In a Guardian newspaper article this week Juliette Jowitt caught up with four MPs—including the former GP Sarah Wollaston, who stood up in the House of Commons last month to talk about their mental illnesses. Wollaston had described her experience of postnatal depression and panic attacks previously, but Conservative MP Charles Walker had only confided […]
John Davies on volunteering as part of the medical team at the Olympic Games
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 […]
Nick Goodwin: Jumping the gun in the telehealth steeplechase?
If the adoption of telehealth were an Olympic sport, it would probably represent the steeplechase—an endurance event with obstacles that do not fall over when hit and with a 3.5 metre wide pit of water to jump across on almost every lap. Whilst many have been brave enough to try out for the event, most […]
James Hopkins and Jane Blazeby: Development of a core outcome set for bariatric surgery
Obesity is a growing problem in affluent parts of the world—for example, North America and Europe—where more than a quarter of the population are obese (BMI >30) and 3-5% are severely obese (BMI >40). Obesity is associated with many health problems including high blood pressure (5.5 times more likely in people who are obese), diabetes […]
Liz Wager: An ORCID by any other name would smell as sweet
The BMJ recently had to apologise for having published a picture of a Japanese doctor called Dr Yoshitaka Fujii which turned out not to show the Dr Yoshitaka Fujii who has hit the headlines recently because of research fraud leading to the retraction of a record number of publications but his namesake. This embarrassing mistake […]
Edzard Ernst: Research into implausible assumptions is likely to result in implausible conclusions
Evidence-based medicine is rarely concerned with the biological plausibility of medical interventions. This, I argue, may be a weakness, particularly when assessing the value of alternative medicine (AM). Many basic assumptions of AM fly in the face of our knowledge about nature, physics, physiology, pathophysiology or even common sense. A few examples to back up […]
Richard Smith: An ex-editor on the receiving end
After 25 years as an editor, I’ve learnt in my eight years as an ex-editor that it’s mostly miserable being at the author end of a very unequal power relationship. We read a lot about doctors aiming to be patient centered, but whoever heard of editors being author centred? The brutal truth, as a senior […]
David Payne: Review of “The Doctor’s Dilemma”
Medicine’s big guns beat a path to Dr Colenso Ridgeon’s consulting room after news of his knighthood is announced. Downstairs, the wife of a consumptive painter pleads with his housekeeper for an appointment in the hope that Ridgeon will cure him of his tuberculosis. In Shaw’s play, now showing at the National Theatre in London, […]
Anna Allan: An end to “Black Wednesday?”
Shadowing began over a week ago. As around 7000 of my newly qualified peers entered our new homes (read: hospital trusts) for the first time, I couldn’t help but feel a sense of adventure. In some ways it felt like the first day of school—new rules, new faces, new friends. In others it was also […]
Richard Smith: You might have had a heart attack or you might not; we forgot to tell you
Complaints against doctors feature communication more than anything else, which is one reason why communication skills have become universal in medical education. Unfortunately we still have some way to go—as this anecdote shows. A close friend has just been in for an operation as a day case. He’s a diabetic and has got very skilled […]