So here’s patient choice for you. Rugby player, mid-match, asks his doctor to have a small cut made in his lip. Doctor says no. He asks again. So she makes a small injury, which means that he can be substituted and thus has repercussions on the competition: Dr Wendy Chapman, now obviously regretful of her actions now […]
Continue Reading →NICE and their astonishing view of the clinical relationship
If you are pregnant, NICE want you to given a carbon monoxide test. This test is to see if you smoke. But look at the flowchart on page 11- you are to have this test even if you say you don’t smoke, and even if you say you do. I don’t think this is conducive […]
Continue Reading →The increasing advice about swine flu
To have a baby or not? The National Childbirth Trust, a hardworking parenting charity, have been criticised for offering advice (now withdrawn) that women may wish to delay pregnancy until the swine flu pandemic is over. Various other agencies, including the Royal College of General Practitioners and the Department of Health, were quick to respond by saying […]
Continue Reading →Baby Talk: column
Labour has a reputation for being painful. Personally, I like pain relief and avoiding complications, so I chose to give birth in what I thought were the safer environs of the hospital. But in hospitals, medical staff may be rather too close to hand, and this can mean a higher risk of medical intervention without, […]
Continue Reading →4D Antenatal scans need careful consideration
Not content to prescribe a shopping list of buggies, cots, Moses baskets, bibs, nappies, changing mats, slings, car seats, blankets, hats, romper suits and bootees, a contender on the pregnancy to-do list is the 4D baby scan. No, the fourth dimension is not really recordable (although my understanding of quantum physics is rather shaky) it refers instead to […]
Continue Reading →The obesity paradox: column
Jamie Oliver, chef-champion of the British waistline, is taking his healthy-eating campaign to the US. We’ll see the results next year, when the six-part series is due to be broadcast. Meanwhile, in the UK, public health adverts feature small girls eating fairy cakes under the slogan: “is a premature death so tempting?” Guilt is ladled […]
Continue Reading →Weight gain
The ritual of weekly baby weighing clinics is unlikely to end anytime soon, and so I am delighted to learn that – at last- the old World Health Organisation baby weight charts are being ditched in favour of more evidence-based ones. Previously, the charts “smoothed over” the differences in normal childrens’ weight gain in the first […]
Continue Reading →A test of tolerance
Autism is not the only developmental disability that a child can be born with. It does, however, garner a lot of attention. Part of the reason is that we still don’t understand the condition as well as we would like. And we still have no way of testing for it through prenatal screening. Recent research […]
Continue Reading →Is paracetamol still safe for children?
Medical lore has created something of a cult around the measurement of children’s temperatures. A fever seems to be something which is suspected and then recorded, swiftly followed by the administration of medicine to “bring it down”. Some confessions. My home medical kit isn’t up to much. At one point it did contain a thermometer, […]
Continue Reading →The medical mother
There are few things quite so embarrassing as being phoned by the school to be informed that your child, whom you saw just a few minutes earlier, is too ill to be at school. Then there is also the issue of the semi-miraculous recovery whereby a child claims severe symptoms in the morning, requiring room service, extra pillows, continuous supply […]
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