Matt Morgan discusses how patient notes could be improved […]
Matt Morgan: Medical notes are broken
Niamh Brooks: Celebrating women in medicine—a 150 year journey
To have made female clinicians the norm is an accomplishment worth celebrating […]
Kieran Walsh: Class war—e-learning
In the early days of e-learning there was great enthusiasm, but little evidence of effectiveness. The enthusiasts said that they couldn’t wait for evidence and so went ahead anyway. When evidence did start to emerge, it seemed to suggest that e-learning offered similar outcomes as traditional methods of medical education—which was a good and solid […]
Richard Smith: How we shun the mortally ill
When you develop a mortal illness, as you will do if you’re not one of the fifth of the population who dies suddenly, you are likely to find that many friends desert you. The same will happen if somebody in your family develops such an illness. And if you’re a doctor then the people most […]
Mary McCarthy: It’s time for GPs to be recognised as the specialists they are
Recognising general practice as a specialty would raise its profile and acknowledge the expertise it requires […]
Richard Lehman’s journal review—9 October 2017
Richard Lehman reviews the latest research in the top medical journals […]
Will Stahl-Timmins: Can graphic design save your life?
An exhibition of beautiful and significant design work, which asks the wrong question of the wrong people, writes Will Stahl-Timmins […]
Fraser Smith and David Locke: When surgeons unwittingly don’t obtain informed consent
It is our belief that many patients with rectal cancer are (probably unwittingly) not being informed about potential treatment options which may be available to them that could allow them to avoid radical surgery and a stoma. [1] In effect this is rendering informed consent invalid and represents a failure to safeguard patient autonomy. Rectal cancer […]
Doctors need to speak up against the use of mental illness as an insult
Arash Javanbakht and Aislinn Williams Over recent months ongoing shakeups in the White House staff have generated a lot of attention from the news media. However, over the summer there was one specific item of news related to psychiatry that got obscured in the whirl of other notable news surrounding it. In July, Ryan Lizza reported that […]
Jeffrey Aronson: When I use a word . . . Checklists
If etymology were anything to go by, checklists would rule our lives, although we must beware not to let etymology rule our views of language, informative though it can be. The IndoEuropean root KSEI meant to gain control or power over, to rule. In Sanskrit a kshatriya was a member of the military caste (rulers, […]