It was a rare privilege to return to Sierra Leone for a couple of months on a break from my PhD studies, where I joined former colleagues at Concern Worldwide in training health workers, volunteers, support staff, and community members on infection prevention and control at peripheral health units as part of the response to […]
Rebecca Stout: To apply or not to apply? Why some junior doctors are taking years out instead of going straight into training
A recent news article in The BMJ told us that the figures from the UK Foundation Programme Office show that the number of foundation year 2 (FY2) doctors applying straight into a training post has fallen again: “in August 2014 (it) was 59%—down from 64% in 2013, 67% in 2012, and 71% in 2011.” As […]
The BMJ Today: We may need more GPs, but where will they come from?
Integrating health and social care is Labour’s main objective for the NHS, Gareth Iacobbuci reports in The BMJ today. Labour has also reiterated its plan to train and hire more doctors, nurses, care workers, and midwives, paid for by £2.5bn raised through cracking down on tax avoidance, the “mansion tax,” and a levy on tobacco […]
Ohad Oren and Michal Oren on the “Cordon Sanitaire Hospital:” A vision being fulfilled
Seven years ago, we outlined our vision of a humanitarian hospital. As Israelis who had witnessed the suffering of the citizens of Gaza, we felt compelled to develop a model that would improve their overwhelming deficiencies in medical care. We envisioned a medical facility that would be dedicated to the care of wounded Palestinians at […]
Richard Smith: Loneliness—the “disease” that medicine has promoted but cannot help
According to the Canadian psychologist Ami Rokach who has long studied it, “acute loneliness is a terrorising pain, an agonising and frightening experience that leaves a person vulnerable, shaken, and often wounded.” In our world of anomie and divorce and where medicine has extended life beyond usefulness, loneliness is one of the main causes of […]
The BMJ Today: Learning new lessons from the young
In a week when the first successful organ donation from a newborn was carried out in the UK, The BMJ seems to also be learning new lessons from the youngest in our society. The latest State Of The Art (SOTA) review by Eugene Chang discusses the increase in preterm birth rates worldwide (11.1% of all […]
Ferelith Gaze: Clarity and stability for the NHS in a time of political uncertainty
We are all prey to systemic amnesia, and in the final 100 days before the 2015 general election, we need to be mindful of the particular vulnerability of the NHS to political soul searching. After all, the NHS has, as the Institute for Government notes, been reorganised 20 times in 41 years. Clearly, change is […]
The BMJ Today: Managing multimorbidity in a monomorbid world
The good news is that life expectancy is increasing around the world and we are all living longer. The less good news is that as we get older, we are acquiring a growing number of chronic diseases. Multimorbidity—defined as the presence of two or more conditions in an individual—is increasingly common. It presents a number […]
Richard Lehman’s journal review—26 January 2015
NEJM 22 Jan 2015 Vol 372 331 “Approximately one in four extremely premature infants born at 22 to 28 weeks of gestation does not survive the birth hospitalization; mortality rates decrease with each additional week of completed gestation.” I am not your best guide to this topic, but for those who want to know more, […]
Larry Rees: Cancer is the best way to die? You couldn’t be more wrong
As an oesophageal cancer survivor of nine years—and now a terminal pancreatic cancer patient—I was deeply offended by Dr Richard Smith’s recent blog post in The BMJ, in which he stated that “dying of cancer is the best death” and concluded with “let’s stop wasting billions trying to cure cancer.” My first reaction was to pen a […]