We talk a lot about communication in medicine and try to teach the right skills to students, such as the importance of body language and simplifying medical terminology. But how often do we look at non-medical language and the effect it has? Suzanne Gordon’s BMJ blog “Medicine’s F word—Fail” in early December reminded me to […]
Category: Guest writers
John Fabre: The absence of a national leadership structure within the NHS
The strike by junior doctors illustrates a fundamental fact about the National Health Service: the de facto chief executive is the minister for health, and there are no advisory or decision making bodies between him and doctors and nurses at the coal face. While there was a broad consensus for the principles underlying the NHS, […]
Sadie Boniface and Sally Marlow: Mother’s ruin? New guidelines for alcohol consumption during pregnancy
The Chief Medical Officer’s proposed new drinking guidelines were announced on the 8th January. These included specific advice about drinking during pregnancy, to which we could not do justice in our previous post about drinking guidelines. The new guideline says “if you are pregnant or planning a pregnancy, the safest approach is not to drink […]
Steve Ruffenach: Tech, my new medical assistant
I have a new medical assistant (MA) and I’m trying to learn how to get along with him. My new MA is named Tech and I bet you have one too. I see him with nearly everyone in clinics and it seems no one can do their rounds without him in the hospital. Everybody, every […]
Richard White et al: Efficiency savings in wound care must not compromise patient care
The Department of Health together with the NHS Supply Chain are trying to push through Generic Specifications (known as the Carter Report) where the specification criteria can be applied so that products, including dressings, will be able to be used in 80% of circumstances and where the output is “good enough” and “fit for purpose.” […]
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 […]
Sally Marlow and Sadie Boniface: From “plucked out of the air” to grounded in evidence—UK drinking guidelines reviewed
This week the Chief Medical Officer has published new guidelines on drinking alcohol. Was a revision necessary, and if so why? The old guidelines were two decades old, and we know more now than we did then about what diseases alcohol contributes to, and about any health benefits. Also, the old advice was confusing at […]
Neel Sharma: Doctors need standardised training in non technical skills
Competency Based Medical Education (CBME) forms the backbone of the teaching and assessment of students and doctors in training. However, limitations have been described including the fact that there are endless lists of required abilities, there are logistical issues where trainees progress at their own rate, there can be a lack of mentoring, and there […]
Azeem Majeed: Moving forwards with research on the “weekend effect”
Two articles published in The BMJ in 2015 on the “weekend effect” have sparked considerable debate in The BMJ and on social media. [1,2] A number of previous studies have reported that hospital mortality is higher for patients admitted at weekends than for patients admitted on other days of the week. [3,4] This higher mortality for […]
Robin Stott: In favour of constructive dissent
Constructive dissent is essential to arriving at the best possible solution to difficult problems. Jeremy Corbyn provided this useful service in the run-up to the debate on extending bombing into Syria. So I was outraged at David Cameron’s suggestion that those of us who support Corbyn’s views were a bunch of terrorist sympathisers. I wrote […]