Recently I had the privilege of talking with the members of an emerging clinical commissioning group (CCG). (For those who don’t know, CCGs are groups of GPs who will have responsibility for commissioning care for a whole population.) It was my job to try and lift the conversation above governance, finance, and the future of […]
JAMA 22 Feb 2012 Vol 307 813 When an Italian team of physicists reported that they had detected neutrinos travelling faster than light, the televisual physicist Jim Al-Khalili promised to eat his boxer shorts if it proved to be true. It turns out to have been a measurement error due to faulty wiring. Unbelievable results […]
Ach, what a furore. The Daily Telegraph is in its element and having a ball printing nasty allegations about doctors doing abortions illegally on grounds of sex selection. Let’s look at the issues a bit more dispassionately. First, is it actually illegal? Yes and no. The 1967 Abortion Act does not permit abortion on grounds […]
A search on one fantastic piece of technology, the internet, suggests that technology can be defined as “…the application of science, especially to industrial or commercial objectives.” When I think about it, other than talking to our patients, most of what we do in medicine involves some use of technology. In fact, increasingly communicating with […]
It is now just over three weeks since I saw my last patient, hung up my stethoscope, and retired. A GP with time to think! Just imagine what might happen. Among the first fruits of this contemplation was the personal view of the Health and Social Services Bill that I submitted to the BMJ which […]
It’s easy to dismiss Twitter, a network that links people using messages of 140 characters or less, but it fills a genuine social gap. If Facebook is an archipelago of islands held together by social ties, Twitter is the shifting current that bathes them. Where Facebook is faithful, Twitter is promiscuous. Teaching thinking skills to […]
From le paradoxe français to a tiny tavern off a narrow alley in Kilkenny. An unlikely journey. But not, perhaps, if the barman is a cardiologist. Red wine has much more than cardiovascular benefits and it was such a pleasure to enjoy a glass with friends in the company of Michael Conway, with jaunty hat […]
The e-petition calling on the government to drop its Health and Social Care Bill has now reached 153 000 signatures to become the second most popular campaign on Number 10’s official petition site. It already qualified for a debate in the House of Commons, when it passed the 100 000 signatures milestone. Some 90% of […]
The Prime Minister’s summit on implementing the NHS reforms has provided a new focus for debate about what the reforms will mean in practice. The government’s critics maintain that competition will undermine the core values of the NHS to the detriment of patient care. Some of these critics go further to claim that competition will […]
I have to admit that after working for the NHS for 19 years I felt the need for a different challenge. I was four years into my appointment as a consultant dermatologist in East Kent, and although I enjoyed the clinical work, I was finding the fluctuations in health service politics somewhat exhausting. My sons, […]