The Department of Health together with the NHS Supply Chain are trying to push through Generic Specifications (known as the Carter Report) where the specification criteria can be applied so that products, including dressings, will be able to be used in 80% of circumstances and where the output is “good enough” and “fit for purpose.” […]
John Hughes: Why dying should be everyone’s business
Like all non-specialist, palliative care healthcare professionals, doctors have varying degrees of willingness to broach difficult conversations with patients and families, particularly if it is a conversation that is about care as opposed to cure. But a new report from the British Medical Association (BMA) says that doctors need to be having these difficult conversations […]
Billy Boland: The trouble with resolutions…
At this most reflective time of year, I found myself in a conversation last week about New Year’s resolutions. Thinking about my most and least successful attempts it occurred to me that I’d foolishly blogged my resolutions for 2015 around this time last year. With dread, I clicked through to see what I’d committed to. […]
Rosamund Snow: A year of patients’ thoughts
In January 2015 we launched What Your Patient Is Thinking (#WYPIT), a series entirely written and edited by patients and carers. Not many patients get a chance to express their views about aspects of their care—both good and bad—and the aim of our series is to let doctors find out what patients wish they could […]
Neville Goodman’s Metaphor Watch: Rocks, horns, devils, and hard places
A dilemma is not just an irritating problem, like trying to decide whether to go to Costa or Starbucks, which anyway gives the option of not having coffee at all. The essence of a dilemma (from the Greek: lemma meaning premise) is that both options have nasty consequences, but one of the options has to […]
Richard Lehman’s journal review—18 January 2016
NEJM 14 Jan 2016 Vol 374 SDM: no looking back 104 There are two interesting Perspective pieces in this week’s NEJM, both about individualizing care. The first is about shared decision making and its difficulties. The author usefully sees these through the eyes of a physician who is just beginning her struggle with the realities […]
Chris Baker: Child obesity in India? Tell me something I don’t know!
In recent years an abundance of observational studies have drawn attention to the rising prevalence of child overweight and obesity in India. A recent meta-analysis of studies in South Asia, including 57 datasets from India, concluded that 14% of children and adolescents were overweight, with the more affluent and those in urban areas being at […]
Jeffrey Aronson: When I use a word . . . Striking tactics
Jeremy Cunctator’s Fabian tactics in his dealings with the British Medical Association over the junior hospital doctors’ contract have precipitated the first doctors’ strike for 40 years. After declining to negotiate, he belatedly agreed to do so, mediated by Acas. The negotiations failed. Did he intend them to? What do you think? Then on Monday […]
Richard Smith: Gawping at death
Around 4000 people a day visit El Museo De Las Momias (The Mummy Museum) in Guanjuato, making it one of the most popular tourist sites in Mexico. Some queue for an hour or more. Why do they go? Why did I go with my family? The museum contains about 100 mummies. These are not mummies […]
Soumyadeep Bhaumik’s review of South Asian medical papers—January 2016
“Study the past if you would define the future,” said the great Chinese philosopher Confucius, and what better way to start the year than to look back at what happened in the past year in South Asian research as we lay the foundations for 2016. Last year saw quite a few papers on what has always […]