On 1 September 2012 the conservative Spanish government of the People’s Party ended 26 years of highly valued universal healthcare coverage. The Royal decree 16/2012 on urgent measures to guarantee the sustainability of the Spanish national health service changed our general taxation funded system back to the previous social security model dating from 1986, and […]
Category: Guest writers
Richard Cook: Twitter, doctors, and rules
Ever get frustrated during a consultation? How should doctors deal with that? The patient comes first of course—we, as doctors, know that and have that mantra at the centre of how we work. What if, just if, the doctor came first? How would a consultation look? If you could draw up a list of how […]
Sylviane Gindrat: “At the Doctor’s Side”—a trilogy of documentary films
I presented my documentary trilogy “At the Doctor’s Side” about family doctors in Switzerland at the Wonca World conference 2013 in Prague. Each film portrays two protagonists. In the first film, “Gabi & Bruno,” Gabi is an enthusiastic young doctor undertaking her vocational training. Bruno is an experienced family doctor in an independent one doctor […]
Mike Hobday: Understanding our growing cancer population
All areas of healthcare are rich in data, some more so than others. Take intensive care. As patients are constantly monitored; the intensive care unit (ICU) is one of the most data intense areas of a hospital. But data alone are no good. We need to translate them, firstly into information and then into insight, […]
Gabriel Scally: Crumbs from the table for cycling and walking
These days, I worry occasionally about appearing churlish. I fully understand that when some investment in cycling is announced the expected response is that I should applaud politely and feel deep gratitude for the government’s munificence in recognising that cyclists and pedestrians need some support. My problem is that I have never been happy with […]
Lucien Engelen: Patients not included
We all know that healthcare faces huge challenges—budget cuts, increasing demand, and a shortage of skilled personnel. To help find solutions to this, conferences are set up to discuss the changes needed. But most of these conferences happen without the people they are all about—patients. “When people are talking about you and you’re not at […]
Paul J Rosch: Cholesterol, cancer, and statins
Numerous studies of healthy people show that a low cholesterol concentration that has persisted for a decade or more is associated with an increased risk of cancer, and that elevated cholesterol has the reverse effect. This has raised concerns that statins might result in an increase in malignancies, especially since all statins are cardinogenic in doses that […]
Mo Roshan: Raising awareness of type 2 diabetes
I often groan at the media’s handling of health issues. Often alarmist, it simply succeeds in raising concern levels enough to translate into unnecessary demands on my already overbooked clinical appointments. But a recent prime time BBC programme on health screening at a rugby stadium in Manchester did give me pause for thought. What was […]
Jonny Martell: Surviving burnout
Nothing much sprung to mind. A friend had just asked me an odd question, paraphrasing the mystical scholar Andrew Harvey, “what breaks your heart the most?” Was this an early showing of the carapace of cynicism to come? A day later it came back to me: the thought of my father’s final walk around the […]
Veena Rao: Food security by decree
I wrote a BMJ article about the Food Security Bill in India after it was introduced in parliament in December 2011. On 5 July 2013 the National Food Security Act 2013, (FSA) was promulgated by ordinance, without discussion or debate. This is a somewhat sticky thing to do in a democracy, with parliament scheduled to meet just […]