To recap. Medicines are given International Nonproprietary Names (INNs) by an expert panel of the World Health Organization, using principles that are not uniformly adhered to. When the names are confusable medication errors can occur. Consider monoclonal antibodies (mAbs). Apart from the first, muromonab, they all end in the stem -mab. Substems are formed by […]
William Cayley: What’s in the future for US family medicine?
Once again, after waiting with bated breath, hope, and anxiety, medical students and residency programs alike have received the results of the annual residency “match.” After months of seemingly endless interviews and paperwork, and the submission of preference lists to the computer based algorithm at the National Residency Matching Program (NRMP), we finally know what […]
Daniel Sokol: The messiness of medicine
Last week I attended a conference for surgeons. In the hall, a poster described the case of a neurology patient who had, literally, inhaled a chicken sandwich. The surgeon, with great ingenuity, combined instruments to suction the mushy chicken embedded in the patient’s lungs. Next to the poster stood a timid medical student, one of […]
Aeesha NJ Malik: Teaching surgery in rural China—who are we benefitting?
I recently bumped into a colleague I hadn’t seen for a while at a conference. He started asking me about a short trip I had made with a Chinese charity to teach cataract surgery in rural China. They had asked him to teach too and he was wondering what it was like and, importantly, what […]
Doctors, The BMJ, and Ireland’s Easter Rising
Earlier this year Ireland’s national broadcaster RTE screened a three part documentary to mark the 100th anniversary of the six day Easter Rising, the rebellion against British rule that led ultimately to the foundation of the Republic and the island’s partition to create Northern Ireland. The programmes, screened by the BBC this week as part […]
Shakir Mustafa: A return to Nepal after the earthquake
In the immediate aftermath of last year’s earthquake in Nepal I took part in an emergency mission. A few weeks later we returned for an aid and education mission. And now, here we are again, in Dharan, East Nepal for another mission to support local doctors and empower them to implement change and drive healthcare […]
Vector-borne diseases in Europe: far more than Zika virus
Certain emerging vector-borne diseases are entering high income countries’ attention in an unprecedented way. Two years ago we wrote about chikungunya, a disease that most Spaniards—including doctors—had not even heard of, but which has already become far more familiar. Now Zika virus disease is gaining broad interest in the wake of its impact on foetal […]
Richard Smith: Is the NHS finally going to start taking patient safety seriously?
Jeremy Hunt, secretary of state for health, is embroiled in battles with junior doctors, GPs, and consultants over contracts and patient safety. He thinks that he will improve safety by reducing excess weekend deaths. The doctors think that he’s endangering patient safety through obliging them to work unsafely. Ironically, he’s the first secretary of state […]
Mags Portman: The PrEP debate gains momentum
This blog was originally written for BMJ Clinical Evidence and posted on blogs.bmj.com/ce/ Last week saw a landmark shift in the pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) for HIV debate in England. After 18 months of work with key stakeholders—including clinicians, commissioners, and community advocates—NHS England announced that it was no longer able to fund a significant PrEP rollout; the outcome […]
Richard Lehman’s journal review—29 March 2016
NEJM 24 Mar 2016 Vol 374 Flinty problem, leaden response 1101 John Snow, the arch-hero of epidemiology, died in 1858 a disappointed man. It was only after he had died that there was a proper inquiry into the cholera outbreaks that he had mapped, and during the interval the water company denied all possibility of contamination. […]