As a medical student I got a parking ticket and three points on my driving license. The mistake I had made was parking in the wrong place on an unmarked road in the Peak District. When I sent in my fine I wrote a short note along the lines of, “I realise that being ignorant of […]
Tiago Villanueva: Returning to medical school 10 years later
A few weeks ago, I returned to the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Lisbon—the medical school from where I graduated ten years ago. The reason was to participate at the AIMS meeting, an international conference for medical students as both a member of the jury of the oral presentations and as a speaker. […]
Suzanne Cahill: What are the next steps on global action against dementia?
The first World Health Organization ministerial conference on global action against dementia which took place in Geneva was organized to encourage governments worldwide to take action to prevent dementia and improve health and social care services, based on current scientific knowledge, evidence, and global experience. It was attended by some 400 invited delegates, representing 80 countries […]
Clare Wenham and John Edmunds: How effective is this year’s flu vaccine?
This flu season, Influenza A (H3N2) has been the dominant circulating strain, with transmission occurring unusually early (November and December). By December 2014, influenza rates were higher than they had been in the previous three years. However, recent research by Public Health England (PHE) suggested that there was a mismatch between the H3N2 strain selected […]
The BMJ Today: Alcohol pledges, fake antibiotic fixes, and NFL payouts
• The UK government’s responsibility deal with the alcohol industry promises to remove a billion units of alcohol (about 2% of consumption) from the market, through reducing the strength of alcoholic drinks such as beer and wine. The interim report from the government has been published, and claims that the deal has already worked better than […]
William Cayley: About what are we being precise?
I’ve been too swamped with the day to day realities of teaching, patient care, and just plain real life lately to be very reflective, but Zackary Berger and Dave deBronkart finally spurred me on to put fingers to keyboard, and put words to my thoughts on the nascent move towards “precision medicine.” From the first, when […]
Chris Naylor: Integrated care—the end of the hospital as we know it?
Hospitals are often seen as an impediment to integrated care. The concern frequently voiced is that their dominant role in the health system makes it harder for commissioners to shift resources into the community, and to develop more coordinated services that cross organisational boundaries. It is certainly true that an over-reliance on hospital based care—and […]
Juliet Dobson: Understanding Ebola in Africa
What has the recent Ebola outbreak shown us about West Africa’s development? Did it reveal Africa’s weaknesses or its strengths? On 23 March, Hans Rosling, from the Karolinska Institute, and Margaret Lamunu, the World Health Organization’s Ebola expert, discussed how West African health systems tackled the Ebola outbreak, and what we can learn from the […]
The BMJ Today: History lessons
• In 1938 New Zealand created a national health system, coining the term “from cradle to grave,” and showing the British government what was possible. More recently, the country repealed its unsuccessful, competition based health legislation. As it is now hard to find anyone in England who believes that the 2012 Health and Social Care […]
Tony Kelly: Is being confident to speak up enough?
Last month we saw two key messages come through regarding patient safety. The first was the publication of Sir Robert Francis’s “Freedom to Speak Up report.” The second was a report by the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman (PHSO), which found significant variation in the quality of NHS investigations into complaints of avoidable death and avoidable […]