The key strategic challenges facing health services across the globe are to meet changing needs and expectations, improve quality of care, and work within financial, resource related, and environmental limits. Environmental health threats include pollution, adverse weather events, and changing climatic conditions (posing challenges to infectious disease control and food security). Resource shortages for healthcare […]
Fiona Pathiraja: Because we’re worth it
I’ve always thought of myself as a feminist and have never consciously made career decisions based on my gender. However, male medical colleagues often comment that my Jackie O-inspired work wardrobe does not necessarily fit with being a feminist. Some have even suggested that I am “more feminine than the average female doctor.” This raises […]
Richard Lehman’s journal review – 9 May 2011
JAMA 4 May 2011 Vol 305 1769 When I first started writing comments on the medical journals in 1998, coronary artery bypass surgery had become the commonest major operation in the developed world. The alternative was balloon angioplasty, though increasingly this was being augmented with the insertion of bare metal stents. And then, as most […]
Research highlights – 6 May 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. […]
Siddhartha Yadav: Diagnosing and treating the “Nepalese” microbes
A large portion of my work as a doctor in Nepal is to treat infections. Even in chronic conditions – COPD, diabetes, malignancy – I find that infectious micro-organisms take the toll more rapidly than the disease itself. It is fascinating how these minute beings have the power to bring human life to a standstill. Fever […]
Daniel Palazuelos on community health workers
Consider this proposal to address firefighting disparities: “The problem of fires in resource poor areas is growing. Even though we’ve had the tools to control fire for years—namely water, buckets, and hoses—thousands of people and millions of valuables continue to burn each year. Unfortunately, the employment of professional fire fighters in rural areas has not proven to […]
Tiago Villanueva: Medical students should be guaranteed a job on leaving medical school
I’ve recently read with great interest the “for” and “against” debate in BMJ Careers on whether doctors should have a guaranteed job upon qualifying from medical school. It sounds reasonable that medical schools train the number of future doctors that is adequate to the needs of the population and that replaces the doctors that retire every […]
Domhnall MacAuley: Enjoying exams
Waking to a hint of bacon frying as the morning sun slanted shadows on the croquet lawn outside. It was the day of the clinical examinations at the MSc in Sports Medicine at Trinity College Dublin. One of the perks of being an examiner is to stay in the beautifully appointed guest rooms overlooking a […]
Richard Smith: Lunch with 90 health ministers in Moscow
Last week I enjoyed myself facilitating a lunchtime meeting of 90 health ministers at a meeting in Moscow on non-communicable disease. The meeting, like all global meetings, was something of a trial—see previous blog—but the lunch was fun. I wasn’t clear exactly who was there, but the meeting included ministers from China, India, Russia, US, […]
Peter Lapsley: Little things that matter
The past week spent as an in-patient in the Charing Cross Hospital in West London served mainly to reinforce my respect and admiration for the staff there. Once again (this was revision surgery for a whole hip replacement done last year) there was not the slightest sign of any of the unpleasantness one reads of […]