most dreaded forms of examination in medical school was viva (short for viva voce which means oral interviews). Here, in a face-to-face interview with your examiners you are asked questions from within (and even outside) the curriculum and are expected to...
by Chiemezie Madu | Jan 26, 2023 | Society & Culture
Recently, I was asked if I often felt like I rushed to complete tasks, as if I was always racing against time. Many years ago, an old university classmate asked a similar question. He wondered if, just like him, I felt an extra hour should be added to each day to...
by Chiemezie Madu | Oct 26, 2022 | Health & medicine, Society & Culture
I clearly recall my first experience at resuscitation. It was at night, in my first week as a house officer, fresh from medical school. A young lady, ravaged by AIDS and Tuberculosis, and as thin as the shadow of a hair had just given up the ghost and I was called in...
by Chiemezie Madu | Oct 7, 2022 | Society & Culture
In recent times, I have found myself fascinated with ageing and the process of ageing. I am particularly interested in the determinants of longevity and the psychology of older people, that is, what makes them live long and what goes on in their mind as they get...
by Chiemezie Madu | Jul 18, 2022 | Society & Culture
I listened to a TEDX talk by Robert Waldinger, a psychiatrist at Massachusetts General Hospital and a professor of Psychiatry at Harvard medical school, where he discussed the findings of what is now known as the world’s longest study on happiness – the...
by Chiemezie Madu | Apr 1, 2022 | Society & Culture
At the end of the Nigerian civil war in 1970, a vicious policy ensured that all monies owned by the Igbos and lodged in Nigerian banks were forfeited and that the owners were given a flat sum of 20 pounds per person. That policy in effect abolished social...
