David VK Chao 周偉強

HK Pract 2017;39:1

Health care professionals lead a fairly stressful life in general. Not only would they need to care for the sick and the needy while at work, but they also look after their own family members at home. However, there is a wide spectrum of different categories of stressors that could potentially result in serious consequences if they are not tackled promptly and appropriately.

In this issue of the journal, Dr Connie Chan shares with us on a special type of stress, namely, post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) that is related to intimate partner violence (IPV). It is hardly surprising that intimate partner violence is under-reported due to its embarrassing nature and the possible feeling of ashamed by the victim. Despite that the severity of domestic violence could be quite variable, substantial harmful effects on the physical and mental health of the victim could result in a detrimental
outcome for the family. In her article, Dr Chan walks us through the predictors of PTSD in IPV, its collateral damage, and the various treatment modalities for this condition including social intervention, medications, and psychological therapies.

Another common happening in the course of clinical practice is uncertainty, especially for family doctors who are at the forefront of patient contact when patients present with symptoms in the early stages of their illness. Dr Iona Heath, past president of the Royal College of General Practitioners and a very experienced practising GP from the United Kingdom, shares with us in her discussion paper on the importance of uncertainty in daily clinical practice, its relevance to decision-making in medicine, particularly in the end-of-life care. This paper rekindles the thoughts about how one should manage the uncertainty about uncertainty, and how a patient should be treated as an individual rather than a diseased case.

Last but not least, Dr Tsang Ming Lam et al compared the application of American Diabetes Association criteria and that of the World Health Organization criteria in diagnosing diabetes among hypertensive patients in the local primary care setting. As the number of patients with long term conditions are on the rise, and diabetes mellitus is one of the rapidly increasing ones in recent years, both locally and around the globe, diabetes does deserve its proper attention.