Readers of the Radio Times can visit locations used in the filming of Sir David Attenborough’s Africa on a tailor made tour offered by the 90 year old UK listings magazine. The Africa trip is one of dozens of destinations listed on RT Travel page and the latest example of how publishers are increasingly thinking like […]
Sarah Welsh on health gadgets
Hardly a new breakthrough, but gadgets relating to health, fitness, and wellbeing are on the increase. Pedometers, sleep monitors, diet apps, and so on, all remain very much in vogue. But, are medical gadgets really the way forward in healthcare? Do we want to be strung up to some monitoring gadget whilst we get on […]
Kelly Brendel: Is print dead?
Digital was definitely the catchword at a meeting of UK magazine publishers in London last week. Perhaps more surprising was how often the print medium emerged as a continuing focus in a conference about the rising number of digital platforms and channels. At this meeting of the Professional Publishers Association’s (PPA), organisers presented the results […]
David Lock: Is this the start of the wholesale privatisation process of NHS management?
The prime minister has picked a new health advisor, Nick Seddon, who poured cold water on the creation of clinical commissioning groups and appears to be focused on moving NHS management away from public bodies and into the private sector. Whatever the rhetoric might suggest, changing the NHS into a commercial insurance model appears to […]
Richard Lehman’s journal review—13 May 2013
JAMA 8 May 2013 Vol 309 1903 When an implanted cardioverter defibrillator goes off inside you, you are sure to feel deeply shocked: whereas, for others, watching you drop dead might be even more shocking. One needs to strike a balance. That was the purpose of the ADVANCE III (Avoid Delivering Therapies for Nonsustained Arrhythmias […]
Penny Campling: The last thing the NHS needs is a compassion “pill”
Reading the Francis Report for many of us is like looking in a mirror. The mirror is at an angle, magnifying the perversities in the picture, but it is all recognisable. We see our NHS reflected back at us, the NHS in England in the early years of the 21st Century. As the weeks since […]
Suchita Shah: A lesser known history of medical education: The Soap Lady and other oddities at the Mütter Museum, Philadelphia
The smell of formaldehyde will never leave me. On my first day as a medical student, in anatomy class, six of us crowded around a dead body, scalpels in hands, waiting to make the first cut. On my university entry form, like everyone else I had proudly stated that I wanted to “help people.” However […]
Tony Waterston: Why can’t we stop nuclear weapons?
Doctors first started to speak out about the health impact of nuclear weapons way back in 1980; the BMA published The Medical Effects of Nuclear weapons in 1983 and it was in 1985 that International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW) was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for its work in publicising what nuclear […]
Domhnall MacAuley: Pot plants and care homes
I cannot have pot plants in the house. The overwhelming smell of pot plants and stale urine is my lasting memory of visiting residential and nursing homes many years ago as a GP trainee in Devon. Rows of pot plants arranged in the hallway and rows of elderly people in front of the television. This […]
Tiago Villanueva: Is there going to be a brain drain of doctors in Portugal?
I have already been invited twice this year to give a talk about emigration of doctors out of Portugal. I find this a sign of the difficult times we’re going through in Portugal. Doctors, like every citizen, have been subject to relentless austerity measures and to progressive impoverishment. But we’re not currently seeing doctors leaving […]