Palliative care globally lacks funding, professionals, and medicines (particularly morphine) and suffers from policy neglect, said David Praill, chief executive of Help the Hospices, opening a meeting in London on global palliative care. Palliative care should cover all patients, all diseases, all nations, all settings, all dimensions (physical, psychological, social, spiritual), and begin earlier, said […]
The dust has settled following last week’s industrial action on pensions. Online forums, Twitter, and blogs have been alight with doctors giving their views—who do they feel have been the winners and losers? […]
JAMA 20 June 2012 Vol 307 2491 Most clinicians assume that the agencies which license new drugs—the Food and Drug Administration in the USA, or the European Medicines Agency over here—apply rigorous standards of effectiveness and safety before they let loose the latest products on the wider public. In fact they can only go by […]
Health services in Nigeria mirror political organisation. The federal government is responsible for tertiary care, state governments are responsible for secondary care, and local government runs primary care. The financing of (but not the responsibility for) public health is tied to the flow of funds from the federation account. Funds are shared between levels of […]
He said he was happy to pay extra for his pension. The country couldn’t afford the national projected pension costs and the economy was in crisis. But, as long as others paid too. He was fed up of being singled out—doctors are soft targets and scapegoats for government. He couldn’t see the judiciary and senior […]
Knowing when and how to apply established knowledge into practice is difficult. A recent article in The Lancet shows why. The thickness of the inner walls of the carotid artery is associated with cardiovascular disease; so much so that the American College of Cardiology (ACC) and the American Heart Association (AHA) support the use of […]
Welcome to the BMJ’s industrial action live blog. Today doctors across the UK will be taking industrial action for the first time in nearly 40 years to protest against changes to the NHS pension scheme. Around a quarter of general practices and four out of five hospitals are expected to be affected by the action, […]
There was extensive media comment this weekend about the Court of Protection’s decision to authorise the force-feeding of a seriously anorexic former medical student with a critically low BMI. The woman, referred to only as “E,” is 32 and following sustained sexual abuse as a child has suffered from an eating disorder since she was […]
For me, one of the best things about working at the BMJ is the fact that my job has kept evolving over the years. In September 2011 I took over the editing of our short obituaries section, and after an initial mega-panic at having to re-familiarise myself with style, process, weekly throughput, phone calls, emails, […]
The recent case of a young Jehovah’s Witness in a sickle cell crisis refusing essential blood products and being allowed to die confirms what should by now be widely known: a competent and informed adult has a right to refuse medical treatment even where the refusal will result in his or her death. Although there […]