Ingeborg Welters discusses why many EU doctors are considering leaving the NHS as a result of Brexit […]
Ingeborg Welters: Brexit is making EU doctors question their future in the NHS
Abraar Karan: Revisiting health as a human right—does everyone have the right to be healthy?
Is health a human right? This question has been a point of global contention, and in particular has driven the highly partisan ideological views on health reform in the United States. A number of health governance bodies have tried to make sense of this notion. The constitution of the World Health Organization (WHO) asserts that “the […]
J Robert Sneyd: 1500 new doctors for the NHS—racing to the finish or crawling to the start line?
On 4 October 2016, England’s health secretary, Jeremy Hunt announced government funding for 1500 additional undergraduate medical school places starting in September 2018. Although medical schools were anticipating the need to expand numbers, the timing of the announcement took us by surprise and perhaps Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) and Health Education England (HEE) […]
Tom Nolan: QOFerendum
The arguments to leave the Quality Outcomes Framework (QOF) have a familiar ring to them: it’s so big it can’t reform; we need to take back control; we should stop wasting money on bureaucracy and fund the NHS instead; what do the so called experts know about real life? These seem to be working just as […]
Paul Glasziou and Iain Chalmers: Ill informed replications will increase our avoidable waste of research
How does the replicability crisis relate to the estimated 85% waste in medical research? […]
Richard Lehman’s journal review—20 March 2017
NEJM 16 Mar 2017 Vol 376 Stem cells for AMD For sufferers of age-related macular degeneration who were hoping for a stem cell cure, this week’s New England Journal brings bad news and shocking news. The bad news comes in a case report showing zero improvement after transplanting a sheet of retinal pigment epithelial cells differentiated […]
Kushal Patel: MPs move to overturn archaic Victorian abortion law
MPs voted this week to introduce a bill to decriminalise abortion in England and Wales. The Reproductive Health (Access to Terminations) Bill, proposed by a cross-party body of MPs, seeks to repeal legislation that dates back to Victorian times. The bill in question aims to amend two sections of the 1861 Offences Against the Person […]
Jeffrey Aronson: When I use a word . . . Cherry picking and berry picking in systematic reviews
Cherry picking originally meant “the action or practice of harvesting cherries” (Oxford English Dictionary). The term is recorded as having been first used in November 1849, in Godey’s Lady’s Book: “Recollections of a grown-up schoolboy. V.—Cherry-pickings, robbing orchards, and love-making”, one of a series by JF Otis, although it is hard to believe that there […]
Jemma Batte: The positive power of transparency
Jemma Batte discusses the importance of information sharing to help improve doctor-patient relationships. […]
Birte Twisselmann: Taking inspiration from dementia
Thinking about dementia and its impact on society can often leave one feeling rather hopeless, despite interesting new approaches to management and treatment, such as those explored a few months ago at Southampton University’s public lecture on ageing at London’s King’s Fund. But last week I had the opportunity to consider dementia in a more […]