Earlier this month, the first set of data on post-operative patient reported outcome measures (PROMs) was published by the Department of Health. For the first time, this has provided a patient-based assessment of changes in patients’ health-related quality of life following hip replacement. The data also cover surgery on knees, varicose veins, and groin hernias. […]
Andrew Burd on medical student assessment
Last weekend the medical faculty of the Chinese University of Hong Kong had its annual curriculum retreat. This is an opportunity to discuss the ever increasing challenges of teaching medicine in a rapidly changing world. I was asked to give a very short presentation about the OSCE station we had organised where for the first […]
Research highlights – 29 September 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. […]
Richard Smith: Creating a sustainable health system, learning from business
If we carry on as now we will need 2.3 planets to support the 9 billion people who will be alive in 2050, says the World Business Council for Sustainable Development. This is a relatively uncontroversial statement, and it probably hasn’t escaped your attention that we don’t have 2.3 planets. We have only one. So […]
Richard Lehman’s journal review 29 September 2010
JAMA 22-29 Sep 2010 Vol 304 1331 Heart failure management is supposedly a showcase for evidence-based medicine, with lots of interventional trials to guide the deployment of ACE inhibitors, angiotensin receptor blockers, beta-adrenergic blockers and so on: but in fact it is just a mess. These drugs can certainly improve prognosis in some patients but […]
Thilo Govender: What about the children?
2003 – it was the best of times and it was the worst of times for people in South Africa with HIV/AIDS. The national minister of health at the time promoted treatment based only on a diet of vegetables – beetroot, to name just one. The Treatment Action Campaign and clinicians were resolute in the […]
Esohe Omoregie: What’s wrong with public health?
The other day, I had my first weekend on-call as an SHO. My consultant asked me the inevitable question about my career plans. I resisted the urge to stay in line with her specialty of choice, geriatrics. This has often been a tack of mine and many other trainees to facilitate smooth passage through any […]
Sandra Lako: The death of a child …
This afternoon an expatriate internal medicine doctor started an ultrasound workshop with the doctors. I thought it would be useful for me to go, so I did. The ultrasound room is adjacent to the emergency room so while we were waiting for doctors to arrive the internist and I were reviewing a few patients. […]
Behrooz Astaneh: Towards professionalism at small medical journals
In the Eastern Mediterranean/Middle East, where I live, most medical journals are small ones. To help train the editors of some of these journals Shiraz University of Medical Sciences founded in September 2009 an academic Master of Science course in medical journalism. The course was first announced at the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) annual […]
Richard Smith: Feeding back to individuals the findings of research on their genes
Around the world research groups are sequencing the genome of tens of thousands of people, and a crucial question is what to do about feeding back to individuals findings that may be “clinically significant.” My immediate reaction was “Of course you should feed the findings back,” but after chairing a session on this topic at […]