How confident are you that the risk management processes in your organisation enable you to predict and manage all the risks your patients are likely to face? If you have doubts, you’re probably not alone, as the findings from our Safer Clinical Systems programme suggest. Looking back at my time on the board of a […]
Category: Guest writers
Paul Roblin on Dobson et al’s Lancet Tamiflu re-analysis: an independent review group. Really?
On 30 January 2015 the Lancet published a re-analysis of oseltamivir effects in symptomatic influenza like illness “Oseltamivir treatment for influenza in adults: a meta-analysis of randomised controlled trials.” This was authored by Joanna Dobson, Richard J Whitley, Stuart Pocock, and Arnold S Monto. The Lancet supplemented this re-analysis with an article by Heath Kelly and Benjamin […]
Neville Goodman: Stemming the rising tide of epidemic proportions
Metaphor is useful. When Malcolm Gladwell wrote about an epidemic of Hush Puppies, no one thought that Hush Puppies were transmissible in anything more than the metaphorical sense. But as doctors we need to be more careful before we muddy the meanings of our technical words. An epidemic is a widespread occurrence of an infectious […]
Vincent Iacopino: Health professionals have no role in Saudi blogger’s flogging case
The disturbing case of a Saudi blogger sentenced to flogging should serve as a reminder that health professionals should never participate in torture or cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment. Raif Badawi, 31, was sentenced last year to 1000 lashes and 10 years in prison for insulting Islam after he criticized Saudi clerics on his blog. […]
Stuart Buck: Sharing data from past clinical trials
There was a time when academic and government researchers performed experiments that were clearly unethical—such as letting syphilis go untreated, or asking people to administer severe electric shocks to each other. Ethics review boards sprang up in an important effort to make sure that research on human subjects remained within the bounds of legality and […]
Ohad Oren and Michal Oren on the “Cordon Sanitaire Hospital:” A vision being fulfilled
Seven years ago, we outlined our vision of a humanitarian hospital. As Israelis who had witnessed the suffering of the citizens of Gaza, we felt compelled to develop a model that would improve their overwhelming deficiencies in medical care. We envisioned a medical facility that would be dedicated to the care of wounded Palestinians at […]
Ferelith Gaze: Clarity and stability for the NHS in a time of political uncertainty
We are all prey to systemic amnesia, and in the final 100 days before the 2015 general election, we need to be mindful of the particular vulnerability of the NHS to political soul searching. After all, the NHS has, as the Institute for Government notes, been reorganised 20 times in 41 years. Clearly, change is […]
Doug Altman: Author overboard—arbitrary limits at journals
Recently I was bounced off the authorship of a letter to the editor. I had been one of four authors of a research paper published in a leading medical journal. Subsequently the journal received a critical letter from a reader, and I contributed to our joint response. After submitting our reply we learnt that the […]
Sarah Kessler interviews Atul Gawande
Atul Gawande, surgeon, author, and indie DJ (check his Twitter feed for mini playlists between the policy), just delivered the Reith Lectures for BBC Radio 4. Broadcast to more than 50 million people worldwide, “The Future of Medicine” ranged across the UK, the United States, and India in a quest to navigate “the messy intersection of […]
Charlotte McIntyre: How to survive your surgical ARCP
The Annual Review of Competence Progression (ARCP) was introduced in 2007, as part of the implementation of Modernising Medical Careers (MMC), and can be an especially daunting time for surgeons in training. Particularly, if it is your first surgical ARCP, trying to ensure that you will meet all of the expected requirements can seem like […]