Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is a global health threat, and it is estimated that if we do not find solutions to tackle the rise of drug resistant pathogens, by 2050 10 million lives a year and a cumulative 100 trillion USD of economic output will be at risk. Since the introduction of antibiotics, microbes have evolved a variety of […]
Mary E Black: Stik—My NHS Homerton hero
What inspires me? People who think differently, public spaces that are beautiful, art in unexpected moments. So when an enormous blue painting of a sleeping baby appeared on an outside wall by the cafe of the Homerton University Hospital NHS Foundation Trust in 2015, I took notice. This video tells the story. The work was […]
Richard Lehman’s journal review—18 July 2016
NEJM 14 July 2016 Vol 375 Olanzapine stops chemo vomiting 134 For about five thousand years, doctors sought out plants that would make their patients vomit, believing that this would expel noxious humours. In this week’s NEJM there’s a good example of this in an interesting short piece about early clinical trials featuring Adrien Helvétius […]
Richard Smith: Why does prevention always come behind treatment of disease?
Why does prevention always come behind treatment of disease? Derek Yach, the chief health officer of Vitality, put this question to many people, and these are the answers he got from Don Berwick, formerly head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and president of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement and a familiar figure […]
Fiona Godlee: My biggest career failure
Like most of us, I have known failure. I tried to get into Cambridge to do preclinical medicine from sixth form—twice: once in my fourth term and again in my seventh. Both attempts were unsuccessful. Instead I went to University College London and got to know London (my favourite city), and had the added benefit […]
Neville Goodman’s Metaphor Watch: No, we aren’t nearly there
It must be one of the most annoying and predictable child behaviours. Perhaps even more predictable than asking if orange juice has got bits in. Any journey of any length will be punctuated by the repeated question, “Are we nearly there?” Put “children car journeys nearly there” into Google and you’ll get lots of advice. […]
Jeffrey Aronson: When I use a word . . . Re: “-er” or “-re”
Anglo-Saxon spelling was consistent, but when Old English and French collided after the Norman conquest of England in 1066, inconsistencies in English spelling arose that lasted until the printing press and dictionaries gradually forced greater regularity, if not always rationality. Samuel Johnson, in his influential dictionary of 1755, preferred the etymologically incorrect variant -our for […]
Oliver Minton: Cancer survivorship—where to next
I was invited to attend the inaugural cancer survivorship conference in Brussels—at the time our interests aligned (and indeed still do). The conference felt different with patient groups, bankers, actuaries and even royalty alongside all the usual suspects. I left feeling hugely positive about what could be achieved with governmental and organisational backing. However this […]
Lara Fairall: Serendipity and scaling up towards universal primary care
A Brazilian adaptation of our PACK training programme for primary care doctors and nurses went live last week in the Southern city of Florianὸpolis, or Floripa as it is known to locals, amid great excitement including a clip on local television. We’ve spent 15 years in South Africa developing, researching, and fine tuning our programme. PACK, […]
Suzanne Gordon: Encouraging all members of a medical team to speak up
The oval, mahogany table dominates the center of the large conference room. A number of chairs circle the table and dot the perimeter of the room. Every week, a group of high level hospital administrators, physician leaders, and leaders of other professional and occupational disciplines—physical therapy, social work, clinical directors of nursing, housekeeping, etc—gather in […]