Gross plagiarism is easy to spot and most people agree it’s wrong, so it’s relatively easy to deal with. But while stealing somebody else’s paper and pretending it’s your own is obvious misconduct, it’s surprisingly hard to define exactly what plagiarism is, especially for more minor offences. It would be helpful if we could agree […]
Jacqui Young: NHS celebrates progress in heart and stroke services in England
A conference held in London this week, titled “Celebrating clinical leadership in heart and stroke care,” looked at what has been achieved over the past decade in heart and stroke services under the leadership of Roger Boyle, who retires this month after 10 years as England’s national director for heart disease and stroke. […]
Domhnall MacAuley: 11th Brazilian congress of family and community medicine
Quaternary prevention – ever heard of it? We know about primary, secondary, and tertiary prevention, but this is different. It means protecting healthy patients from unnecessary investigations, tests, or treatments. Marc Jamoulle (Belgium) introduced the concept in1995 but it gained traction mostly in non English speaking countries. Patients without recognised illnesses are increasingly vulnerable through […]
Oliver Ellis: Health records in the cloud
On my first ever hospital placement the thing that most struck me was just how antiquated the records system was. Junior staff were writing with pen and paper; the grander ones used a tape (an actual magnetic tape!) to dictate letters to a secretary. To find something in a patient record you couldn’t type a […]
Tomohisa Shoko, Yasuhiro Otomo, and Atsushi Shiraishi: The next day of the disaster – a report from a Japanese disaster medical assistance team
Pictured: Tomohisa Shoko, the corresponding author. On 11 March 2011, at 2:46 pm Japan time, a massive 9.0-magnitude earthquake struck off the Pacific coast of Japan’s Tohoku (northeastern) region. The maximum seismic intensity, level seven (on the Japan Meteorological Agency’s scale), was recorded in Kurihara City, northwestern Miyagi Prefecture. About 25 minutes after the quake, […]
Tracey Koehlmoos: Internal conflict of interest bias?
If you work as a scientist, you also volunteer as a peer reviewer in the name of collegiality and service. I review about five or six manuscripts a month from a surprising array of journals–which always leaves me to ask, “How did they get my name and email address?” Generally these are journals in which I […]
Richard Smith: Will the NHS let me die of malaria?
I’m about to spend two weeks in Nigeria and need antimalarial tablets, but it seems that the NHS cannot help me. If I come back with malaria, no doubt it will help me – with two weeks in intensive care and a post mortem if necessary. It’s Monday morning, and I’m going on Saturday. I […]
Richard Lehman’s journal review – 4 July 2011
NEJM 30 June 2011 Vol 364 2483 The world of African emergency medicine is one which many noble British GPs have visited, but I alas am not of their number. I have merely braved the acute takes of celebrated New England hospital, where I learned yesterday that emergency departments throughout the world exhibit a hypotension-fluid […]
K M Venkat Narayan: Smoking Jordanian doctors
During a recent trip to Jordan a waiter at the international chain hotel I was staying at seated me at a table in the midst of several smokers. When I asked for a “no smoking” table he took me to another, still surrounded by smokers, and replaced the ashtray with a no smoking sign. I could barely breathe and eat my sandwich to my […]
Richard Smith: More on the United Nations meeting on NCDs
In September the United Nations will hold a high level meeting on the prevention and control of non-communicable diseases (NCDs). This is only the second such meeting that the UN has held, and the first in 2001 led to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB, and Malaria. The UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon has […]