Peter Gøtzsche, a Danish physician and researcher, has written a book arguing that 97% of psychiatric drugs cause more harm than good. Allen Frances, emeritus professor of psychiatry at Duke University and chair of the committee that produced DSM IV, says that 70% of Gøtzsche’s book is right but the big problem is that patients […]
Last week I discussed the various forms of patronymics that are formed by adding prefixes or suffixes meaning “son/child of,” concentrating on UK varieties. Now I go further afield. The suffix -son is common in English speaking, Scandinavian, and Teutonic countries, spelt –søn and -sen in Denmark, Norway, and the Netherlands, and -sohn in Germany. […]
Shared decision making has now entered common parlance. Everyone seems to be talking about it and the term pops up frequently in report after report. But we can’t assume it’s fully embedded in mainstream clinical practice just because it’s talked about a lot. On the contrary. A recent review from the Care Quality Commission found […]
The BMA’s annual representative meeting was right to reject a policy of neutrality on “assisted dying.” The “do no harm” principle lies at the centre of clinical practice and underpins everything we do as doctors. For the BMA to fold its arms and tell the world that it has no policy on whether doctors should […]
“Whether you agree with assisted dying or not, whether you decide to participate or not, we will be at the table to protect your rights and interests. Legalisation of AD is a societal prerogative. It is a done deal. But we still have an opportunity to help shape what it will look like in practice.” Dr […]
No one can be in any doubt, after the referendum campaign, that large parts of the British print media have abandoned any attempt at balance. A detailed study by academics at Loughborough University has described in detail how much of the tabloid press ran a relentlessly negative campaign against the EU, but more especially against […]
I stand on a cliff top and ask my dog to bark twice if it doesn’t want me to jump. It fails to bark so I jump. That is a paradigm for our situation with the EU referendum. “The country has spoken” are the words we hear time and again, delivered with the same reverence […]
For many who work to promote the universal right to health, Brexit has brought despondency. While some people voted Leave on the back of democratic and progressive arguments, many who sought a rupture with Europe appeared to do so out of insecurity and mistrust, driven by a combination of austerity, alienation with the political establishment, […]
The Indian government has seemingly assented to the NEET-PG (National Eligibility cum Entrance Test-Post Graduate) as a common exit cum entrance exam for those who’ve achieved their MBBS and want to begin practising medicine or continue with a postgraduate medical course, irrespective of whether they come from an Indian or foreign medical school. As has […]
The NHS does not have enough nurses and midwives with a vacancy rate for nurses of around 10% (and higher in London). The majority of NHS trusts have been actively recruiting nurses from as far afield as India and the Philippines. EU immigrants make up approximately 4% of registered nurses working in the UK—quite what […]