I’ve just spent five days—yes, five days—talking about health literacy. Before my five day conversation I’d never thought much about health literacy, but now I see myself as an expert. Pick a small enough subject and you can be a world expert in about 20 minutes. But health literacy is actually a big subject and […]
The nurse steps forward into the circle, putting her hands together. She prays aloud, “in Jesus’ name,” asking that our four day workshop at the Children’s Hospital be blessed, “so that we might put everything that we have learnt into practice.” After a rousing Christian song, we proceed directly to the Muslim prayer. Nearly every […]
Once in every while an ethical dilemma will swim across the horizon, a dilemma whose wake will induce in me a bout of moral seasickness. My compass spins, my bearings wheel and lurch. One such is the reappearance of “facilitated self-harm”. I am not over-fond of the word “facilitate”. It drips with the oil of […]
One thing about the current swine flu pandemic is that it has brought with it a universal sense of fear. As with all fears, individuals respond differently, but we know what they are feeling because the sensation of fear, which varies from a mild anxiety to incapacitating panic, is so much part of our constitution […]
I’m excited to have started at the Ola During Children’s Hospital in Freetown, after hearing so much about it from the Welbodi Partnership, the charity I’ll be working for over the next year. On first impressions, things at the hospital look good. There are freshly painted wards and uniformed nurses. There are notices on the […]
It’s nice to know how others see us. Several weeks ago, a journal editor based in Europe asked my opinion on a contentious paper he had agreed to publish, had posted online, but about which he now had concerns. I told him that I did not have the scientific expertise to provide a thorough review […]
Having been sacked from his position as the chief UK government drugs advisor Professor David Nutt may today be reflecting on the precarious position of anyone who seeks to advise politicians on controversial matters. […]
Something has just happened that will almost certainly end the tyranny of impact factors and may well mark another step towards the extinction of most scientific journals. Did you notice it? Probably not, and even if you did you may not have understood what it was or what it may lead to. It was the […]
Fergie lost it with the referee. The Manchester United manager’s public criticism of the referee’s fitness in their recent match against Sunderland made headlines. Although subsequently making a personal apology he did raise the more general issue of referee’s fitness. Perhaps it was because he knew about the long established referee fitness programme in Scotland […]
If the health service takes environmental, social and economic sustainability seriously, it is amazing how many co-benefits there are – for the health of individuals, for the health of the population, and for the cost and quality of the health care system – genuine win-wins – win now, win later. You might think therefore that […]