In the last few weeks, working as a GP, it seems like I’ve seen more pneumonia and bronchitis than at any time in the last 20 years. As a practice, we’ve also had a number of our elderly patients admitted as emergencies, sometimes after seeing one of us and sometimes when they’ve sought hospital care […]
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Sex, suicide and surgical blues: getting under the skin of Grey’s Anatomy
I’d always hoped that one day I’d finally get to grips with the contents of Gray’s Anatomy. Perhaps then I’d be able to write the sort of blog my friend Babette- a sport’s physician- would like me to write. To quote Babette, she’d like me to write something “simple, like sports, or the athlete’s heart, […]
Human Identity in the Age of Bio-science: two gems from Radio 4
As civilians in both Gaza and Israel spend another day living and dying in fear and surrounded by hate, Ali Abbas, a young man who as a child lost 16 members of his family and both his arms in the Iraq conflict, tells reporter Hugh Sykes his story. Ali’s story reminds us of the human […]
Henderson’s Equation: embracing science, facilitating human flourishing
I’m fond of referring, in talks and in discussions about medical professionalism, to the midnight meal. It’s a metaphor that I borrow from Dr Jerome Lowenstein, a friend and colleague who wrote an essay of the same name. In that essay he recalls a time when the medical team would meet in the hospital restaurant, […]
House MD: just what the doctor ordered
http://www.fox.com/house/gallery/ Back in the mid-80s when, as a junior doctor, I went to work in the US, I caused a mini-panic amongst the nurses by refusing, at least for a short while, to sign “MD” after my orders. An order in this context being a written order to the nurses to do the myriad of […]
Can a comic a day keep the doctor away? GP Ian Williams thinks so
In these uncertain economic times there seems to be a growing nostalgia for the more simple things in life. Home baking and dressmaking is on the rise and many families are anticipating a less commercialised festive get together. Although some of this return to basics is undoubtedly driven by economic imperatives, anecdotal evidence seems to […]
Rubens and the art of observation: a dying clinical skill?
Peter Paul Rubens. Helene Fourment in a fur wrap (Het Pelsken). c.1635. Oil on panel, 176×83 cm. Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum. Do you ever really look at your patients? I mean really, really, look, so carefully that you’re in danger of making both of you feel uncomfortable? And if you do, do you look with the eye of […]
Mad, bad or simply sad: a medical humanities look at mental health legislation
Vincent Van Gogh. Self Portrait with Bandaged Ear, 1889. London, Courtauld Institute Gallery. http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/cgi-bin/WebObjects.dll/CollectionPublisher.woa/wa/artistBiography?artistID=301 This month the Mental Health Act (MHA) 2007 came into force in England and Wales. This Act, which amends the MHA 1983, is just the latest in a series of Acts of Parliament that form part of an on-going search for […]
The Birmingham Children’s Hospital: the day the silent scream got noisy
http://www.munch.museum.no/content.aspx?id=15 This week a leading national paper in the UK broke news of what has been rightly called a medical scandal. They revealed the existence of a report into the systemic inadequacies of management systems at Birmingham Children’s Hospital. The impact of these failings on the standard of care provided by the hospital are now […]
December 2008 issue of MH: what’s new?
The next issue of MH, to be published in December, will be the first for the new editorial team and so represents a milestone of sorts in the history of the journal. Some of the planned developments will already be evident in this issue, including for instance both an art review and a music review. […]