Out with the old and in with the new? Improvements in the quality and portability of electronic diagnostic equipment have led to increasing discussion of late over the possible demise of the stethoscope. News outlets for the general public and for medical professionals have noted the growing debate over whether portable and handheld ultrasound, as […]
Category: Columnists
Jeffrey Aronson: When I use a word . . . Apothecaries
Last Saturday (23 January) I went to Sam Wanamaker’s Globe Theatre in Southwark (picture) for a meeting of the Oxford–Globe Forum for Medicine and Drama in Practice, as part of the commemorations of the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death in 1616, expertly organised by Shakespearean scholar Professor Laurie Maguire and her colleagues. I gave a […]
David Kerr: A bump on the road to mHealth utopia?
A recent clinical trial’s finding that digital health technology (also known as mHealth) failed to reduce healthcare costs is raising eyebrows on this side of the Atlantic. For naysayers the results will most certainly reinforce their belief that mHealth is a fad, which distracts from the real business of medicine, and that more investment in […]
Jeffrey Aronson: When I use a word . . . Fifty up
This is the fiftieth blog in my “When I Use a Word” series. You’ve been counting, of course. To appreciate fully the range of words that imply “five” and “fifth”, “fifteen” and “fifty” requires an understanding of the phonetic phenomenon of assimilation, which is the modification of a sound in a word, phrase, or sentence, […]
Richard Smith: Calculating our debt to the old
My mother, who has had no short term memory for nine years, has lived in a nursing home for almost three years. I visit her most weeks, but I constantly fret if I should visit her more or less. What, I ask you, reader, is the way to calculate the right amount of time to […]
Billy Boland: The trouble with resolutions…
At this most reflective time of year, I found myself in a conversation last week about New Year’s resolutions. Thinking about my most and least successful attempts it occurred to me that I’d foolishly blogged my resolutions for 2015 around this time last year. With dread, I clicked through to see what I’d committed to. […]
Jeffrey Aronson: When I use a word . . . Striking tactics
Jeremy Cunctator’s Fabian tactics in his dealings with the British Medical Association over the junior hospital doctors’ contract have precipitated the first doctors’ strike for 40 years. After declining to negotiate, he belatedly agreed to do so, mediated by Acas. The negotiations failed. Did he intend them to? What do you think? Then on Monday […]
Richard Smith: Gawping at death
Around 4000 people a day visit El Museo De Las Momias (The Mummy Museum) in Guanjuato, making it one of the most popular tourist sites in Mexico. Some queue for an hour or more. Why do they go? Why did I go with my family? The museum contains about 100 mummies. These are not mummies […]
Paul Glasziou and Iain Chalmers: Is 85% of health research really “wasted”?
Our estimate that 85% of all health research is being avoidably “wasted” [Chalmers & Glasziou, 2009] commonly elicits disbelief. Our own first reaction was similar: “that can’t be right?” Not only did 85% sound too much, but given that $200 billion per year is spent globally on health and medical research, it implied an annual […]
Richard Smith: Does the NHS meet the needs of junior doctors?
Bain, the global consultancy, produces what it calls “a pyramid of employee needs,” and on the day when junior doctors are striking it’s instructive to see how well the NHS is doing in meeting their needs. The bottom of the pyramid is “satisfied employees,” and the very fact that junior doctors are striking suggests that […]