The NHS is legally committed to reducing its carbon consumption by 80% by 2050, but the route to that destination is far from clear. The leaders in trying to find a practical route are Sussex Community NHS Foundation Trust, and I went to visit them in Brighton. The trust covers Brighton and Hove, West Sussex, and […]
Journals have a responsibility to communicate clearly in ways that benefit patients […]
After a consultation on changes to its methods for appraising health technologies, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) has gone public with its way forward. As discussed previously, the consultation sought views on four items: Introduce a “fast track” NICE technology appraisal process for the most promising new technologies, which fall below an incremental cost […]
I have been talking about failure a lot at the moment. How it should be encouraged and celebrated. We all do it often enough, so we might as well try to enjoy it. Being open to failure and learning from it is a key skill in quality improvement (QI). The more you do it, the […]
Richard Lehman reviews the latest research in the top medical journals […]
To recap: over the past three weeks I have used the metaphor of crossing bridges in discussing translational research in clinical medicine; derived a model of it from definitions in the Cooksey report; and, recognising its weaknesses, modified the model based on later descriptions. However, the second model still has weaknesses. For example, it retains […]
Hope for cure has traditionally been the patient’s best friend and the clinician’s strongest ally. Clinicians may avoid discussing their patients’ poor prognoses with them for fear that this might destroy their hopes or cause depression. [1,2] However, patients with serious illness usually want to hear the truth from their physicians and benefit from knowing the […]
Medical education has changed dramatically in recent years. During my training we used a standard reference text and relied heavily on seniors to provide more detail about different clinical diseases. Nowadays, this kind of teaching seems less relevant. With online resources, learners are increasingly turning to the internet to access the latest guidelines on how […]
While rates of smoking are slightly decreasing in some high-income countries, worldwide more and more women smoke, and 10 to 25% of women smoke during pregnancy. Smoking remains the first avoidable cause of preterm births (ten cigarettes/day causes a 3-fold increase), lower birth weight, placental complications and perinatal mortality. However, smoking during pregnancy is too frequently […]
Back in the 1990s politicians dreamt up a way of funding new hospitals, prisons, and schools and keeping the borrowing away from national debt. It was John Major’s government that began the private finance initiative (PFI) scheme, which was much loved by Gordon Brown who expanded on it, and which we still see being used now. […]