What do we know about the medical biography of Kemal Atatürk (1881-1938)? A summary of the state of knowledge and outlook on relevant issues for further research.

Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the founder and first President of the Turkish republic, is the subject of many more or less 'heroic' biographies and few critical ones. His anamnesis, however, is only available in fragments. Many books omit details of Atatürk's health and life, for example his bloodline, his illness and eventually his death, his funeral prayer and ceremony and his burial. His liver problem, diagnosed as cirrhosis and said to be the cause of his death, is well described but his general health and other sicknesses are scarcely recorded. This paper provides an overview of his anamnesis as far as it is known, the literature describing it and the level of knowledge generally published, and it also indicates where original research in the archives is needed to complete the picture.

Are all deaths the same for physicians and nurses?: stereotype questions physicians and nurses utilize to characterize a person who has died.

How do healthcare professionals classify or characterize human beings: how do they identify and define a patient or in the case of this study a dead person? Healthcare professionals are fairly regularly exposed to human beings dying. Part of their duty is to postpone death but, death being inevitable, they regularly lose the fight. This study aims to determine how healthcare professionals classify human beings by asking only 1 question, and allowing respondents to provide 5 answers of their own making ("You are exposed to a dead person, victim of a car accident. Apart from name and surname, what are the 5 questions you would ask?"). Thereby, it is hoped to avoid both conflicts with responsibilities of healthcare professionals and predetermining the answers. As described above, one self-administered open question related to a very short story had to be answered anonymously and was asked by e-mail. As a result of the analysis, a number of stereotype question sets were obtained through the answers of the respondents. The stereotype questions and derived thought concepts provide an insight into the awareness and (prioritized) values of healthcare professionals in Turkey. In the replies, questions related to the personal background of the dead (such as age, marital status, and parenthood) had the highest frequency, while questions of professional relevance followed with medium frequency. A question relating to the consent of the deceased to organ donation was almost never asked. It is suggested that any potential educational material for healthcare personnel should be reviewed in order to increase awareness of relevant issues.