Who’d be a psychiatrist? The emotional burden of caring for patients presenting in real distress; trying to negotiate a way forward when dealing with someone with a skewed sense of reality; potentially life and death risk assessments on a daily basis; general lampooning from medical colleagues… No wonder psychiatry’s not such a popular choice among […]
Harriet Adcock: Pharmacist bashing – it’s just not cricket
The bad press heaped on pharmacists this week no doubt raised a few smiles among BMJ readers. But doctors should remember that pharmacists are easy targets for consumer watchdog Which?, whose survey found that more than a third of pharmacies give unsatisfactory advice. […]
Pat Sidley on South Africa after Mbeki
South Africa’s newly elected president, Mr Kgalemo Mothlante, acted swiftly to end an era of ugly controversy and extreme incompetence in the health ministry by appointing a highly regarded, new health minister and effectively demoting the previous one, Dr Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, who implemented all of former president Thabo Mbeki’s eccentric AIDS beliefs, which has laid […]
Joe Collier: Coping with conflicts and uncertainty
Recently I met a student who had been in a Problem Based Learning (PBL) group that I had ‘facilitated’ in 2006. During the PBL we will have spent around six hours together each week for a full trimester (so around 72 hours contact time in all) and I was interested to know if he could […]
Aliya Razaaq on learning about dementia
Baroness Warnock, one of Britain’s leading ethical experts recently talked of the “right to die” of patients with dementia. She called for more research into the illness, in order to establish whether patients with dementia were mentally competent. Thus when they reached a certain point in their illness, they could make a decision of whether […]
Trish Groves on research in India
Just back from my first visit to India, which the Lonely Planet guide rightly says is much more of a continent than a country. Three days in Delhi and three in Mumbai barely scratched the surface, but left me resolved to return there for longer. The day before we left home Delhi was bombed by […]
Julian Sheather on paying attention to art, science and nature
It is a long time since I studied art history, but if I remember rightly the invention of photography is said to have contributed to the exhaustion of the realist impulse in the visual arts. It sounds plausible: the documentary impulse, the desire faithfully to record what is actually there, which has always been close […]
Tauseef Mehrali on the frontline as a GP registrar
After years of blogging in the cyber-wilderness, the BMJ has welcomed me into its warm embrace by giving me a little blogging corner all of my own. From this virtual soapbox I’m hoping to chart my efforts to navigate the murky waters of GP training as I kick off a year-long stint as a GP […]
Trish Groves on the (only?) bank that’s growing
I made my deposit this week in UK Biobank. I was recruited because my age lies between 40-69 and I live within 10 miles of an assessment centre. At least I do now: like a dodgy business, the centre (on the 3rd floor of a gloomy office next door to Zorba’s Snacks) will be here […]
Birte Twisselmann at the annual meeting of the AGMS
Some months ago I was invited to the Anglo-German Medical Society’s 49th annual meeting, to be held in Cologne on 11-14 September 2008. As a German national who trained as a technical editor with the BMJ and who translates medical papers from German into English in her spare time I accepted. […]