At the 14th European Health Forum Gastein (5-8 October 2011), a group of “Young Gasteiners” are blogging live from the talks. A selection of their blogs are on the BMJ blogsite. The workshop, “Lessons from the East” provided an interesting overview on how Eastern countries are dealing with issues regarding existing resources, the financing of their health systems, […]
Douglas Noble on vaccinating doctors
As I lay in Regents Park on Saturday 1 October showing my one year old daughter the falling autumnal leaves and conkers it hardly felt like winter was approaching. Not least because it was thirty degrees Celsius, and there was more ice cream on sale than climate change proponents could swallow. Yet, winter is on the way and unofficial […]
Tiago Villanueva: Quaternary prevention
The primary care innovation seminars group, a primary healthcare think tank that was created in Spain in 2005, convened this weekend in Barcelona. The group used to meet several times a year in Madrid. This year, group members gathered for the first time outside the Spanish capital, with the added bonus of the presence of […]
Research highlights – 7 October 2011
“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. […]
Joseph Ana: Breast flattening, ironing, straightening, and pounding: a new form of violence against girls and women
Until a few weeks ago, I had never heard about the cultural barbarism of breast flattening, a native attempt to delay the development of a girl’s breasts so that they are not “attractive” to men and boys before they are ready for marriage. Just before a girl reaches puberty her mother will (sorry but please […]
Maham Khan: Cheating in the foundation application process
Sharing cases and risking places, be careful with whom you discuss your white spaces. As registration for the UK foundation programme opens this week, final year medical students across the world wait, fingers poised above keyboards, gearing up to answer the five life changing white space questions. White space questions are compulsory short answer questions […]
Martin McShane: Why?
A frequent refrain is “we mustn’t recreate PCTs.” Increasingly, when I hear or see it said I want to ask five why’s. Let me give you an example. “We don’t want to recreate PCTs.” Why? “Because they were bureaucratic.” Why? “Because they made people jump through loads of hoops to get anything done.” Why? “Because […]
Aneez Esmail: Understanding patient safety in general practice
It was a comment that I made in an interview for a BBC 4 File on Four programme that caught the eye of producers at Channel 4’s Dispatches programme. I had been speaking about the problems of understanding patient safety in general practice and how we knew so little about issues related to wrong diagnosis […]
Richard Lehman’s journal review – 3 October 2011
JAMA 28 Sep 2011 Vol 306 1329 Intra-aortic balloon counterpulsation reduces left ventricular load and improves outcomes in animal models of myocardial infarction. But in previous small human studies of MI without shock, it hasn’t been shown to do anything much, and this trial confirms that it does not reduce infarct size significantly. But such […]
Research highlights – 30 September 2011
“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. […]