Jean Martin Charcot (pictured) (1825-1893) was one of the great pioneers of neurology—the so called Napoleon of the neuroses. He was the first to describe multiple sclerosis, named the “shaking palsy” Parkinson’s disease, and bestowed the eponym for Tourette’s syndrome in honour of his student Georges Gilles de la Tourette. (His other later famous students included Sigmund […]
Category: Guest writers
Lawrence Loh: Public health and why terminology matters
As younger generations of physicians develop a newfound interest in the social determinants of health, public health has increasingly become a buzzword for providers to throw about. In the medical community, it is now more and more common to find someone who is “practising” public health. But are they? Having worked as a public health physician for five years, […]
Suzanne Gordon: What we call healthcare professionals matters
The other day I attended a patient safety workshop at a major US hospital. The physicians and nurses, IT, and other quality and safety staff in the room were deeply concerned about the latest report in The BMJ documenting that 250,000 patients a year die from preventable errors, making this the third leading cause of […]
Anne Marie Rafferty: Whose responsibility is the workforce anyway?
It’s the workforce stupid! That is the key message of the Nuffield Report, “Reshaping the workforce to deliver the care patients need.” Workforce solutions are rarely quick fixes so policy makers often find it is more appealing to introduce new types of workers rather than grind away at trying to make what we already have […]
Paul Hunter: Zika virus would be able to spread in Europe
Zika virus is not new. Last year, when I was asked if I knew of an expert on the disease in the UK, I searched for papers written by an author giving a UK address. I found 11 papers, six of which were written before I had started primary school in 1961. Yet in the past […]
Ian Roberts: Misleading meta-analyses of small trials?
In September 2015, under the banner “Trusted evidence, Informed decisions, Better Health,” a Cochrane Collaboration press release proclaimed to the public that “preoperative statin therapy reduces the odds of postoperative atrial fibrillation and shortens the patient’s stay on the ICU and in hospital.” No adverse effects, no caveats, no calls for bigger and better trials, […]
Anna Sutherland: Hospital at home increases the chances of dying at home
It’s Dying Matters Awareness Week, an opportunity to place the importance of talking about dying, death and bereavement on the national agenda and to share Cochrane evidence that may help inform choices for those at the end of life and those caring for them. Here, Palliative Medicine doctor Anna Sutherland shares her thoughts on a […]
Jo Waller: Could a leaflet help catch cancer earlier?
We’ve written before about the difficulty of recognising symptoms that could be signs of cancer, and knowing when it’s appropriate to go to the doctor about them. There’s lots of evidence that cancer is more treatable if it’s found at an earlier stage, but we know less about effective ways of encouraging people to seek […]
Patient and public involvement in basic science research—are we doing enough?
In the past decade, medicine has seen a dramatic shift: from a paternalistic approach to one in which patients and clinicians make shared decisions. In parallel, there is a drive for greater involvement of patients and other members of the public in medical research—not just as passive participants in research, but as active contributors to […]
Ellen Broad and Tom Sasse: Google deep in trust issues around use of UK patient data
We all need different kinds of medical care at different points in our lives. When we interact with our GPs and healthcare providers, we hope that our doctors and nurses know everything they need to know to help us get better. We want to get the best possible care and we want the experience to […]