An extra 2000 GPs were promised when the Minister of Health in Norway heard Barbara Starfield speak on a previous visit to Scandinavia. Roar Maagaard, in quoting this figure in his introduction, was sorry that the Danish Minister for Health and Prevention, who opened the conference, left before her keynote address at the 16th Nordic […]
Tessa Richards: Paying for health in Europe
Two years ago health ministers in the Czech Republic decided to focus on the financial sustainability of health systems during their six months at the EU presidency helm. Was this foresight? Did the ministers know what the bankers did not- that economic Armageddon was round the corner? Either way, the financial crisis was certainly concentrating […]
Richard Lehman’s journal blog, 16 May 2009
This week, Richard ponders a multitude of topics, including the usefulness of prognostic markers for heart failure, the pros and cons of aspirin, and the ins and outs of climate change, while boldly stating that, to his knowledge, no one has ever died of crumbly toenails. […]
Tony Waterston on climate change talks at the Commons
A meeting in the House of Commons to discuss the health impact of climate change? Surely that would be worth 32kg of CO2 to travel from Newcastle for – since there appears to be a severely lacking awareness of this subject among our MPs, who are not well known for their low carbon lifestyles. And […]
William Lee on Philip Nitschke’s return to the UK
Philip Nitschke is in the UK giving his DIY suicide workshops again. I attended one of these in October and blogged about it then. His reappearance reminded me that last month BBC Radio 4 aired “The Report“, in which Simon Cox investigated some concerns about the conduct of the head of another assisted suicide organisation, this […]
Richard Feinmann on aid to Africa
Sitting here pondering as a VSO doctor in Uganda I wonder all the time is the aid money to Africa well spent. Uganda gets £70m from the Department for International Development (DFID) and Africa gets about £1.2 billion. I feel some of it could be spent differently. […]
Layla McCay on making junior doctors agents for change
We can’t wait to hear from a NASA astronaut and doctor. James Bagian is coming over from the US specially to speak at our conference, Junior Doctors: Agents for Change, on 1 June. He’s currently the Director of the National Center for Patient Safety at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs and everyone who has […]
Frances Dixon on antibiotic misuse
I overheard an interesting conversation the other day. One man was telling his friend about an inflamed joint he’d had a few weeks previously. He had gone to his GP and had eventually been admitted to hospital and put on intravenous antibiotics. He’d spent a few days in hospital, but had a holiday booked, so […]
Richard Lehman’s journal blog, 11 May 2009
The medical eponymous genitive is only one of many things on Richard’s mind this week. He makes the distinction between Important Sounding Surrogate End Points (ISSEPs) and Patient Important End Points (PIEPs): hardly new concepts, but possibly new acronyms. These are the fundamental enemies and friends, respectively, of evidence based patient care. Do you think […]
Julia Riley on end of life care
The last nine months have seen significant efforts to break down the national reserve which surrounds talking about end of life care and death. The launch pad was the Government’s End of Life Care Strategy published last July. By outlining a six step end of life care pathway the strategy provided a real opportunity to […]