It wasn’t until the last couple of weeks that I began to have terrible, panic-stricken nightmares about my dreadful communication skills. I wake in a trembling state, sweating because I can’t remember how to ask my patient ‘Does the pain radiate anywhere else? Does it come and go? Is it sharp, stabbing pain?’ In my […]
Annabel Bentley: Pregnancy and swine flu: facemasks and self imprisonment?
If you’re pregnant lock yourself in the house, shut the curtains and wear a facemask if you so much as put your nose outside the door… has advice to pregnant women finally gone too far? Or, given that at least six healthy women in their second and third trimesters of pregnancy are reported to be in […]
Liz Wager: Spreading the word
A journal editor told me he was once asked to act as an expert witness defending a doctor accused of negligence for failing to diagnose a rare condition. The defence hinged on how soon a doctor could reasonably be expected to be aware of a medical development after it had been reported in a journal. […]
Tom Nolan: Critical care and the pandemic panic
A pandemic of panic A “panic pandemic” is worsening the crisis in the UK said health ministers over the weekend. Andy Burnham, the health secretary, told The Observer of the need for people to keep a sense of perspective. “If people are made unnecessarily anxious, it makes the lives of NHS professionals, who are already […]
Miriam Longmore: Iran puts MTAS in its place
Iran has done what the United Kingdom has not dared: it has devised a single exam to be taken by its 20,000 doctors who are competing for 1600 residency positions. The UK system seemed to me unfair, but then an Iranian doctor explained Iran’s system. Rather than the UK’s online medical training application service (MTAS), […]
Sneeze and Click service launched in England
Last week 100,000 people are estimated to have had swine flu in the UK. 840 are in hospital and 63 are in intensive care according to Chief Medical Officer Sir Liam Donaldson. The number of deaths has climbed to 26, while worldwide 700 are thought to have died. GP consultation rates rose dramatically last week. […]
Frances Dixon ends year one at medical school
So, one year of medical school finished, just five more to go. What have I learnt this year? As well as a load of useful medical things, and how to do my own washing and cooking, I have learnt some things they don’t tell you about in the prospectus… […]
Harry Brown on planned changes to Connecting for Health
Medicine and leading edge technologies have always gone hand in hand over the years, and with the recent explosion of information technologies, medical practice has certainly been at the forefront. Over the recent past in the United Kingdom, there has been a dramatic shift in the way medical records have been created and stored. There […]
Tom Nolan: Prescribing antivirals – is beyond 48 hours too late?
After Monday’s statement to the House of Commons from Andy Burnham (you can watch all ten hours of the commons session here), the RCGP emailed members to summarise this and other developments. […]
Julian Sheather on playing God – again
So they’ve been at it again, the men in white coats. Putting on their grey beards and playing God, getting the jump on poor old mother nature. There are times when you could almost feel sorry for her. All those pipette-pushers forever tunnelling deeper and deeper into her mysteries. Leave her alone, I can almost […]