In my last blog I described my time in a goldfish bowl with some 35 GPs on a leadership course—how the process worked, and what I learnt about myself, and how GPs think about me. But what I really meant to describe was our discussion on commissioning, how to do it well. In particular, I […]
A recent breakfast meeting at the Kings Fund discussed the issue of an NHS top-up policy in relation to multifocal lenses in cataract surgery. My contribution from the commissioner perspective involved six points: i) the lenses were dear, adding several hundred pounds to the around £800 NHS cost of a cataract procedure, ii) that they were highly […]
Two weeks ago I spent 90 minutes in a goldfish bowl with about 30 GPs. The goldfish bowl is a process to encourage reflection, and it certainly caused me to reflect. The goldfish bowl features in the leadership course of the Royal General College of Practitioners. Somebody with some pretensions to having been a leader […]
One of the purposes of vocational training is to develop good professional development habits and skills that will hopefully be sustained and honed throughout the rest of a doctor’s professional life. The great thing about completing vocational training and entering the ranks of seniority is not having to feel forced to study periodically and carry […]
I urge you to read Michael Millenson’s article on “Spock, Feminists, and the Fight for Participatory Medicine: a History.” It’s a fascinating and very readable account of how patient power has steadily increased in the US, and it would be very good to have a similar history in Britain. Most of what follows in this […]
I enjoy Rabbi Lionel Blue’s thought for the day and one I caught recently seemed pertinent to the turmoil which the NHS is going through. He started his talk with, “Monday it’s kidneys, Tuesday heart, Thursday joints, and Friday blood and brains.” It wasn’t a recipe, he said, but the hospital appointments in his diary […]
Gross plagiarism is easy to spot and most people agree it’s wrong, so it’s relatively easy to deal with. But while stealing somebody else’s paper and pretending it’s your own is obvious misconduct, it’s surprisingly hard to define exactly what plagiarism is, especially for more minor offences. It would be helpful if we could agree […]
If you work as a scientist, you also volunteer as a peer reviewer in the name of collegiality and service. I review about five or six manuscripts a month from a surprising array of journals–which always leaves me to ask, “How did they get my name and email address?” Generally these are journals in which I […]
I’m about to spend two weeks in Nigeria and need antimalarial tablets, but it seems that the NHS cannot help me. If I come back with malaria, no doubt it will help me – with two weeks in intensive care and a post mortem if necessary. It’s Monday morning, and I’m going on Saturday. I […]
In September the United Nations will hold a high level meeting on the prevention and control of non-communicable diseases (NCDs). This is only the second such meeting that the UN has held, and the first in 2001 led to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB, and Malaria. The UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon has […]