Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Medicine/Task forces

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This page can be used to gauge support for potential task forces under WikiProject Medicine before starting one.

To propose a task force, write a brief description (including links to the related Wikipedia articles), and add it along with your name to the list below (in chronological order). Some boilerplate you can use:

=== (Name of task force) ===
'''Description:''' 
[description here] ~~~~

'''Interested Wikipedians (please add your name)'''
# ~~~~

'''Discussion:'''
* '''Comment''' (or '''Oppose''' or other indicators)

To attract members from outside WikiProject Medicine, you might also want to post at note at the task force section of the pan-Wiki proposal page. A small number of one-time announcements on the talk pages of key articles and related WikiProjects may also be appropriate.

If you are interested in any of the task forces listed here, simply add your name to the appropriate list under Interested Wikipedians and start contributing to the relevant articles. The discussion section of each proposal is designed for expressing support, opposition, or any other comments or concerns, whether or not you intend to join the task force. When adding to a discussion, please provide your rationale for support or opposition; this is not a numerical vote.

*'''Support''' - [Rationale for support] 
*'''Oppose''' - [Rationale for opposition] 
*'''Neutral''' - [Concerns or suggestions]

See Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine/Task forces#Task_force_creation_guidelines

Description: [description here, and author to please sign the description with four tildes]

Interested Wikipedians (please add your name)

Discussion:

• Isn't this already covered by the Pathology task force? Seems redundant. Mmagdalene722 (talk) 16:05, 3 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

No - they are totally different medical specialties. The model of task forces in WPMED is that they are basically split up by medical specialty. While "pathology" can be used to describe anything abnormal, the task force mostly covers entire articles relating to what pathologists do (see {{Pathology}} and Category:Pathology). The pathology of specific diseases is mostly covered by the task force of the medical specialty that would treat a patient with the condition.

In the US, ID is a sub-specialty of internal medicine. ID docs complete an internal medicine residency and then a fellowship in ID. They see patients at the bedside - either as primary care physicians or more commonly as consultants. ID docs may order tests or cultures, but they do not physically perform the tests. Pathology is its own residency. Pathologists typically work in (and are in charge of) hospital labs and look at tissue slides under microscopes to diagnose things. Pathologists do not actually see patients - they interpret slides like radiologists interpret images. In hospitals, I'm not sure who performs the specimen cultures, sensitivities, and Gram stains. It's probably a tech overseen by a physician medical director, but I do not think these types of tests are verified by pathologists. --Scott Alter 03:28, 4 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

• Would this include Public health as well? I'd just realized that Water treatment was not within WPMed and came here looking for the appropriate task force... LeadSongDog come howl 20:57, 29 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Description: This idea needs a more inclusive name, but I'm thinking of something that would cover outdated theories, new-but-not-accepted ideas, all WP:FRINGEy articles, a good deal of alternative medicine, and the like. Re-discovering Wilson's temperature syndrome and the strange changes recently made at Leukemia#Causes_and_risk_factors is what got me thinking about it. Potential categories of interest include:

• Category:Alternative cancer treatments
• Category:Experimental medical treatments
• Category:Medicinal use of cannabis
• Category:AIDS denialism
• Category:Patent medicines

Specific articles probably include anything named Health effects of ____ or ____ and health.

My goal is a cross-disciplinary noticeboard that might interest some people at WP:FTN, WP:SKEPTIC, WP:WPHOS, and perhaps WP:ALTMED; without interest from people outside the WPMED core group, then it's probably not worth starting an extra page for this. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:38, 18 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Interested Wikipedians (please add your name)

1. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:38, 18 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]
2. Renaissancee (talk) 05:08, 4 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
3. pustelnik(talk) 9:12, 7 June 2009

Discussion:

• Comment: I don't think a task force here would be the best format for such an endeavor. Everything within the scope of WPMED (tagged with {{WPMED}}) should be strictly within the confines of conventional, accepted medicine. Maybe WPMED could keep a noticeboard page outside of a task force. This page could list all of the questionable articles, without actually including them within the scope of the project. This way, articles can all be easily watched with "related changes". --Scott Alter 00:43, 13 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

What's wrong with preserving history? Renaissancee (talk) 05:08, 4 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Description: Endocrinology is a major area of medicine, and it should have its own task force, plus there is allot of articles that need to be cleaned up, expanded and created. Maen. K. A. (talk) 13:02, 2 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Interested Wikipedians (please add your name)

1. Maen. K. A. (talk) 13:02, 2 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]
2. pustelnik(talk) 9:12, 7 June 2009 I'll be happy to look at pediatric endocrine articles
3. Lee, Diana (talk) 18:38, 26 July 2009 (EST)
4. Fishmuffin Cool beans. 17:28, 8/8/10 (GMT - 4)

Discussion:

• Comment (or Oppose or other indicators)

Description: Health informatics is the science of applying information science and information technology in health. It is an important field, that is growing, and wikipedia has a number of articles already but that are in need of some more serious attention. Look at Category:Medical informatics and Category:Health informatics - I recently added a category Category:Health informaticians that attempts to gather together some of the informaticians who have profiles but many more bios could and should be created of some of the leaders in this field. Karl.brown (talk) 21:16, 24 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Interested Wikipedians (please add your name)

1. Karl.brown (talk) 21:16, 24 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]
2. Prashanthns prashanthns (talk) 10:30, 17 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion:

• Comment (or Oppose or other indicators)

Description: Occupational medicine is a multidisciplinary field covering traditional medicine, several alternative medicine fields, business practices, insurance policy and many other areas both within and without medicine. Obviously related articles include: physical therapy, tendinitis, lumbar epidural steroid injection, anterior cruciate ligament injury, rotator cuff tear, spinal fusion, radiculopathy, Workers' compensation, Waddell's signs, and an untold number of redlinks. Most of the work associated with this task force would likely have to do with expanding coverage of medical treatment as used in this field. —/Mendaliv/^2¢/_Δ's/ 01:48, 3 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Interested Wikipedians (please add your name)

1. My own focus would be from the utilization review side of Occ. med. —/Mendaliv/^2¢/_Δ's/ 01:48, 3 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
2. MaenK.A._Talk 07:38, 9 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion:

• Comment (or Oppose or other indicators)
• Neutral Good idea, but I don't really find OM very interesting. Renaissancee (talk) 00:26, 4 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
• Support there are many articles in this field that need expanding and monitoring MaenK.A._Talk 07:38, 9 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Description: The Anesthesia page is currently in constant turmoil due to constant edits from political parties adding talking points. My goal is to keep the page from becoming about politics and maintain it. There have been many attempts by moderators to keep the peace without success.Mmackinnon (talk) 03:09, 15 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Interested Wikipedians (please add your name)

1. Mmackinnon (talk) 03:08, 15 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion:

• Comment (or Oppose or other indicators)
• Comment Do we really need a task force to protectt one article? Renaissancee (talk) 16:05, 18 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment Would it be appropriate to roll this into a greater occupational medicine and pain management (or just pain management in general) TF? —/Mendaliv/^2¢/_Δ's/ 01:55, 20 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment: If this task force is created, its purpose should not be solely to protect one article. There are plenty of articles in Category:Anesthesia for a potential task force to cover. Also, the content relating to anesthesia is not well organized. I think there should be separate articles on Anesthesiology (the field of medicine), Anesthesia (ways to decrease sensation), and Anesthetic (agents used to decrease sensation). The Anesthesia article is currently pretty long, so dividing it into separate articles would make sense. It could also reduce the turmoil, since each article would have a specific focus, instead of covering such a wide spectrum. Currently, there are separate articles for local anesthesia/local anesthetic and general anesthesia/general anesthetic, so I think it would make sense to split anesthesia as well. I do not think this should be combined with occupational medicine, as anesthesia and occupational medicine are unrelated. Pain management is a subspecialty of anesthesia (along with PM&R, neuro, and psych) not the other way around. --Scott Alter 15:30, 20 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
  • Yes, I understand that they aren't strictly related, but combining into an alternative, multidisciplinary TF might get more involvement. Maybe even a general "pain" TF. Just thinking aloud, I suppose. —/Mendaliv/^2¢/_Δ's/ 18:57, 20 June 2009 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment: Perhaps create a pharmacology task force that would cover all forms of drugs instead? It seems like the task forces that would fail are those that tend to be specific and those that succeed are those that tend to be broad. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Fishmuffin (talk • contribs) 22:05, 8 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Description: This is a project that so far has had its main page in commons: Commons:Human body diagrams. In short, The main purpose is to provide a way of explaining medical conditions and other phenomena in an easier way, that is, with pictures, helping to get an overview of the involved components. The latest works include diagrams in human anatomy and leukemia. However, it might be more suitable to move the project to a WPmed task force instead of having it far off in Commons. Mikael Häggström (talk) 07:01, 6 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Interested Wikipedians (please add your name)

1. Mikael Häggström (talk) 07:01, 6 November 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion:

Description: Surgery is a huge area in medicine that demands coverage on this project. Much to my surprise, this has not been addressed yet. There is a vast amount of articles out there on wikipedia that need cleaned up and improved as well as ones waiting to be created. Tyrol5 [Talk] 01:07, 14 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Interested Wikipedians (please add your name)

1. Tyrol5 [Talk] 01:07, 14 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion:

Description: Otolaryngology and head and neck surgery is a fast developing speciality. A separate task force is a must. Drtbalu (talk) 13:25, 28 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Interested Wikipedians (please add your name)

1. Dr. T. Balasubramanian Drtbalu (talk) 13:25, 28 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion:

Description: The most common cause of all diseases in the world today is autoimmune diseases. The current article on autoimmune disease lists about 46 accepted or suspected autoimmune caused diseases. This is no where near a complete list which would probably be comprised of a couple hundred diseases (Researchers have identified 80-100 different autoimmune diseases and suspect at least 40 additional diseases of having an autoimmune basis, though it may be significantly more than this). In fact, I have not found a good list anywhere, tending to leave out a number of lesser known suspected autoimmune diseases (e.g. Dercum's disease). This ought to be remedied. The list of cutaneous conditions has nearly been expanded into oblivion, why shouldn't autoimmune diseases get the same level of attention and consideration? Also, there are a number of articles pertaining to autoimmune diseases that need cleaning up, updates to conform their content to modern thinking, and general expansion.

Immunology would cover autoimmune diseases along with hypersensitivities, immune deficiencies, etc. Fishmuffin 17:55, 8 August 2010 (UTC - 4)

Interested Wikipedians (please add your name)

1. Fishmuffin
2. Jbarin

Discussion: The current state of immunologic topics on Wiki is immensely variable - somewhere between decent and disastrous. Basic immunology is largely basic, and appropriate for the audience. The autoimmune disease pages are frankly poorly written, and filled with fringe - although the major diseases (multiple sclerosis, type 1 diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis) tend to be better. There frankly aren't enough editors to cope with the massive amount of WP:NOT, WP:NOR, and other reasons to facepalm. Frankly, immunology remains a niche discipline, and a very active area of research, in no small part because we lack an understanding that is both discrete and comprehensive of how molecular and cellular pathways integrate into the big picture. Autoimmunity is among the most problematic of those mysteries. I would support an Immunology group, working under both WikiProject Medicine and WikiProject Molecular and Cellular Biology. Jbarin (talk) 11:26, 27 October 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Description:

Interested Wikipedians (please add your name)

Discussion:

Scott, can you tell me what the noinclude tags are supposed to do in this instance? WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:06, 22 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Hands up! II think it was a rationalisation of my edit, which was to fix the header levels, i.e as included on the medicine proct page, intro was level 3, list of task forces was 2, so it caused a break when it shouldn't, assumed I'd got it wrong! LeeVJ (talk) 01:11, 22 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

This page is transcluded to the main WPMED page as the task force section. LeeVJ, while your edit made sense, I don't think we need that header on the main page. When this page was expanded with content as to how to create a task force, new headings were added here that need not be displayed on the main WPMED page. Rather than adding the task force list directly to WP:MED, I chose to transclude the list to simplify maintenance. --Scott Alter 02:25, 22 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Understood - and it's fixed now! By the way - Exellent job on all of this task force organisation / reorganisation! LeeVJ (talk) 03:18, 22 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, Scott! I know if I asked, I'd learn something interesting. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:20, 23 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Should there be any set criteria that should be met before a new task force is created? Although it is nice to have separate task forces for different fields of medicine, most are not really active. And since we are not really limiting task force creation, why not just get it out of the way and create task forces for all the remaining common medical specialties? Besides the proposed hem/onc, endocrinology, and psychiatry, others major ones we've missed so far include surgery, rheumatology, and pediatrics. --Scott Alter 00:25, 13 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Overall, I'd rather see task forces created when there are at least two or three editors willing to watchlist the pages. I don't expect them to be particularly active pages, especially when task force members themselves don't use them for discussions in their area (posting to WT:MED instead of to the task force page when the question is clearly within the specialty is a good way to end up with an "unused" task force page), but a page that's unwatched is clearly undesirable.

Also, I think that it's natural for a spate of task force creation to be followed by a long lull, while people get used to the idea and figure out what does and doesn't work. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:17, 30 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Not quite sure how to add discussion to this specific topic. Would it be possible, in this space, to provide some regular update on the status of the proposed task force ?

If we know where the task force stood, then it would be a little easier to engage colleagues into participating. --InnocentsAbroad2 (talk) 23:22, 17 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Hi InnocentsAbroad2,

I've moved your comment down here and hope that you don't mind.

In general, if nothing's happening at this page, then nothing's changed. I think, though, that with the proposed psychiatry taskforce, that we've got five people on board, and perhaps it's reasonable to create the page now. (Perhaps we'll wait until tomorrow, just in case anyone objects.) If you know anyone that might be interested, please encourage them to volunteer here. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:38, 19 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

If a new page is created for the proposed task force, what are the first steps to maintaining the page ? --InnocentsAbroad2 (talk) 01:21, 21 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

This is the page to watchlist to follow task force creation guidelines. The steps to create the page are at Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine/Task forces. We could help you out in creating the task force, if needed. After a place for discussion is created, the first steps would be to possibly notify the interested people that the task force now exists, and direct them to a discussion regarding the goals of the task force. Maybe specific articles would be named as high-priority, and should receive attention, or maybe new articles need to be created to cover missing topics. --Scott Alter 02:41, 21 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I'd like to add a link to the Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine/Google Project on the project page. I was thinking it is a kind of task force but you guys are pretty organized, so thought better check first - as it doesn't really fit criteria... maybe associated taskforces? Lee∴V (talk • contribs) 10:37, 18 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I just added it to WP:MED and {{WPMED Navigation}} under the "How to help" sections. --Scott Alter (talk) 03:38, 22 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Many thanks. Lee∴V (talk • contribs) 13:38, 22 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]