This morning we left the peaceful lutheran guesthouse in the grounds of the Augusta Victoria Hospital (AVH) to start set-up for the first day of the basic surgical skills course (BSS) for Palestinian surgical trainees in the hospital. The morning sun was glaring and a haze lingered over distant views of the Dead Sea as […]
Richard Smith: It’s hard, perhaps impossibly hard, to be a good doctor
How would you feel if your patient said to you: “I want you to be my Virgil, leading me through my purgatory or inferno, pointing out the sights as we go?” Or how would you respond to: “I would like to discuss my prostate with you not as a diseased organ but as a philosopher’s […]
Richard Lehman’s journal review – 11 June 2012
JAMA 6 June 2012 Vol 307 2269 As I near my fifteenth year of writing comments on the medical journals every weekend, I sometimes envy columnists who can write their copy ahead of time and take the odd week—or even month—off. I don’t have any prepared store of fine phrases or worked up indignation, but […]
Stephen Whitehead: Transparency in pharma and healthcare
Recently, at a joint ABPI/BMJ conference, the Ethical Standards in Health and Life Sciences Group (ESHLSG) published the latest in a series of collaborative documents: Clinical Trials Transparency-Principles and Facts. The conference was excellent, and there were many difficult questions asked around the transparency issue—and rightfully so, as it is difficult to understand why medical […]
Magdalena Kincaid: surgical teaching on the Mount of Olives – part 1
The car journey from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem lasts about an hour. There is an enveloping warmth in the air even at 2 am and it is eerily quiet. The UN car is veering into East Jerusalem, up the Mount of Olives, and finally to our destination: Augusta Victoria Hospital (AVH). Next week this hospital […]
Tiago Villanueva: Mass gathering medicine
I won’t have the privilege of attending the Olympic and Paralympic Games, but I recently had the opportunity to attend a meeting with mass gathering medicine experts chaired by David Heymann at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. Around 8 million spectators, 300 000 accredited professionals, and 10 500 professional athletes will be […]
Matthew Billingsley: How would you use social media during a public health crisis?
At the height of the 2009 pandemic, there were 10 000 swine flu related tweets an hour. These ranged from the helpful (“Swine-flu symptoms: checklist to see if you may be infected), to the more ephemeral (“This swine flu stuff is kinda creeping me out.”) During a public health crisis, how can we accurately evaluate […]
Peter Bailey: Striking for a duck island
A few days ago I was asked by a local radio station to give an opinion about the strike action being planned by the medical profession over pensions. I told them that in view of the fact that I was already retired and drawing my pension, I was perhaps hors de combat and should leave […]
Richard Lehman’s journal review – 6 June 2012
NEJM 31 May 2012 Vol 366 2065 “Hey postman, I just saw that parcel move!” “Don’t worry buddy, that one’s fulla chicks.” Such exchanges cannot be uncommon in a country where live poultry is sent cheeping through the post at the rate of more than a million kilos per year; and how these poor fluffy […]
Angela Coulter: Please stop muddling shared decision-making and provider choice
Government departments are barred from making policy announcements during elections, so there’s always a flurry of them after the purdah period has ended. The aftermath of the recent local government elections was no exception. Hot on the heels of the publication of the long-awaited NHS Information Strategy came a document entitled No decision about me […]