The average GP doesn’t earn this much, but anyway, earning 300K as an NHS GP is now possible. How? The usual way is for one GP to be the managing director of several NHS surgeries. Most will employ salaried doctors and nurses to deliver care; the profit becomes singularly that of the managing doctor/director. It’s […]
Continue Reading →My last FT col
..will be printed this Saturday. It’s quite good fun doing a column but the dread and terror of getting things wrong doesn’t really improve with time. . .
Continue Reading →Carl Elliott on opinion leaders
Excellent article. Looking forward to reading his book.
Continue Reading →Prostate cancer screening: what do the papers actually say?
Lots of press attention has gathered around the latest research on prostate cancer screening. To be clear: there is no NHS screening programme for prostate cancer screening. Instead, if men want a screening PSA test they can ask for it from their GP. The DoH’s press release in response to the latest research looks like this: […]
Continue Reading →Ghosts in the machine
When I was a medical student, I went to lectures which told me that HRT was going to stop everything from dementia to heart attacks to teeth falling out. I hardly prescribe it now, such are the hazards, especially of breast cancer, and given that the long term benefits are not what we were sold. […]
Continue Reading →Tell me the truth about Fit Notes
So the big idea was that people who were off work due to illness might be able to do some work, perhaps not their regular work, or perhaps people returning to work while recovering from illness might be better having a graduated return. Rather than simply signing people off work while ill and then back […]
Continue Reading →Medicating children for ‘psychosis’
This very insightful article from the NY Times explores the consequences of labelling a pre-school child with behaviour problems with severe mental illness. This US view is disturbing, from the ease of which anti-psychotic medication is prescribed off-license, to the pharmaceutical company who supplied promotional building bricks to use in the waiting room. In the […]
Continue Reading →Avastin and cost effectiveness
I can’t understand the blame being apportioned in press coverage over NICE’s decision not to fund Avastin, or bevacizumab, for the treatment of advanced bowel cancer. Many patients groups are laying the blame with NICE. Is this fair? The important bit to me is ‘cost effectiveness’. It isn’t about either cost or effectiveness alone. While […]
Continue Reading →Religious doctors and death
A paper in the Journal of Medical Ethics is suggesting that non religious doctors “were more likely than others to report having given continuous deep sedation until death, having taken decisions they expected or partly intended to end life” . This seems to have caused some furore on Radio 4 this am with a discussion about whether […]
Continue Reading →Patient choice and doctor-mediated injury
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 […]
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