Boots the chemist are making much of research just published in the British Journal of Dermatology. It involves their Protect and Perfect product, which is on sale in my local store, where there are signs saying that customers are allowed to buy only 6 bottles. Clearly they are anticipating great demand. In 2007, the BBC […]
Continue Reading →Strike off whistleblowers?
Margaret Haywood was struck off by the Nursing and Midwifery Council last week. She had secretly filmed patients in the hospital where she worked to document the conditions, which she claimed to have previously reported. These images were subsequently broadcast on the BBC programme Panorama. There has been an outcry from nurses, as well as from some families […]
Continue Reading →Embarrassing illnesses, politicians and medical records
Of particular concern to me about the latest political scandal is the idea that the leader of the Conservative party was to be invited to publish his “full financial and medical records” apparently as a way to reassure the public that he had not had a sexually transmitted disease. It is difficult to see how a political […]
Continue Reading →FAST, and furious
The FAST campaign wants you to call 999 if you can answer, about someone you’re with, “yes” to the question “Has their Face fallen on one side?”, “no” to “Can they raise both Arms and keep them there?”, or “yes” to “Is their Speech slurred?” The idea is to get people with strokes to hospital as quickly […]
Continue Reading →Mid Staffordshire NHS Trust: a failure of policy
The investigation into the Mid Staffordshire NHS Trust makes for harrowing reading. The mortality rate at the hospital was found to be high in patients admitted as an emergency. The first data that showed an increase in the standardised mortality ratio was in 2005. The Healthcare Commission investigation was done during last year, 2008, and is reporting […]
Continue Reading →Shift work, cancer, and compensation
Denmark is reported to be paying 40 women compensation after developing breast cancer. The women are being compensated because they were shift workers. It seems that women with a family history of breast cancer are not going to be compensated. Is this going to be a precedent? How certain can we be that shift work is […]
Continue Reading →Screening for ovarian cancer: the pros and cons
There has been much press coverage of The Lancet Oncology’s paper this week on screening for ovarian cancer. Screening – looking for disease before a person has symptoms that suggest the disease – is often harder than it seems, thanks to the myriad problems it can create. That’s not to say that screening shouldn’t be […]
Continue Reading →Doctor, doctor
The MB ChB medical degree confers a Bachelor’s degree only. True doctorates are PhDs. However, I am guilty of having the title of “Dr” on my bank card. This was only because I thought it might help me get a (larger) overdraft when first out of medical school. But otherwise, at the hairdressers, school gates, and in […]
Continue Reading →Cleaning up the superbugs
I am pleased to see that PatientPak (“introducing the world’s first antisuperbug kit”) have been admonished by the Advertising Standards Authority . I wish I had been able to mention it in this piece for the BMJ before it went to press….
Continue Reading →The problem with breast screening (continued…..)
This follows on from a post a couple of weeks ago about this paper in the BMJ and the duty of doctors to explain both pros and cons of breast screening to patients. Here is a letter and article on this subject today in the Times.
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