I’m preparing for a BBC Radio 4 debate on whether we can look forward to a healthier future, and I’m cast as the pessimist who must argue that the future will be less healthy. Here is my case. The whole debate could centre on how we define health. WHO may define it unrealistically and ambitiously […]
America needs to set aside ideologically driven approaches to healthcare, argues William Cayley […]
The political upheavals of 2016 pose a serious threat to the progress we have made in improving women’s health and reproductive rights […]
Despite the fact that my son is considered a “sick kid”—a child with multiple, chronic conditions—he actually hasn’t been in hospital for years. About a month ago, his winter cold turned into pneumonia, and we’ve been reacquainted with hospital life with a vengeance. Parenting a child in hospital for the first time in nearly a […]
There is a lot to remember when you are leading a ward round. There’s the patient, the relatives, the junior doctors, the nurses, the physiotherapist, the occupational therapist, the pharmacist, the social worker, and the discharge coordinator. There are also the case notes, the drug charts, the observation sheets, the blood tests, the radiology films, […]
Today’s report from NHS Providers on NHS winter pressures bears out what the Royal College of Emergency Medicine (RCEM) has been saying for some time—urgent and emergency care is in the midst of a crisis and facing very serious challenges if patients are to be kept safe. Performance has continued to worsen to the poorest levels on […]
Clare Nicholson issues a call for clarity in defining severe intellectual disability […]
Richard Lehman reviews the latest research in the leading medical journals. […]
Horrifying new reports of famine on a vast scale in Yemen, South Sudan, Somalia, and Nigeria are emerging, signalling the lack of a real right to food among tens of millions of people. Climate change and conflict are leading to recurrent food crises. These unfolding episodes resemble the story of the last famine in Bangladesh, […]
Richard Asher once commented, citing Pel Ebstein fever in Hodgkin’s disease as an example, that some clinical manifestations that are regarded as “typical” of certain diseases may be in fact rather uncommon or even non-existent. It is several years since I last saw a patient with gout that presented as podagra, affecting the big toe. […]