In the 13 years since embarking on my medical training I have witnessed unbelievable progress in many different aspects of medicine as a whole, not least, within gender equality. I am a female general surgical registrar in North West London. I am married to a recently retired professional rugby player. I have no children…yet. I […]
Desmond O’Neill: The Healing Touch
Although not as grand as the Museum Quarter of Hapsburg Vienna, Dublin has a proportionately rich concentration of museums, galleries, and Victorian heritage alongside Trinity College Dublin, our own mini Museum Quarter. The analogy is not entirely without basis as both concentrations arose in the context of large empires, and elements of both have taken […]
Mihail Călin: The impact of the refugee crisis on European health systems
This year, those participants at the European Health Forum Gastein who were not too busy moving from one session to another, too eager to rub shoulders with top level speakers, or too absorbed in the beautiful landscape, could witness a new reality: refugees had arrived in Bad Hofgastein. There are 55 of them, 25 of […]
Neal Maskrey: The three elements of consultations
It’s the conference season and I seem to have ended up talking a lot with doctors about multimorbidity and polypharmacy. There’s pretty much universal agreement that there is too much medicine. I hear tales of wholesale crossing out of drugs from lists of medicines and how much better everyone is………and I do an “Oh really?” […]
Henry Murphy: The impact of the junior doctor’s protest march
I couldn’t sleep yesterday morning. Something was wrong. On Saturday I joined 20 000 people marching in protest at the government’s threats to impose a new contract on all doctors below consultant level. Police in riot vans were parked on Parliament Square, and were met with smiling parents, pushchairs, and a lot of stickers. A helicopter circled […]
William Cayley: Continuity over efficiency
It has become fairly clearly established that a strong primary care system is associated with better overall health for a society and a more equitable distribution of health in the population. A recent modeling study in the Annals of Family Medicine, which evaluated the “primary care paradox” (lower levels of evidence based care for individual diseases, […]
Richard Lehman’s journal review—19 October 2015
NEJM 15 Oct 2015 Vol 373 NEUROSIS about tiny babies 1497 The first paper in the NEJM this week has me flummoxed. Its acronym is NEUROSIS—who thought that was a good idea for a trial of inhaled budesonide in very premature infants? The European Union funded the trial which took place in 40 centres around […]
Mary McCarthy: Are GPs doing “penance” for the 2004 contract?
Recently, Jeremy Hunt said that GPs are undergoing penance for the 2004 contract. To quote, he said: “Labour signed a disastrous contract in 2003 and since then, in penance really, the NHS has not really wanted to put extra money into general practice and it been has starved of resources progressively.” Is he really saying […]
Neel Sharma: Selection into medical postgraduate training requires a fair and balanced approach
Prober et al recently voiced their concerns of an over reliance on USMLE step 1 scores in determining residency posts in the States. They highlighted its predominantly scientific or clinical content, the fact that the more competitive specialties require higher scores, the added stress and anxiety faced by learners to score well, and the costs […]
Jeffrey Aronson: When I use a word . . . Red fire
The Indo-European root ATR, which gave the Old English word atter, listed in the dictionary called the Epinal glossary, was not the only one that connoted fire. The word fire itself comes from PEUOR, from which we also get pyre, a pile of wood or any other combustible material on which to incinerate a dead body. […]