Before I arrived here, I was concerned about quite how bad my first on-call could be given the new environment, the language, and the vastly different presentations that I could see. I’d done my homework, I knew that Guatemala ranked highly in both maternal and infant mortality rates, but I’m not sure I’d taken the […]
Category: Guest writers
Tejshri Shah on scrapping healthcare fees in developing countries
A group of doctors warned last week that if climate change is not effectively tackled we all face a health catastrophe. What they did not say is that the catastrophe is already here for millions of the world’s poorest people, because when they get sick, or even have a baby, they cannot afford the medical […]
Oscar Yang: A Sino-Kiwi in Scotland
So finally, when dusk fades into darkness, I sit down at my computer to type my first BMJ blog entry. I’m sitting at the warmly-lit dinner table in my second floor apartment on South Clerk Street in Edinburgh, looking over the quiet darkened streets mapping this auspicious city. The calm contrasts with the haste of the day. Busy people, heavy traffic. Tourists […]
Joe Collier: A drink for Mr Teetotaller?
Two things are certain. First, I am a teetotaller. Second, UK society (in common with society in Europe generally) is awash with the influence of alcohol. If ever there were a risk of a clash of interests, this is one. […]
Louise Kenny: It’s a mystery
One of the most exciting aspects of working here is the opportunity to have a good rummage among the rarities of diagnoses that I learnt about for the MRCP. There have been a few cases now, which have rung a big bell in my head, related to conditions which I never thought to save space […]
Douglas Noble: Tales of patient safety from the frontline for junior doctors: incident reporting
The NHS has so far accumulated almost 3 million incident reports, well on the way to being as tall as the British Telecom Tower if they were all piled up one on top of the other. Many significant research studies have identified the main barrier to incident reporting as lack of feedback to the reporter. Sound […]
David Kerr: UK and US healthcare- public option is the universal, high quality, and efficient way
Writers of the open letter to America in defence of the NHS rebut clearly and concisely some of the more ludicrous charges leveled against our system of healthcare. It’s a debate that on the whole leaves me cold. The idea that wittingly a Government would allow a huge chunk of its population to go without proper healthcare […]
Olivia Roberts: More tales from the UN number-crunchers
Quick follow on from the last blog post on the wonderful world of UN statistics. This time the Inter-agency Group for Child Mortality Estimation (IGME) has ploughed through country data. Good news: The estimated global mortality for children under-5 in 2008 is 65 per 1,000 live births, versus 90 in 1990. Bad news: Due to […]
Louise Kenny: On-call in Guatemala
I thought I might be broken in gently to the new job, but I arrived last Friday in Santiago, and was thrown into a 24hr on-call in the ER on Saturday, which was thankfully remarkably quiet. Sadly I have had to convert to transatlantic terms, as when I use the term A+E, my American colleagues […]
Richard Smith: Remember “the disappeared”
The most interesting, and certainly the most chilling, experience I had in four days in Buenos Aires was to visit the memorial to “the disappeared.” […]