Guest Post by Mark Toynbee, Adam Al-Diwani, Joe Clacey and Matthew Broome [Editor’s note: Events in the real world have moved more quickly than David or I have; the facts of the junior doctors’ strike have moved on since the paper was published and this post submitted. Still, the matters of principle remain. – IB] A […]
Category: The NHS
R-E-S-P-E-C-T
Here’s an intriguing letter from one John Doherty, published in the BMJ yesterday: Medical titles may well reinforce a clinical hierarchy and inculcate deference in Florida, as Kennedy writes, but such constructs are culture bound. When I worked in outback Australia the patients called me “Mate,” which is what I called them. They still wanted me to be in […]
Homeopathy, Blacklisting, and the Misuse of Choice
It seems that homeopathy might at last be facing some serious opposition from within the NHS, with the prospect of its being blacklisted being considered. There’s any number of people who’ll be entirely on board with that. Homeopathy doesn’t work. Of course, a lot of medicines turn out not to work, or not to work […]
Should Doctors Strike?
Should doctors strike? Is it ethical for doctors to go on strike, potentially putting their patients at risk of getting inadequate treatment? As the BBC reports, ministers and junior doctors are currently “locked in a dispute.” One possible outcome of this disagreement is a physicians’ strike, which raises a number of tricky ethical questions. […]
Stop What You’re Doing: This is Important.
I’d not realised it, but the latest iteration of the erstwhile Medical Innovation Bill – colloquially known as the Saatchi Bill – is up for debate in the Commons on Friday. This is it in its latest form: to all intents and purposes, though, it’s the same thing about which I’ve blogged before. In a […]
Assisted Dying’s Conscience Claws
Aaaaaaaand so the latest attempt to get assisted dying of some sort onto the statute books in the UK has bitten the dust. I can’t say I’m surprised. Watching the debate in the Commons – I didn’t watch it all, but I did watch a fair chunk of it – it was striking just how […]
On the other hand…
… the phenomenon of apologising for the wrong thing comes alongside people taking umbrage at the wrong thing. Last week, the BMJ ran a head-to-head feature on the “question” of whether doctors should recommend homeopathy. This was the latest in a series of articles in which a question is posed, apparently strictly on the understanding that it’ll accommodate […]
The Death of Sidaway: Values, Judgments and Informed Consent
Guest post by Kirsty Keywood (University of Manchester) On 11th March Nadine Montgomery won her case before the UK Supreme Court to gain compensation for the failure of her obstetrician to warn her of risks associated with the vaginal delivery of a large infant – a risk which she would have averted by requesting a […]
Once More unto the Breach of Covenant?
The “Military Covenant” is in the news again: The government is failing to abide by its military covenant, medical experts who treat injured soldiers have said. Leading professors in psychology and orthopaedics say the healthcare system is not providing veterans with the service they have been promised. […] The moral obligation to treat veterans should […]
Oh, and while we’re talking about media hype…
… there’s this, from last week’s Independent: Thousands of unborn foetuses incinerated to heat UK hospitals The bodies of more than 15,000 unborn foetuses have been incinerated in the UK, an investigation has found, with some treated as “clinical waste” and others burned to heat hospitals. The practice was carried out by 27 NHS trusts, […]