As the mother of a severely disabled child and a psychiatrist working with learning disabled children, I was particularly interested in this BBC documentary which highlights the enormous challenges families face in bringing up a child with disabilities. more…

With the World Food Summit happening this week in Rome, and thinking about my experience of working in the field of malnutrition, two very strong images came to mind. more…

How does a doctor obtain informed consent for H1N1 immunisation consistent with General Medical Council guidance? The Department of Health’s guidance does not provide sufficient information for this.  This is our attempt to rectify this omission, providing information required for informed consent consistent with good professional practice. We outline the main principles of General Medical Council on the responsibilities of doctors in seeking informed consent into practical guidance.  more…

You have got to do something. Young mothers and their babies living in socially deprived areas do poorly. Isolated, unprepared, and hard to reach; the obvious way to help is through their peers. Why bother with research. It’s obvious. Just implement it.  more…

Medicaid is typically thought of as the health insurance program for the poor. But when it was created in the 1960s, it was designed to cover only three low income groups: parents and children, older adults and individuals with disabilities. Single adults without a disability and without dependent children were left out. What this means in practice is that you can be homeless and have no regular income but as long as you do not meet the strict federal definition of disability and do not have any children under the age of eighteen, you cannot get access to Medicaid in many states. 47% of adults with incomes below 100% of the federal poverty level, or $10,830 a year for a single individual in 2009, are uninsured. more…

Dan Martin undresses in 20-knot winds beneath the Everest summit to prepare for a femoral artery blood sample and muscle biopsy while a team of sherpas look on, entertained by what they see. The critical care anaesthetist and his three colleagues ended up on the top of the world’s highest peak two years ago as part of their research project to quantify the limit of human tolerance for hypoxia.

Describing the experiment so far at a Wellcome Collection event in London last week, Martin said he and his three colleagues recorded an average blood oxygen level of 54% (3.28 kilopascals or kPa). His was the lowest, at 34% (2.55 kPa). Patients with a level below 8 kPa are considered critically ill. more…

Patient and doctor interactions are one of the cornerstones of medical care and with the advent of modern technology, there is now more than one way for doctors and patients to communicate with each other. With the rise of the mobile phone, instant two way communication has become even easier. I have found that having a patient’s a mobile phone number a great resource when I need to contact them urgently when they have an abnormal test result. In addition, the general and widespread availability and use of e mail both within the healthcare setting and in society as whole, you would think patient and doctor e mail interaction is common. more…

Plagues create business opportunities and the worried well in any era present a commercial opportunity. In the Middle Ages, the Black Death and the Great Plague saw brisk sales in fumigators, herbal remedies, and the plague suit - predecessor of the DuPont TK555T HazMat suit, and equally unsettling for nervous patients. Quacks (from the old Dutch word Quacksalver, for one who boasts or “quacks” about his or her salves) thrived in an era unchallenged by scientific evidence and online Cochrane reports. more…

There have been mixed messages from the Patients Association in response to the announcement of plans for nursing in England to become an all-graduate profession. Writing in The Times on 12 November, the Association’s director, Katherine Murphy, said the move had “sent out all the wrong messages, as it has become more important to write about care than to give it”. In contrast, their vice-chairman, Mike Summers, welcomed the move, saying he didn’t think, “…anybody could really complain about nursing being taught to a high level.” Neither mentioned an essential point, apparently missed by other commentators, too, that common sense suggests that you cannot increase recruitment to a profession by making it more exclusive. more…

I was flicking through my Student BMJ the other day when I came across an article on Medical Professionalism. This is a subject that I have been thinking about recently, mainly as we have just had the first of our “Personal & Professional Development” sessions at medical school.

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