Sometimes it takes a visual cue, a short reference, or a good analogy for one to grasp the philosophy of a place. This was certainly so when I visited Aravind Eye Hospital in Madurai, South India. As a Ghanaian born, British trained ophthalmologist, I have always had a yearning for developing country eye care work, […]
Category: NHS
Samir Dawlatly: Why is it hard to do the right thing?
“You want a blood test to make sure that there isn’t a reason why you’re tired?” I ask the patient sat in front of me, checking that I have understood what they have been telling me about for the last five minutes. I now know that they work shifts, have three children under the age […]
Tim Ballard: Will a tax on sugary drinks work?
Channel 4 recently aired a documentary by Jamie Oliver called Jamie’s Sugar Rush. Following on from his successful advocacy aimed at improving the nutritional quality of school meals he has now moved his attention to the obesity epidemic and in particular the part that sugary drinks play. In addition to obesity the documentary aims to […]
Abi Rimmer: Seven day services lack definition
What exactly are “seven day services?” This is something that I have been wondering ever since David Cameron announced in March that the NHS would run a seven day service by 2020. And, despite all the rhetoric from Cameron and health secretary Jeremy Hunt, the government doesn’t seem to have a clear definition of what […]
Samir Dawlatly: Could general practice survive without the NHS?
General practice is often described as the cornerstone of the NHS. Though its funding doesn’t necessarily reflect this, having its proportion of funding decline in recent years, 90% of all interactions with patients happen in general practice. It is therefore easy to predict that if, for whatever reason, general practice were to collapse or cease […]
Jim Sherifi: The tyranny of excellence
When one reads the history of any autocratic, despotic regime, one is always struck by how they managed to secure the submission of the educated and intelligent through remarkably simple methods. Doctors in the NHS are currently being subjected to the same tried and trusted processes of indoctrination used by totalitarian regimes. These may be […]
Phillippa Hentsch: A new way of paying for urgent and emergency care services
Different parts of the urgent and emergency care (UEC) pathway are paid for in different ways. Acute and specialist facilities are predominately funded through the national tariff, whereas UEC services offered by mental health and community trusts—such as rapid response, crisis teams, and psychiatry liaison services—are paid predominately through block contracts. For commissioners and providers […]
Samir Dawlatly: Can you measure what is good about general practice?
The Health Foundation, at the behest of the government, is gathering thoughts from professionals and the public on the use of data to inform the quality of primary care until 24 August 2015. Although they say that this will not be used to “rate” practices, data about so-called quality has been used to “band” or […]
Dominic Patterson: Why general practice
General practice is in crisis. Those are the first words on my site whygp.uk—launched in July along with the hashtag #whyGP—which aims to be a space for positive messages about general practice. Strange first words for such a site, but they are of deliberate choosing. I’m no crisis denier, and I recognise personally and from […]
Samir Dawlatly: There is no dementia wonder cure
The daughter of one of my patients booked an appointment to see me*. She often came to see me about her father who had lived alone ever since his wife had died five years ago. He was in the early stages of dementia, probably Alzheimer’s, but was still just about managing to live at home […]