From the Guardian, and also making it’s way forth into the Daily Mail, the Mirror, Management in Practice, and Pulse , amongst others. The story is apparently that “GPs are failing to identify conditions such as osteoporosis, heart disease and bowel trouble that can affect patients’ lives for years after they have become free of tumours, claims […]
Continue Reading →Adult and child asylum seekers
should be treated with humanity. Free link to BMJ article here.
Continue Reading →More or Less
Little 7 minute section on the placebo effect, acupunture, and ethics. Available on listen again on iplayer, here.
Continue Reading →Choices for screening and paternalism
Luisa Dillner wrote a statistically correct and informative article about breast screening in the Guardian recently; she has been replied to by Chris Askew, the chief executive of Breakthrough Breast Cancer. He makes a big mistake. In his first paragraph, he says “Breakthrough Breast Cancer hopes this will not discourage women from attending their breast-screening […]
Continue Reading →Do not resuscitate – why death needs to have heart
So: Addenbrooke’s hospital are being sued for allegedly illegally using a ‘do not resuscitate order’ on a patient. The patient had allegedly expressed that she wished to be resuscitated, but apparantly the order was written anyway. Meantime, we have Iona Heath writing in the BMJ about how CPR “amounts to yet another scenario within contemporary medicine where […]
Continue Reading →Commercialisation, post conception, and via your GP
Excellent article in the Guardian about the National Childbirth Trust. The NCT have found that some hospitals are paying 5K to allow access to companies to come on to antenatal wards to sell their wares; photographs of babies, free samples of nappies, etc. I have complained about this before, in my own antenatal care. I […]
Continue Reading →An early test for Alzheimer’s?
Medicine in the media piece in the BMJ. As a follow up to this Daily Mail article, and the Food for the Brain enterprise.
Continue Reading →Bayesian and needles in haystacks: why medicine is difficult to do well
and why protocols are not the answer to good diagnosis and risk management. Excellent BMJ editorial telling it like it is. “identifying those febrile young children with the greatest risk for serious infection at the time of clinical presentation is like looking for a needle in a haystack.” Essentially, if you have a child with […]
Continue Reading →If your kids haven’t had your MMR…
now is the time. 330 cases in England in last 4 months. 4,000 cases so far this year in France. Some have died. The WHO says that 18 children die hourly from this preventable illness. MMR is free from your local NHS surgery.
Continue Reading →The Home Office, ‘Prevent’ and doctor/patient confidentiality
How I wish that politicians would stop telling doctors how to professionally behave. While we are much vexed about the Health Bill (how can there be a “u-turn” until commissioning is fully stopped?) the Home Office have put out their review of the Prevent counter-terrorism strategy. I worry that the authors understand what doctors do, why they […]
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