One afternoon I passed through the emergency room and noticed two doctors hovering over a patient attempting to get intravenous access. As in many of the emergency cases, the patient’s circulation was poor. While one doctor was attempting jugular access, I suggested inserting an intraosseous needle. […]
Category: Columnists
Richard Smith: Computers take histories better than doctors – why don’t they do it more?
Here’s a simulated doctor patient consultation that took place today at the Royal Society of Medicine. A 65 year old woman (cunningly disguised as a bald, male professor from the Mayo Clinic) who is known to be hypertensive and on treatment says that her blood pressure has gone up over the last 10 days. An […]
Tracey Koehlmoos: E-cigarettes still on sale at the shopping mall
During July 2009 during a brief visit to the US my three sons and I noticed that electronic cigarettes were being sold at kiosks in the mall. It seemed so un-American somehow to have cigarettes being advertised so openly and in such a public venue. Some quick research showed that these devices are actually very […]
Siddhartha Yadav: TedxChange’s millennium development goals webcast
Sitting in the comfort of my room and sipping a cup of tea, I listened to Melinda Gates and others this morning – live. The TedxChange was an event organized by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and TEDx to mark the tenth anniversary of inception of the millennium development goals. Focused on the theme […]
Martin McShane: The boa constrictor of bureacracy
Another request for “urgent” reporting pinged into my inbox today. It is the third or fourth in as many days. At least two were asking for identical information from different people, for different templates. The desire for central reporting is incessant and has not lessened one iota since May. If anything, it has increased. My […]
Julian Sheather: I want to be bipolar
Slouching around the internet recently I happened upon an article with a title that intrigued me – and one that I have shamelessly stolen for this blog. Where once the mentally troubled went to enormous lengths to avoid a diagnosis of mental illness, today some of us are actively seeking it, or seeking one diagnosis […]
Richard Smith on banks and vulnerable people
Banks are probably now our most unpopular institutions, more so than estate agents, local authorities, and the Press Complaints Commission. So perhaps I shouldn’t kick them when they are down, but I fear that not only are they hopeless at managing risk (supposedly their core business) but also they are hopeless with vulnerable people. […]
Julian Sheather: Doctors’ religious beliefs and end of life care
Early on in my ‘career’ in ethics – I put the word in scare quotes not only because the idea that my rather shapeless crashing about should be dignified with the name ‘career’ makes me chuckle, but also because the idea of a career in ethics itself has always felt like a category error – […]
Richard Smith: Medicine needs to feel defeat
Defeat is a marvellous thing. It can refresh in a way that never happens after victory. Wouldn’t it be wonderful, I thought this morning as I awoke, if medicine were to feel defeated and have to rethink its purpose? […]
James Raftery on bevacizumab for metastatic colorectal cancer
Roche’s bevacizumab (Avastin) is in the news again. This has a reasonable claim to be a wonder drug, but for macular degeneration, a disease for which Roche refuses to license it. Instead Roche has tried and failed several times to have the drug recommended by NICE for lung, breast, and colorectal cancer, all at an […]