How has Bangladesh been so successful in achieving MDGs and good health outcomes? Richard Smith discusses. […]
Richard Smith: Why has Bangladesh done so well?
Elizabeth Burns: Pass me an anti-boredom pill doctor
Could boredom in patients be a problem that impacts on health outcomes and performance of hospitals, asks Elizabeth Burns. […]
Mary Higgins: The echoes of adverse events
I’ve written before about the domino effect, which describes the multiple groups that are affected when an adverse outcome occurs. Traditionally, the first victims are the patient and their family and friends, the second victims are the staff members, and the third victim is the organisation. Recently I watched a fantastic talk on Learning from […]
Eng-Tat Ang and Kapil Sugand: How can anatomy teaching be improved?
By their own admission, medical students tend to forget their anatomical knowledge when entering into clinical practice. It is common for surgical supervisors to question whether anatomy had ever been taught in an adequate and relevant manner, and they often find themselves having to revise the relevant topics with the students again. Anatomy professors have […]
David McCoy: Taxing diesel—now’s not the time to choke
David McCoy explains why we should tax diesel vehicles more. […]
Sharon Roman: Notes from the less comfortable chair
As someone with chronic disease and comorbidity, I have benefitted from the knowledge and expertise of a great number of doctors. Sometimes you’ve only known me as an image on a screen or a cluster of numbers and counts—another name and health number—the ubiquitous patient. Some of you I have met in passing, a shorter […]
Billy Boland: How do we become compassionate leaders?
An excessive focus on systems, policy, and performance without talking about the people involved can exclude, undermine, and disillusion those we want to bring about change in the NHS, says Billy Boland. […]
Richard Smith: The ways in which hospitals can destroy health
Spending more and more on hospital care, means that you “crowd out” spending on other activities that do much for health, says Richard Smith. […]
Richard Lehman’s journal review—27 February 2017
NEJM 23 Feb 2017 Vol 376 Kallikrein rises from the footnotes The curious word “kallikrein” first appeared in 1934, when Eugen Werle discovered an inflammatory chemical in plasma which he thought came from the pancreas. It is supposed to be derived from the Greek word for pancreas. Anyway, the human disease most closely associated with […]
Jeffrey Aronson: When I use a word . . . Fake illnesses
Fake news is in the news. So what about fake illnesses? When Richard Asher described “a common syndrome, which most doctors have seen, but about which little has been written”, he called it Munchausen’s syndrome, because “the persons affected have always travelled widely; and their stories, like those attributed to [the famous Baron von Munchausen], […]