When buses in Glasgow started to come with posters asking if people were “Concerned about diabetes?” with an image of an older woman, a freephone number, and webpage for people “to find out about our health screening programme,” I wondered what was going on. Another bus advert said, “Do you have asthma? Register for a […]
Desmond O’Neill: Alex Ferguson and the Field Marshall
Field Marshall Mannerheim of Finland is one of the giant, if relatively under fêted, figures of European history. Called out of retirement at the age of 72 to lead tiny Finland against the might of the Soviet Union in the Second World War, his achievements were not only to win two wars, but also to […]
Richard Smith: Is anything less than fully informed consent abuse?
Recently in preparing a talk I was giving in Bologna I found a copy of a talk I’d given to WONCA, the world meeting of general practitioners, back in the era before Powerpoint existed, and it contained information on a study that has stuck in my head for 20 years, but which I couldn’t find. […]
Richard Lehman’s journal review—20 May 2012
JAMA 15 May 2013 Vol 309 2016 I got into a bit of a muddle with this paper, but I blame JAMA. Let me test you out: the abstract says “Long-term follow-up of the randomized, masked 2-year Colpopexy and Urinary Reduction Efforts (CARE) trial of women with stress continence who underwent abdominal sacrocolpopexy between 2002 […]
David Lock: What does duty of care mean?
This is a serious blog about death, about what can go wrong in the dying process and how it can be put right. It arises out of an inquest where I represented a family member who found the medical and caring profession had misunderstood what was meant by a “duty of care” and tried to […]
Juliet Dobson: MSF scientific day 2013—how can we measure the impact of research?
How can we measure the impact of research? What is impact, and how can we show that research leads to measurable outcomes for patients? On 10 May, Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) held their annual scientific day, and the focus of the day was to try and answer some of these questions. There was also a […]
Richard Smith: Reclaiming blood pressure from doctors
We all know about obesity. We can see fatness. Obesity belongs to all of us, and it’s a global problem. Politicians care about obesity. But who cares about blood pressure? Raised blood pressure may be a bigger risk factor for premature death and suffering than obesity, but people don’t see it. Blood pressure belongs to […]
Martin McShane: Smelling the coffee
Walking up from the station, the Royal Berkshire Foundation Trust has a rather grand frontage. David Oliver, the consultant geriatrician who organised my day, guided me, by phone, round to the modern entrance and bought me a coffee. It was shortly before 8am and, on the hour, we dived into the maelstrom of the clinical […]
Naohiro Yonemoto: Japan welcomes new international research collaboration
The first Core Outcome Measures in Effectiveness Trials (COMET) workshop in Japan took place, in April 2013, at Kyoto University, stimulating debate about how the Japanese research and practice community might engage with this international initiative and make use of core outcome sets. Toshiaki Furukawa (Professor and Chair, Department of Health Promotion and Human Behaviour […]
Domhnall MacAuley: Designing general practice for others
Flying off to Berne to talk about general practice in the future, I met a GP colleague in the airport. A conversation contrasting theory and reality. Asked to talk to Swiss GPs about the best models of European general practice, with particular focus on the UK, I looked back on the effect of the 2004 […]