My teenage patient presents with a cough, fever, and a sore throat. This sounds like an ordinary, everyday consultation in general practice. The only difference is that this time the consultation is taking place in a caravan, in the refugee camp (also known as the Jungle) in Calais. My father and I (GP and GP […]
Ruth Bonnington: Thoughts on the NHS from a GP
As I sit at the bedside of my dying father at 04h30 in a small palliative care unit in the Scottish Borders I wonder about lots of things and about how I love the NHS (and NHS Scotland). I’ve worked in the NHS since I qualified in 1987 and have been a GP in Gateshead […]
Martin McKee: What will happen to EU citizens living in the UK after Brexit?
One of the few things that almost everyone, whichever side of the Brexit argument they are on, can agree on is that the NHS would face severe problems if the large number of EU citizens working in it were to leave. However, a combination of uncertainty about their future status and a rising tide of […]
Jane Parry: Without incentives, health data sharing systems don’t work for patients
In the multi-payer systems that characterize primary health care in Asia and the Pacific, both developed and developing countries suffer a way of delivering care that works against data sharing. Even in Hong Kong, China—which has one of the highest standards of health care in the region—services are rendered without a sharable electronic medical records […]
Mark Porter: The NHS and a £350m lie
It was a lie. A big lie strewn down the side of a battlebus. A lie, knowingly and cynically peddled, of which there was nothing left but a bad smell within hours of the Brexit result. Doctors are not naive: we have seen promises get broken, forgotten, or quietly melded into “ambitions.” But the claim […]
Claire McDaniel and Daniel Marchalik: Survival is a Myth
The Doctors’ Book Club Anthony Doerr’s All the Light We Cannot See Rich men, trust not in wealth, Gold cannot buy you health; Physic himself must fade. All things to end are made –Thomas Nashe “A Litany in Time of Plague” Anthony Doerr’s All the Light We Cannot See recounts the story of two children […]
Marcus Powell: A new and powerful relationship with patients
The NHS five year forward view talks about harnessing the “renewable energy represented by patients and communities” and the need to “engage with communities and citizens in new ways, involving them directly in decisions about the future of health and care services.” We know that one of the founding principles that underpins the NHS at […]
William Cayley: Where lies greatness?
Recently while driving to work, I was bemused (or should I say, dismayed) to pass yet another presidential campaign poster promising to “make America great,” just as I was hearing on the radio a story about the worldwide 2016 Social Progress Index, which rates the US as 19th overall on measures of social and environmental performance […]
Richard Lehman’s journal review—4 July 2016
NEJM 30 Jun 2016 Vol 374 Cervical sense 2509 This week’s NEJM is an odd mix of the down-to-earth and the arcane. The down-to-earth comes first, ahead of midostaurin for advanced systemic mastocytosis, PD-1 blockade in Merkel-cell carcinoma and deficiency of sFRP4 as the cause of Pyle’s disease. If these conditions did not exist, it […]
Sarah Walpole: Collaborating across continents—what is the best that technology can offer?
The world may be getting smaller, but it’s not getting simpler. In the lead up to the Association for Medical Education in Europe (AMEE) annual conference 2016, we are working to prepare sessions fit for an international audience and our globalised world. A symposium I was part of last year at AMEE on “Social accountability: […]