Review

Right up my hamlet

Problem-based Learning for Health Improvement: practical public health for every professional
Edited by John Cornell and Frada Eskin
Radcliffe Medical Press, 2003. £27.95

The new public health professional seems to embody the latter-day Renaissance Man. Traversing the variable terrain associated with population health, evidence-based practice, change management, research methods and leadership, such professionals (whether doctors, nurses or social workers) are expected to be a veritable Jack (or Jill) of all trades.

Focusing in turn on each of the ten competencies identified by the Faculty of Public Health Medicine, this book is an unexpected treasure trove. Each chapter starts with identifiable learning objectives that are comprehensively explored and realised. It proceeds through case study materials, hence the ‘problem-based learning’ of the title, with accompanying exercises and helpful hints.

In deciding whether you are a dilatory Hamlet or a decisive Laertes, you encounter realistic scenarios against which to ‘whet thy blunted purpose’.

The book arrived on my desk at the same time as our university advances plans for its masters in public health. I have no doubt this text will become a key resource, assuming the collective authorship can keep up with the challenges of an ever-shifting, and indeed expanding, public health agenda.

While the broad competencies contribute a semblance of permanence, the supporting detail has the inevitable feel of transience. However, to label this prodigious work as exam fodder is to do it a disservice. It belongs on the desk of every public health professional, and other colleagues besides — more Everyman than Renaissance Man, in fact.

My one criticism is that the chapters are too variable, not in quality, but in format. Some have sections that represent numbered learning objectives, while others do not. One chapter has 133 references while the others typically have no more than a dozen. Two chapters begin with a graphical chapter overview, for example a ‘mindmap’, while the rest do not.

In permitting this assemblage of well-respected South Yorkshire-based public health contributors to produce virtuosi performances, the editors have perhaps relaxed their grip on the conductor’s baton a little too much.

Nevertheless, the resulting work is a fascinating and useful read and a clear testimony that ‘Something is healthy in the state of South Yorkshire’.