What with being caught up in the whirlwind of Hurricane Agatha, sinkholes, volcanic eruptions, and the daily grind of life as a doctor, it has been a while since I’ve had the chance to sit down and collect my thoughts, in fact its arguable that I still don’t have the time! […]
Domhnall MacAuley: The SCAR project. Surviving cancer. Absolute reality.
Ambling along a New York street, a poster grabbed me by the throat. A young woman with a mastectomy scar and pregnant.* “Breast cancer is not a pink ribbon,” it said. And, of course, they are right. But, the stark realism jarred. Breast cancer charities have been very successful with their society balls, pink ribbon […]
Desmond O’Neill reviews “Taking the keys away”
If geriatricians had a pound for every time an adult child said that it wasn’t safe for their older parent to go home from hospital, their financial standing would improve enormously. It is an almost daily occurrence for geriatricians to mediate between older adults (who tend to value independence and embrace risk) and their adult […]
Research highlights – 5 November 2010
“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. […]
James Raftery: What’s happening with NICE? The cancer drugs fund and “value based pricing”
The reports that NICE is to be stripped of its powers to recommend against NHS use of drugs prompts questions about the Coalition Government’s health plans. Some indication of what these might be can be gleaned from the current “Consultation on the cancer drugs fund” and its linked impact assessment. By having to frame the […]
Richard Smith: informed and uniformed consent
Informed consent has degenerated from an important and respectful act to a cumbersome, meaningless regulatory process that impedes research. That bluntly is the opinion of many researchers, and so a large group of them started listening with scepticism to a talk on informed consent from a bioethicist from the National Institutes of Health, Joseph Millum, […]
Mike Clarke: Core outcomes for autism, COMET, and the Cochrane journal club
Autism spectrum disorders place a tremendous burden on the sufferers and their families and carers. Parents are often desperate for treatments that might help, but are not receiving the best possible guidance from research that has already been done, because of a lack of consistency in the outcomes used in this research and the subsequent […]
Elizabeth Loder on sharing SPIRIT
A diverse collection of people, ranging from medical journal editors to the head of the clintrials.gov trial registration website gathered at the third meeting of the SPIRIT initiative in Toronto on October 2. SPIRIT stands for “standard protocol items for randomised trials.” The goal of the initiative is to improve the quality and completeness of trial […]
Andrew Burd on the World Association of Plastic Surgeons of Chinese Descent
I have just returned from a fascinating meeting in Taiwan. This was the second world congress for plastic surgeons of chinese descent which is a biannual meeting of the World Association of Plastic Surgeons of Chinese Descent (WAPSCD). The first world congress was held in Beijing in 2008 following the Olympic games and has been […]
Annabel Bentley: Information overload…are you waving or drowning?
Information is out of control. Whether it’s a bulging email inbox of journal alerts or an unread pile of medical journals, we’re all drowning in unread and out-of-date information. But at last, I may have found the secret to effortless continuing professional development (CPD): just read 75 trials and 11 systematic reviews a day. What […]