Remedy UK, the organisation behind the MTAS protest marches in London and Glasgow, is to launch a legal challenge to the single interview process planned for junior doctors in England.
They’ve enlisted the help of leading lawyers Leigh Day and Co to bring the action, which they are due to present on Monday — the same day details of the new interview process are due to be announced. (more…)
In the latest move over medical training applications, England remains isolated in its decision to offer applicants just one interview for a post.
Wales and Scotland have decided they will each stick to their original plan and continue to offer more than one interview to candidates who are appropriately qualified. Reports that Northern Ireland would do the same have yet to be confirmed. (more…)
The national director of Modernising Medical Careers, Professor Alan Crockard, has resigned over the MTAS debacle.
He sent a letter last night to the Chief Medical Officer, Professor Sir Liam Donaldson, saying he did not feel he could stay and watch what was happening to junior doctors, who seem to have been forgotten in the whole process. (more…)
Applicants under MTAS who have already been offered interviews in round one have been asked to carry on and attend these — even if they have more than one interview lined up. (more…)
Reduction of Atherothrombosis for Continued Health (REACH) could be a description of what we spend half our time doing in primary care, but it is also the name of a big 44-country register of people with known atherosclerosis or with 3 or more risk factors. (more…)
In England they used to be known as firemen, even when this invited confusion with the stokers of steam locomotives, but now they are usually called by the more heroic name of firefighter, after the American practice. (more…)
Warning: this meta-analysis is only for single LADs. (more…)
In this proof-of-concept study, cervical vertebral discs were removed from cadavers and transplanted into matched patients with degenerative disease of the cervical spine. (more…)
This Dutch hospital-based study derives a clinical prediction rule called CHIP for the use of computed tomography in patients with minor head injury, (more…)
This is a fungus of climates warmer than the British, and has long been collected in southern Europe, where it is found in association with the sea-hollies or Eryngium species - hence its name. I would love to report that I had found it while wandering around the coast of Portugal, but in fact I found it on a bleak grey afternoon in Leamington Spa, where I spotted its great bulbous stipes amongst a medley of exotic fungi in a grocer’s basket.
It is really good news that the delectable King Pleurotus can be grown commercially and has now reached these shores, because I would rate it higher than any other commercially growable species and at least on a level with Boletus edulis. In fact it can be grown on most of the substrates that will support its inferior cousin, Pleurotus ostreatus, and these include toilet paper. But I do get the impression that the flavour of a mushroom can be influenced by its substrate, so I would favour pulverised sea-holly, or failing that, alder sawdust (see Growing Gourmet and Medicinal (sic) Mushrooms by Paul Stamets, Ten Speed Press, 2000).
