Lots of my friends have recently retired or are retiring. None of them, as far as I know, have been on preretirement courses. They launch into retirement, which may be very long, ill prepared, perhaps reflecting on stories of people quickly fading and dying after retirement. I have a proposal for them. I’ve not been […]
The BMJ has chosen Doctors of the World for this year’s Christmas charity appeal. Paquita de Zulueta has worked for the past four years as a clinical volunteer at Doctors of the World’s clinic in London’s East End, helping to provide a one-stop service for vulnerable people who cannot access primary care. Those we help […]
For Mandela, the sudden transition to a democratic South Africa and his ensuing bids to reconcile the racially divided nation meant he simply missed the rise in HIV infection rates among his compatriots. HIV infection rates tripled during his presidency. In pregnant women, for example, it rose from 7.6% to 22.4%. The transition to democracy, […]
“I’m going to be spontaneous on Tuesday,” declares Josephine, a recovering anorexic in the play Mess. She’s a 20 year old drama student who’s been admitted to hospital after her weight falls below what’s safe. The line about planning spontaneity is just one that has the audience laughing. But to anyone who has known an […]
The problem of how to tackle poor performing NHS trusts has dogged the NHS for many years. Companies that fail can be put into liquidation, factories close down, and people lose their jobs. However, a failing hospital is not a factory. An overspending hospital cannot “fail” and be closed because that would leave local people […]
Over the past two years, the popular press has been rife with headlines about how the sheer number of people with alcohol misuse is a “ticking time bomb” ready to explode into a major bed crisis. Last year, North West Public Health Observatory (now part of Public Health England) undertook a consultation on the methods […]
NEJM 12 Dec 2013 Vol 369 2283 This week most of the NEJM is taken up with trials of genotyping to guide starting doses of vitamin K antagonists. Fair enough: this is a common clinical problem, and warfarin initiation is an important test case for genotyping as the gateway to personalised therapeutics. Dosing people with […]
The BMJ has chosen Doctors of the World for this year’s Christmas charity appeal. Karen van der Veken has worked for Doctors of the World as a midwife and project coordinator since 2006, working in many post disaster situations including in Pakistan, Haiti, and Darfur. 1) What health problems do people often suffer from after […]
The European Court of Justice has struck down and ordered a rehearing of the cases for an interim injunction to stop the European Medicines Agency’s new transparency policy on clinical trial results. The two companies, AbbVie and Intermune, will have to give more specific arguments as to why the relevant data should not be disclosed, […]
A long long time ago, well, 1995 if you are asking, I was part of a team running a randomised controlled trial. I was, and indeed still am, working in a general hospital as a liaison psychiatrist. Back then, and still now, a considerable proportion of those admitted to the general hospital wards had problems […]