About us

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GANFYD was initiated by a group of doctors and medical students who at that time used Doctors (AKA Ausdoctors) to contribute their knowledge and experience to the commonwealth. Those who wish to contribute to ganfyd should start here.

Simply put this is an evolving textbook of medicine. The medium - computers and the Web rather than dead paper - removes some limitations on conventional text, or reference, books and we are taking advantage of that. Perhaps it will help doctors decide what is important, certainly we would encourage contributors to try to distil out issues where other media may be badly out of date or specialisation has resulted in a massive literature of little relevance to most patients. We hope the information presented on this web site will be more evidence based than some web sites devoted to health matters. This is in the context that interest groups often manipulate presentation of health related evidence, by say hard to easily detect omission or to reinforce beliefs.

Why 'ganfyd'?

Projects often come from discussions of a different or more wide-ranging nature and this one is no exception. It arose form a discussion of GANFYD in a medical forum.

GANFYD stands for Get A Note From Your Doctor, and is a slang abbreviation used by British General Practitioners to describe the situation where a member of the public has been forced to consult their doctor in order to get a letter to say that they can do something which common sense says they can. Usually GANFYDs occur when employers, schools or public bodies are involved. They are as frustrating for patients as they are for doctors.

GANFYDs are now the least element of this project, but having been named we are keeping that.