The overpoliticisation of simple medical encounters may do more harm than good […]
Stephane M Shepherd: Cultural awareness training for health professionals can have unintended consequences
Elizabeth Jameson: “I wish my health provider knew…”
As a person living with the progressive illness of Multiple Sclerosis, I visit my waiting room often. This experience can be stressful and isolating not only for visitors who are patients, but also for visitors who are there in support. In this environment, it’s hard to realise that we are all in it together, going […]
Ashish Jha: A year of living dangerously with the Affordable Care Act
Although efforts to repeal the ACA in 2017 did not come to fruition, it did not escape unscathed […]
Richard Lehman’s journal review—22 January 2018
Richard Lehman reviews the latest research in the top medical journals […]
Anthony McDonnell and Neil Woodford: Hype can undermine hope for new antibiotics
Every time a newly discovered molecule or preclinical drug makes the headlines as a “cure for drug resistant infections,” we risk people thinking that the problem has been solved […]
Nick Hopkinson: Your life in my hands—review
Andrew Lansley had his calamitous Health and Social Care Act 2012; Kenneth Clarke introduced the wasteful and destructive NHS internal market before going off to work for British American Tobacco; Enoch Powell was a racist. This does make it a challenge for Jeremy Hunt to podium in the grim competition to be the country’s worst […]
Jeffrey Aronson: When I Use a Word . . . Being one, two, or many
As I noted last week, animals are monophyodonts, diphyodonts, or polyphyodonts. Rodents and some cetaceans, for example, are monophyodonts—their teeth grow continuously and are never replaced. Humans, and most other mammals, are diphyodonts—they normally have two sets of teeth (dentitions), although the numbers of teeth in each dentition are different, so that the 20 deciduous […]
Writing letters directly to patients puts them at the centre of their care
A clinic letter from a paediatric surgeon hit the headlines recently. Written to the child’s GP and copied to her parents, it began “Thank you for referring this lovely young lady… Unfortunately her mum could not be at the clinic visit today as she has not been well and father stepped in manfully”. The parents […]
Jeremy Taylor: There are reasons for patients to welcome Hunt’s return to the Department of Health and Social Care
What, as patients, are we to make of the re-appointment of Jeremy Hunt, yet again, to the government’s health brief? […]
Ian Hamilton: Language alone cannot reduce the stigma that people who use drugs experience
The derogatory language we use to describe people who use drugs is merely a symptom of a deeper problem, says Ian Hamilton […]