I was once in a restaurant in London when Nicole Kidman brushed past my table. Six feet of silver glamour. The effect was very much more intense than shaking hands with Prince Charles, meeting Tom Jones in a Paris hotel, or even watching Princess Diana at a garden party. Oddly I was reminded of Nicole […]
A recent article by Stephen Moss (“Pills, bills and bellyaches: a peek behind the scenes at a GP surgery,” Guardian.) is a vivid Hogarthian portrait of a frontline of our current NHS. As a long serving inner city GP there is much I can endorse, amplify, or dispute. One strand is of interest and illuminates […]
It’s taken me a while to write about my first residential for the NHS Leadership Academy Bevan Programme. So much went on there, I’ve needed a bit of time to come down from the whole thing. It was a dark day in November that found me racing through the English countryside to get to Leeds, […]
Last month, the Institute of Medicine (IOM) partnered with Blue Shield of California Foundation and the Patient Centered Outcomes Research Institute to bring together patient and family advisory council leaders from across the US. These organizations comprise a vibrant and growing resource for leadership and partnering on behalf of care that is patient centered, effective, […]
Greater transparency on clinical trial results would help reduce off-label promotion—the promotion of medicines for uses for which they have not been approved. Looking at the US since 2004, I compiled a table of cases taken by the Department of Justice involving off-label promotion where the fines, penalties, and/or settlements came to more than $300 […]
NEJM 5 Dec 2013 Vol 369 2183 Respect: this trial collected nearly a thousand patients who survived out-of-hospital cardiac arrest and ended up in one of 36 intensive care units spread across Europe and Australia. They were then randomised to treatment involving hypothermia to 33 deg celsius—as recommended by current guidelines—or without hypothermia. This logistic […]
At Britain’s first and only summit meeting on research misconduct in 2000, Alexander McCall Smith, a professor of medical law and ethics, argued that research misconduct (the gentlemanly phrase for scientific fraud) should be a criminal offence. The idea seemed outrageous. Nobody took it seriously, but 13 years later Nature has published an editorial not […]
My knowledge of eating disorders stems less from my medical training than from vicarious insights into their ravages in the milieu of my teenage and young adult daughters. Yet not infrequently on post-take ward rounds I encounter those affected and am generally struck by an inarticulacy on both sides, and a mismatch between the medical […]
I am a man. Really I am. And men don’t cry—correct? Well this one does—not very often, but when I do it is usually a good moment to pause and reflect on the circumstances. Just to check, you know, that I’m still a real man. Shortly after the birth of our first child, I stayed […]
Faith and healthcare do not comfortable bedfellows make. The majority of coverage of their convergence is around the tensions and conflict they can cause. Here in the US, the battleground of contraception coverage is being publicly and aggressively fought between the government and Catholic Church. The BMJ last week published a personal view from an […]