So inevitably as a middle-aged family man with a home in the suburbs of North London I meet health professionals over dinner. ‘This is Peter, he’s a consultant anaesthetist…’ my host will say and I translate as ‘This is Peter he’s far more interesting than you and will hold court for the rest of the […]
Choose your own swine flu adventure
The pandemic continues to spread throughout all corners of the world, with Serbia and Iraq getting their first cases yesterday. In the UK the West Midlands still lead the way in new cases with 115 confirmed there yesterday. The actual prevalence in this area and other flu “hotspots” is probably much higher as guidelines on […]
Olivia Roberts: “Lies, damn lies, and statistics”
The recently released World Health Organisation statistics on progress to meeting the health-related Millennium Development Goals reveal little progress in some areas. But closer analysis reveals some huge achievements and underlines the need for greater evaluation of what works and what doesn’t, rather than cutting development aid. […]
Tom Nolan’s flu blog
The media’s interest in H1N1 may have declined, but the number of cases appears to be on the increase, and not just in the southern hemisphere where we’re told to look to. The World Health Organisation’s latest map of H1N1 cases gives an interesting if simplistic snapshot of the most affected areas globally. Countries with […]
Vidhya Alakeson on affordable health choices in the US
An audible gasp went around Washington last week when the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released its first estimate of the cost of healthcare reform: $1 trillion. The cost seemed all the more eye watering given that it would only cut the numbers of uninsured Americans by 16 million or around a third of the total […]
Stephen Ginn on antidepressants: psychiatrists only?
Recently I saw a patient who has problems with use of multiple recreational drugs and alcohol. The patient had never seen a psychiatrist before, but has been taking an antidepressant for the past few years. This is prescribed by a hospital physician. I almost never prescribe medications outside a psychiatric remit, but antidepressants are regularly prescribed by doctors whose area of expertise is not […]
Richard Smith’s HealthCamp for innovators
I associate camps with wood smoke, burnt sausages, and filled latrines marked with crosses, but HealthCamp is different. It’s about innovation, and I attended my first one last week—at the soulless Excel Centre in Docklands, LondonHeathCamp begins with lightning talks. In under two minutes participants must pose one problem they’d like to discuss. We had […]
Richard Lehman’s journal blog, 23 June 2009
Richard fancied a change, so is currently blogging on BMJ Group’s new professional networking site for doctors, doc2doc. You can read his weekly journal watch blog there. This week he turns his attention to gene gnomes, finds the Lancet a bit waffly and the New England Journal of Medicine in self congratulatory mode. To comment on his blog, […]
Richard Smith’s first days as a doctor
The Student BMJ is asking, via Twitter, for accounts of people’s first days as a doctor, and their request has for me brought back painful and partially suppressed memories. I started in the Eastern General in Edinburgh on Sunday 1 August 1976 and experienced my first death from medical error on the Monday. Maybe this […]
Joe Collier on coming to one’s senses
Training to be a clinician is so much more than simply accumulating facts. It is easy to forget, for example, just how much time and energy we spend on learning to use our senses. Despite having served the owner well for 18 or more years, the senses of the “raw” student still need much honing […]