It’s Dying Matters Awareness Week, an opportunity to place the importance of talking about dying, death and bereavement on the national agenda and to share Cochrane evidence that may help inform choices for those at the end of life and those caring for them. Here, Palliative Medicine doctor Anna Sutherland shares her thoughts on a […]
Jeffrey Aronson: Mandates and manifestos
I recently heard Jeremy Hunt, UK health secretary, on the Today programme claiming that the Government has a mandate for the controversial contract that it wants junior hospital doctors to sign. I can’t find that mentioned in the Conservative Party’s 2015 manifesto. The Indo-European root MAN meant a hand. The Latin word was manus, from which […]
Jeanne Lenzer: The Backstory—Is US healthcare a frontier for a new civil rights movement?
When the Lown Institute first signaled its plan to build a “movement” four years ago, it seemed to be an unlikely group to succeed. The founding conference was attended largely by academic doctors—and no matter how concerned doctors are about what is happening to healthcare, movements are only successful when driven by the people who […]
The chief executive’s tale: Exit interviews
People always surprise you. When I started interviewing retiring NHS chief executives to support a project with the King’s Fund, I had several preconceptions that were quickly disproved. The first preconception was that my four interviewees would be tempted by the traditional exit interview traps of score settling or self-authored hagiography. Instead what I found was […]
Billy Boland: QI forum
It’s been really rewarding discussing quality improvement (QI) with colleagues at my trust. We’ve set up a few different resources for people to make use of. My favourite of these so far is something we’re calling a QI forum. Essentially it’s an unstructured meeting where we discuss QI in general with whoever turns up. We’re […]
Post-it note triage: A little documentation, a big difference
In January this year I spent a fortnight volunteering at the Moria Refugee Camp on the Greek island of Lesbos. At the time Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) was the primary care provider in the camp and was supported by other charities such as Médicines Du Monde*. The small, UK based Health Point Project I was […]
Jo Waller: Could a leaflet help catch cancer earlier?
We’ve written before about the difficulty of recognising symptoms that could be signs of cancer, and knowing when it’s appropriate to go to the doctor about them. There’s lots of evidence that cancer is more treatable if it’s found at an earlier stage, but we know less about effective ways of encouraging people to seek […]
Patient and public involvement in basic science research—are we doing enough?
In the past decade, medicine has seen a dramatic shift: from a paternalistic approach to one in which patients and clinicians make shared decisions. In parallel, there is a drive for greater involvement of patients and other members of the public in medical research—not just as passive participants in research, but as active contributors to […]
Richard Smith: A foretaste of the end of the NHS
When the NHS began in 1948 dental care was free at the point of delivery, but charges appeared as early as 1951. My current experience with dental services gives me a foretaste of how the whole NHS may begin to crumble. There is little left of one of my upper molars. My NHS dentist has […]
Julie Wood: Yoga and asthma
I am not at all surprised that new Cochrane evidence showed yoga may be beneficial to those with asthma. I am a devoted yogi who has practised a combination of hot power and bikram yoga about twice a week for the past two years. In my early 20s I decided to take up running and noticed […]