The Lithuanian Cancer Patient Coalition recently organised a series of lectures in the two largest University Hospitals located at Vilnius and Kaunas. Enthusiastic patients and medical staff were eager to hear about the latest research highlighting the links between a healthy lifestyle and a reduced incidence, progression and relapse of cancer and other chronic diseases. 1, […]
Ahmed Kazmi: A GP’s experience of the Grenfell Tower fire
I am a GP working in the west London area. My clinic is less than 800 metres from Grenfell Tower and several of our patients were residents there. Wednesday was a tragic day for many and a very atypical day in our surgery. We spent it trying to compile a list of our patients who […]
Adithya Pradyumna: Human health depends on planetary health
Food is deeply engrained as a basic human need, and also a source of great pleasure. It is central to the very notion of what it means to be “alive.” Consuming the food of one’s desire and having choice could be seen as an indicator of individual liberties and rights, and people tend to […]
Helgi Johannsson: I am a better doctor for allowing myself to stop, reflect, and grieve
A consultant anaesthetist reflects on what he has learnt from treating patients from Grenfell Tower […]
Joe Freer: Those who have the power distort our perception and treatment of disease
Turn the corner into cable street, and a sharp breeze from the river catches you; Sometimes the scent of the sea, a gust of wind from far off places; distant times Carry their stories into a song. We were here and we felt that gust: a common humanity—the force that binds us together. One mind, […]
Jeffrey Aronson: When I use a word . . . Culture
The IndoEuropean root KWEL, which implied turning in different ways, has turned into many different linguistic manifestations. Through the Greek κύκλος, a circle, we get cycle, cyclone, and encyclopaedia. A consonantal shift gives τέλος, that which turns out, the completion of a cycle, anything final, whence teleology, teleoanalysis, and entelechy, the Aristotelian realisation of potentiality. The […]
Juliet Dobson: How gardens can improve health
We are lucky in BMA House to have a beautiful and well looked after garden. It is all the more of a luxury for being in the very centre of London. It was this garden that provided the venue for two talks that formed part of the Chelsea Fringe Festival. I attended one of them, […]
Samir Dawlatly: When turning away my patients could be good for them, and for me
Mechanisms to reduce patient demand and workload for GPs have had limited success, as GPs are increasingly the “risk sink” that work gets dumped on. As well as contributing to burnout and subsequent problems with GP retention, workload is likely to increasingly affect patient safety. This is based on the reasonable assumption that the number of […]
Samiran Nundy: The challenges of practising surgery in India
The most obvious solution to the challenges Indian surgeons face is to provide universal healthcare coverage […]
Jonathan Whittall: Medics as force multipliers around Mosul—at the expense of medical ethics?
The battle for Mosul is taking place in a densely populated urban centre. Thousands of people are being injured in the crossfire—by explosions, snipers, and air strikes. Sixteen years after the so called “War on Terror” began, most humanitarian actors around Mosul behave in line with how Colin Powell (a previous US secretary of state) described […]