JAMA 2 Nov 2011 Vol 306 1874 The older you get, the more likely you are to have a haematological malignancy, and the less likely you are to be able to stand up to the rigours of myeloablative therapy followed by allogeneic haematopoietic cell transplantation, which can offer a cure in younger patients. You might […]
My consulting room is full of ghosts. Shadowy figures whose tears or trauma hover over the patient’s chair. The room has a memory and sometimes shares its thoughts. A word on the computer screen or a half remembered name brings back images, voices, fragments of forgotten conversations. I can see the faces of old friends […]
I was privileged to be invited to the patient experience seminar being held as part of the Mid Staffordshire enquiry. I felt as though I was participating in one of the best development sessions I have experienced as a clinician and manager. The morning was filled with three excellent presentations. First up was Paul Hodgkin […]
“Research highlights” is a weekly round-up of research papers appearing in the print BMJ. We start off with this week’s research questions, before providing more detail on some individual research papers and accompanying articles. […]
Children with tuberculosis have been neglected for too long. Children tend to have paucibacillary disease and therefore are less infectious than adults, meaning they have not been prioritised by the WHO global tuberculosis control strategy. This neglect has resulted in many problems. Firstly, there has been no impetus for governments to prioritise paediatric programmes. Secondly, diagnostics […]
The economic downturn has given us all a crash course in the arcane language of economics. A fine example is “quantitative easing,” a sober and serious sounding euphemism for the unnerving practice of governments printing money to spend their way out of a hole. While it may make sense in the short term, it dilutes […]
The NHS in England faces a huge challenge over the next decade. The tighter public spending settlement for the NHS means the NHS will have to increase productivity in the order of four per cent per annum. The health sector is a labour intensive industry; it will only be possible to deliver productivity improvements by using […]
Once again the RCGP’s Annual conference last week in Liverpool produced a wealth of stimulating and topical debates – from the ethics of whether doctors should take a lead in commissioning (why do we always feel the need to “take the lead?”), to what constitutes sustainable general practice. The groups considering the latter issue, chaired […]
The late Sir Jimmy Saville devoted much of his life to public service, raising £40 million for various good causes including hospitals, and even working shifts as a hospital porter. Yet to read his obituaries this week has been to witness a struggle, not always availing, against disbelief. […]
The news this week from the UK foundation programme office (UKFPO) cast a devastating blow to the confidence of many applicants, when they announced that not only was this year’s programme oversubscribed, but that applicants’ choices of foundation school had forced them to implement their contingency plan for scoring the applications. Applications for foundation posts […]