Template talk:Medicine

= Suggestion =

While there is no guideline on these pages, I have been trying to standardise all of the Medicine navigational boxes. This is what I have been using, to keep a sense of uniformity it would be best to stick to this, or change them all. Below I have given a bare code for the boxes for future use.

Notes on templates
To each of the templates I have added the following documentation info:


 * :This template is part of the Medical series of navigation boxes. Refer to Template:Medicine and its talk page for suggestions on style and editing.

Giving:


 * This template is part of the Medical series of navigation boxes. Refer to Template:Medicine and its talk page for suggestions on style and editing.

Please be aware that when using any extra newlines will be included in the articles, so make sure the first is on the same line as the |}.

Spaully 18:01, 24 February 2006 (UTC)

=Comments=
 * I'd prefer to separate the links with vertical bars instead of hyphens. If you look at the other Navigational templates, you'll see that this is common practice.
 * Also, I'd prefer the links to begin on the same line as the table cell code, that is:

|| Link | Link
 * instead of

|| Link | Link
 * as the latter creates an unneeded paragraph tag to be created inside the table cell, thus adding some extra space.
 * One more thing: Skip the leading . You already have  and   margin top and bottom (½ might be enough?), so the   shouldn't be necessaty. All in all, I propose the following:


 * Best regards, Fred Bradstadt 18:28, 24 February 2006 (UTC)


 * Fred, thanks for the input. All of your suggestions are fair - I hadn't noticed the current conventions on |'s.  1/2 em would work better in articles where several nav boxes are present.  As with the s . Cheers, Spaully 19:54, 24 February 2006 (UTC)

Substing and
Hi everyone. I added some minor changes to the template. First I made the "edit" link look like an internal link (just a cosmetic change) and then I also added the two "subst:" tags since double transclusion should be avoided to save server load. "Subst:" causes those templates in the template to be expanded when the page is saved and thus means the server don't need to do that on every page rendering. --David Göthberg 17:05, 27 February 2006 (UTC)


 * I was aware this could be an issue, but had included the SERVER and localurl tags to prevent what had happened to the previous 'edit' links - at some point there seems to have been a change in the namespace link, making most of the old 'edit' links obsolete. However if we're pretty sure that is unlikely to happen again there should be no harm in including subst:.  The change to an internal link is good, I'm going to ask for AWB activation to make changing this across all of the templates for easy. |→ Spaully°τ 21:09, 27 February 2006


 * The double transclusion policy has now been rejected and so to preserve clarity I think transcluding these templates here is beneficial. The edit link still appears internal, a nice addition. |→ Spaully°τ 20:22, 27 March 2006 (GMT)

Using (&)middot; rather than the vertical line as divider
To me, the &amp;middot; (" · ") is more effective than the vertical line (" | ") as a divider because it isn't as obtrusive (perhaps because it doesn't resemble one of the strokes used to form letters). Where do I vote for my preference? Thanks, David Kernow 13:06, 17 March 2006 (UTC)


 * We could have a vote here, although you and I might be the only ones to visit. Perhaps it would more properly be decided on Wikipedia_talk:Navigational_templates, where there might be more traffic.


 * I had started to use '-' as a divider before the current bias towards '|' was drawn to my attention. Personally I do not see a huge amount of difference between them, but think that all of the medicine related navboxes should be the same. (Unfortunately that means any change would require significant effort).


 * I'll start a discussion on that talk page, and we'll see where it goes, I think to jump straight into a vote wouldn't be sensible. |→ Spaully°τ 15:02, 19 March 2006 (GMT)

Thanks. I've had another thought in the interim and have added it there. Best wishes, David Kernow 18:38, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

Edit links
It seems there has been some change to the software meaning all of the edit links now no longer work as they include an '&' in the title which was previously ignored. I'll change them all tomorrow with AWB.

Anyone know where this kind of thing might have been announced or could be announced in future? Might be a good idea if not current. |→ Spaully°τ 05:09, 28 March 2006 (GMT)

Ive been adding this to the headers of some of the templates, moving the ugly edit tag:

{| style="margin:0 auto;" align=center width="80%" class="toccolours" !style="background:#ccccff"|

Hope thats ok - Jack (talk) 19:25, 19 July 2006 (UTC)


 * I like the v•d•e thing, very neat and functional. I'll try and copy this to the rest of the templates in the series.
 * I'm going to change the code a little though, mainly to get rid of the clear=all thing that tends to insert unnecessary lines. Modified below:

{| style="margin:0 auto; clear:both; text-align:center;" align=center width="80%" class="toccolours" |- !style="background:#ccccff"|


 * Thanks for finding and changing that. |→ Spaully°τ 10:47, 11 August 2006 (GMT)

Immunology
How come immunology isn't on here? -- 71.132.152.195 03:44, 15 August 2006 (UTC)

Update
Was interested in updating the template information using Careers in Medicine as a (rough) guide:

Interested in your comments/thoughts.

Thanks,

-RJ1001 03:23, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

STD/STI
i think stds and stis should me worked into this template somewhere!Qrc2006 09:17, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Question
Received the following on my talk page:


 * Hi, I'm not clear why you are lumping nursing, dentistry, etc. in on the physician navigation bar. These are separate professions.  If you are going to do something like that, you need to treat them equally with physicians and list each specialty, which would be cumbersome.  I'll go ahead and remove nurse and nurse practitioner from the list. -THB 02:34, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

My reply:


 * Really it is a matter of not thinking of it as a the physician navigation bar, but rather as the health science navigation bar. When I first saw the original template that had the header "Health Science" in the title, I was disappointed not to find dentistry, nursing, etc. as I consider these valuable parts of the health science whole beyond merely physicians.  Furthermore, as far as I can tell, there is no unification of the health sciences on Wikipedia, so consider this a first attempt at changing that.  That being said, I agree with you in that perhaps something a bit more neutral is in order:




 * In this way, I hope that it seems that the specialties listed are less physician-oriented and more field-oriented (or are at least on their way to be).


 * Let me know your thoughts,


 * -RJ1001 04:30, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

Further reply:


 * Thanks for the reply. My view is that the nav bar is for the medical profession.  There's also a medicine portal.  There's a health portal that includes nursing and I started working on a nursing portal last week.  No need to blur the lines between the professions.  Traditionally medicine has dominated the health care field but in numbers there are a lot more nurses, not to mention other professionals and paraprofessionals.
 * I suppose you could do a separate nav bar for all the health professions together giving each of them equal weight but I don't see a purpose in that as there is already a category for it. -THB 04:46, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

I suppose I'd just like to hear what the community thinks is appropriate. I may have gotten into editing this template without fully understanding its purpose,

-RJ1001 21:19, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

Hello, I am new to this discussion, however I think that it is natural to have links to other health proffesions on the Medicine page because all the proffessions are linked and work together. Therefore a user who finds the medicine page might want to know about nursing or occupational therapy etc.

One other thing, you are missing Dietetics in the list of relevant proffessions.

Jkoopmans 17:29, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

Surgical specialties that aren't
So I noticed that several specialties listed under "surgical specialties & subspecialties" are not ones traditionally thought of as falling in that category, e.g. OB-GYN, Opthalmology, and "interventional neuroradiology" (a bit overly precise, no?) I typically think of "surgical specialties" as those requiring a surgical internship, while "medical specialties" require a medical internship, and "physician specialties" are those that don't specfically mandate either one or have their own specialty-specific internship. Maybe this is US-centric, but I think these categories are fairly consistent in the english-speaking world. Otherwise we end up with silly situations, like saying that dermatologists and opthos "practice medicine AND surgery" and thus need to be listed twice, etc. -RustavoTalk/Contribs 07:15, 28 April 2007 (UTC)
 * You might want to review US surgical specialties: http://www.facs.org/residencysearch/specialties/listing.html
 * -RJ1001 00:16, 23 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Well there's no question that docs in those fields perform surgical procedures, but for many of them, "medical" therapy makes up just as much or more of their practice & training (and I wouldn't necessarily file refractions or vaginal deliveries under either "medical" or "surgical"). My point is that it's silly to list any field multiple times on the template, and unless we're going to turn it into a big Venn diagram, it is simplest to put IM subspecialties under "Medical", fields that are primarily surgical and require a surgical internship under "Surgical," and fields that practice a little of both, or their own totally unique skill, under "physician." -RustavoTalk/Contribs 02:07, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

New format with bullets
I like it. That is all. -RustavoTalk/Contribs 19:28, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

Neurology
I would like to object to considering my last edit vandalism. According to the article on Internal Medicine, the American Board of Internal Medicine considers Neurology an Internal Medicine subspecialty. Thus, it belongs with the Medical Specialties, not with the Physician specialties.Mordac 17:17, 20 June 2007, GMT
 * Moving Neurology from Physician specialties to Medical subspecialties certainly isn't vandalism. I agree Neurology is more of an internal medicine subspecialty; the confusion arises because neurology is frequently a direct-entry (from medical school) residency.  The same goes for dermatology, it ought to be in medical subspecialties. Dlodge 16:58, 20 June 2007 (UTC)
 * This is kind of a semantic debate, but from my U.S. perspective, it seems that a "medical subspecialty" is one that results from additional training after completing full internal medicine training (although I admit I used "required medicine internship" as the definition in a previous comment). Can neurologists or dermatologists sit for the boards in IM after the standard combined training program? I'd vote to leave them in the "physician specialty" section. -RustavoTalk/Contribs 05:16, 21 June 2007 (UTC)