NEJM 26 February 2015 Vol 372 803 It’s hard to imagine a world without chocolate, potatoes, tomatoes, avocados, sweet peppers, and chilli peppers. Since the 16th century, one or more of these excellent South American foods has become a characteristic ingredient of almost every national cuisine from Northern Europe to Thailand. The peanut or tlalcacahuatl was […]
Medical education is a confusing field at times. Whilst I value its role in cementing training, there seems to be an often all too common course of contrast among educators as to what is classified as valuable academic research into teaching methods. […]
I often try and whizz round an exhibition during a lunch hour, but the Wellcome Collection’s latest exhibition on forensics is not one to rush. My visit was how I imagine it must be to work on a crime scene. You take in a lot of detailed and gripping information from different places, and then […]
Conversations with my patients can be very revealing. “I know you say they’re ace, Doc, but I can’t take these tablets.” “Why not, Pat?” “They give me a terrible cough. I can’t go to the movies or a gig. Anywhere public, actually.” At this, Pat coughed loudly, concatenating two phonemes without realising it—technically the glottal […]
Here is a taste of what’s new on thebmj.com today. If I ruled the NHS • We need drones, robots, and autonomous ambulances In our new series, Mary Church, a Glasgow GP, would turn to technology to solve the NHS’s problems. “The current technology used in out of hours services—a human with a certificate gained after […]
The big national health “system” story of the past week has been the surprise announcement of a voluntary tariff. This is one part of a solution put forward by NHS England and Monitor to resolve the current impasse, which arose from an objection mechanism to the proposals being triggered by those it affects—providers of NHS […]
“The economics of education are changed dramatically by delivering online courses to large numbers, making expensive education much cheaper.” That line in Richard Smith’s blog post describing a proposed “global university” for healthcare workers caught my attention—especially since my own local statewide university system, of which I am an employee as a medical school faculty […]
Although the situation in Sierra Leone with respect to Ebola has improved considerably since November, there are still cases in Freetown every day. With Ebola still present, it is important to stay vigilant and have a high index of suspicion. Every single person that enters the hospital compound needs to be screened according to the […]
AYUSH—an acronym for Ayurveda, Yoga, Unani, Siddha, and Homeopathy—is a system of medicine that has been integrated into the Indian national healthcare delivery system to strengthen public health in rural India. In 2005, when the Indian government launched the national rural health mission (NRHM) to improve healthcare delivery especially for the rural population, integration of […]
Here is my personal selection of what is new on The BMJ today: Head to Head • Is a smoking ban in UK parks and outdoor spaces a good idea? In this topical debate, Ara Darzi and Oliver P Keown call for a ban to help smokers quit and to protect children from seeing people […]