How is the EU involved in transparency and access to clinical trial results? Many readers will know this already, but perhaps not all. For obvious reasons, health professionals have tended to focus on the national and they might not all appreciate the strength of the “side-wind” blowing from the EU. The EU was formed on […]
Category: Columnists
Richard Smith: Does it take an earthquake to reform healthcare?
Integrating the fractured and fractious components of health and social care systems seems to be everybody’s current favoured “solution” for healthcare problems, but it’s hard to make happen. We now have evidence that it may literally take an earthquake or some other natural disaster to make it happen. Conceptually it’s easy to see why integration […]
William Cayley: Can you show that you care?
“Can’t I just fake it? Can’t I pretend to care, even if I don’t.” So an anonymous physician is reported to have responded during a workshop on caring communication with patients. My colleagues and I all scoffed with appropriate indignation when this story was told, as the same training was presented to us—but I’ve started […]
Jim Murray: The EMA’s efforts to widen access to clinical trial results
The European Medicines Agency is trying to widen access to clinical trial results for medicines that have been authorised. Its efforts have been blocked, at least temporarily, by a legal challenge in the European Courts from AbbVie, in a case involving the medicine Humira. AbbVie is in effect the former medicines division of Abbot Laboratories. […]
Richard Smith: Am I behind the times in expecting to die?
Until last weekend it never crossed my mind that I wouldn’t die. Now after conversations with my brilliant friend Alex Jadad I fear that I might be hopelessly out of step with modern thinking and way behind the times. Three weeks ago Time magazine asked “Can Google solve death?” The provisional answer is “if anybody […]
William Cayley: The patient’s story comes first
Once upon a time, there was a pain, a positive test, and “a possibly abnormal x-ray requiring clinical correlation.” As they travelled the world, no one could figure out where they came from. Many physicians racked their brains, but they remained a mystery, until one wise person said, “tell me your story.” Our three travelers […]
Tiago Villanueva: Should medical students spend time in resource poor settings?
I believe firmly in the importance of medical students and doctors engaging in international experiences, and in the international mobility of doctors. So I decided to go along to a conference on the 11 October, organised by the Medical Schools Council entitled, “Working together for ethical, educational, and safe placements at home and abroad.” In […]
Mary E Black: Save our national statistics
That old chestnut about “lies, damned lies and statistics” always raises a laugh. But something is about to happen that is not funny at all. The Office for National Statistics has published a consultation on proposals to STOP producing a wide range of statistics related to health and health inequalities. This is an important issue […]
Richard Smith on John Munro: odd shoes and charisma
How when you are a 20 year old medical student with almost no clinical experience and no experience at all of death do you talk to a dying patient? What do you say? Do you avoid the topic of death altogether or do you put it top of the agenda? Should you look sad? Can […]
Richard Smith: The day I kissed 500 women
On Christmas Day 1976 I kissed 500 women. All of them were over 70 and institutionalised, and one was either dead or killed by my kiss. I was a houseman, working in the Eastern General in Edinburgh, close to the city’s inadequate sewerage works. The hospital was built in 1906 by Leith Parish Council as […]