Radio 4 news: “1 in 8 women will get breast cancer”. It’s based on a press release from Cancer Research UK. And it is not helpful: these are the figures, below, for risk of breast cancer you want to know (from their press release) . At present, the headline figure media outlets are using isn’t helpful, and […]
Continue Reading →Dr Andrew Lansley’s monster
Fantastic editorial in the BMJ. “What do you call a government that embarks on the biggest upheaval of the NHS in its 63 year history, at breakneck speed, while simultaneously trying to make unprecedented financial savings? The politically correct answer has got to be: mad. The scale of ambition should ring alarm bells. Sir David […]
Continue Reading →Well enough to work
An article about Atos and their work capability assessments, in the BMJ, here. I am finding, often, a distinct lack of co-operation when it comes to polite and basic questions being asked of companies who are contracted to provide services to the Government. I wanted to know about Atos recruitment, audit and training; they didn’t […]
Continue Reading →Surgery for spectators
There’s a lot of press coverage about a piece by Simon Chapman in the BMJ. He describes a charity auction where one prize was to attend a neurosurgical operation. He thinks it was wrong to do so; so do I. Yet this is the logical outcome of so many voyeristic cameras in the consulting room. […]
Continue Reading →No decision about me, without me
..and other fairy tales. From the Conservative party manifesto “putting patients in charge of making decisions about their care” is the choral refrain, and yet this week has seen a new Health and Social Care Bill which, bottom line, seeks to interrupt and decimate relationships between patients, GPs and hospital specialists by putting numerous other messy […]
Continue Reading →Flu vaccination and fiction
There are people with complications of flu in intensive care and much publicity; many people seem very anxious to pay for a flu vaccination privately if they don’t fall into the NHS’ ‘at risk’ categories. The chair of the RCGP has called for healthy people not to be given flu vaccination in order to save supplies […]
Continue Reading →GPs sell out
I’m sorry that this important newsitem from the BMJ is behind a paywall, but I’ll put up the really important bits. The political imperative is now to get GPs to commission care. One way of ‘saving money’ (if you are interested in short term, shallow, non clinical outcomes) is allegedly to deal with GP referrals […]
Continue Reading →The new NHS breast screening leaflet fails to impress
The best evidence that we have about the effectiveness and harms of breast screening comes from a large review done independent of the breast screening industry – with a patient information booklet available here – which states that It may be reasonable to attend for breast cancer screening with mammography, but it may also be reasonable […]
Continue Reading →Too many referral forms
I’m very chuffed to have a piece in the Christmas BMJ, jointly with two colleagues. It’s here
Continue Reading →Healthcare charities and the uselessness of GPs (again)
..and so, again and again, that GPs are in some way ‘undertrained’. We aren’t specialists – we are generalists. It’s a different job, with different skills. But it’s a myth to repeat that just because a GPs doesn’t have specialist training somehow means that the doctor is incompetent or lacking in training. GP training consists […]
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