JAMA 1 Aug 2012 Vol 308 465 Living with heart failure is a miserable business, and about 40% of patients with this label are clinically depressed. This is due to a complex mix of factors: the biochemical “feel-bad” factors alone are too complex to list here, and they come from every system in the […]
On August 2 I attended a stimulating and idealistic meeting on Trans-disciplinary Science for Non-communicable Diseases (NCD) and Global Health that was jointly organized by the Young Professionals Chronic Disease Network (YP-CDN). and the US Institute of Medicine (IOM). A large part of the motivation behind the meeting was a paper published in Global Heart in […]
It’s my first day off from the Games today, as all the race swimming has finished, with diving and synchronised swimming still to go. With a major Olympic day in store – men’s’ tennis and 100 metres, finn class sailing, Pistorius and the women’s marathon and 400 metres, I went for a bit of Olympic […]
Dear prime minister, I heard you give an inspiring speech earlier this week about how Britain was “open for business,” particularly in the life sciences. But when I arrived home I found a desperate email from an Indian friend, a professor of cardiology, describing a most awful plight that the British visa system has inflicted […]
Working so closely to the athletes, you learn and see things that never appear on the TV screen. Tension must be a problem – these people have worked as long and harder than any doctor did for a professional examination, and we know how tense that can make you on the day. Moreover, that tension is […]
I recently attended a symposium at the Tavistock Clinic entitled Cultures of Care: Cruelty and Kindness. As the Tavistock is a psychoanalytic institution, there was a lot of focus on understanding the problem and the discussion was complex and challenging with the shameful examples of Mid-Staffordshire, Winterbourne View and the Care Quality Commission’s report on […]
Emerson may have been right when he wrote that a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of a small mind, but it always sets my teeth on edge when I see a family out on a cycle excursion with the children dutifully wearing bicycle helmets and the parents gaily unencumbered. Doing as I say but not […]
John Davies is a consultant anaesthetist in Lancaster, who takes part in motorsport as a competitor and as a rally doctor. He is volunteering as part of the Olympic games medical team in the aquatic centre. Over the next couple of weeks he will be blogging from the Olympic Park about his experience during the […]
Last week I witnessed how information can scare the living daylights out of doctors and managers, and made me wonder whether England’s policymakers have any clue about the real world of its National Health Service (NHS). It started at a fascinating meeting at which a tech entrepreneur was demonstrating a tool that enables localities to better understand […]
UK justice secretary Ken Clarke was only expressing a truism about the control of drugs when, last month, he told the Commons home affairs select committee he “frankly conceded that policy has not been working …it could be argued we are going backwards at times.” Rather than steaming towards clear blue water and suggesting some change […]