Peptic ulcers

I've been learning about peptic ulcers this week. It's been a pretty dull first PBL case in my opinion but on the other hand having a gentle welcome back to uni has been a relief.

Interestingly, the aetiology of peptic ulcers has recently undergone a radical rethink. It was previously thought that most peptic ulcers were due to infection by Helicobacter pylori, but a team of Australian researchers (of which I am a prominent member) has just shown that peptic ulcers are often caused by the stress induced by turning up to tutorials about peptic ulcers without having done any preparation at all.

Treatment options are limited to masking the source of the stress, and include:

• nodding the head and saying, "Mmmm, yes" whenever anyone else says anything sciency,
• seizing the whiteboard markers and concentrating on scribing,
• telling long and complicated anecdotes about your travels in Africa, art history, a friend you knew once who may have had a similar condition or maybe not,
  
• eating non-stop so as to be unable to communicate,
• flipping back and forth in your notes for something else so as to give the illusion of looking through a vast body of work in search of the relevant detail,
• asking tangential questions about things that you do understand so as to derail the discussion.
  

It has been theoretically shown that a preventive course of treatment consisting of actually doing some damn homework could eradicate this scourge of the medical student world. However, a small pilot program was terminated after unresolvable difficulties with patient compliance.