Sarah Welsh: Academic shortage threatens medical education and research

The pressures upon medical academia mean that our medical education and research is under great threat. This is down to the new Health and Social Care Bill, changes to university fees, and modifications to the funding of clinical teaching. Students are being deterred from entering academic medicine. […]

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Guy Rughani: A waist of money?

“Cash for blubber” is how the Twitter community have dubbed the UK government’s latest bid to tackle obesity. As revealed in the Sunday Telegraph, plans have been made to pay GPs extra for giving their patients “weight management advice” and referring them to publicly financed dieting clubs. But will this nudge fatten wallets or slim […]

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Tiago Villanueva: Medical students should be guaranteed a job on leaving medical school

I’ve recently read with great interest the “for” and “against” debate in BMJ Careers on whether doctors should have a guaranteed job upon qualifying from medical school. It sounds reasonable that medical schools train the number of future doctors that is adequate to the needs of the population and that replaces the doctors that retire every […]

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Sarah Welsh: How much exercise is too much?

Tomatoes are good for you, right? They are filled with antioxidants, good for the heart, and associated with decreased risk of cancer. Likewise, exercise is good for you. It improves circulatory, respiratory, and psychological health. But you wouldn’t be in good health if all you ate were tomatoes, and the same goes for exercise. As […]

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Peter Labib and Jeremy Jordan: Conducting research in developing countries can be as challenging as climbing Everest

The elective is the highlight of a medical student’s time at medical school. As keen trekkers, we decided to conduct a project in Nepal on the effects of altitude on the hormone hepcidin. The project involved following trekkers ascending to Mount Everest base camp, collecting urine samples, freezing them, and then transporting them back to […]

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Guna Reddy-Kolanu: Cultural problems with the “bare below the elbows” policy

The NHS should, as its name suggests, be a service which caters to the health of the nation.  Britain, as a nation, has a rich and deeply international history. With the benefits of internationalism have come complexities of addressing the needs of a multicultural population.  To achieve this not only does it need to attend to […]

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Jonny Martell: Is love a drug?

Like most things related to sex, “This House believes that Female Sexual Arousal Disorder is a fabrication,” proved a popular motion for the 41st Maudsley Debate at the Institute of Psychiatry in London on 2 February. The auditorium was packed to bursting. Combining libido, a distinct whiff of disease mongering and the sticky paws of […]

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