There are now two groups of people living with chronic disease, those that are connected and those who are not. In days gone by, “being connected” meant having personal and […]
Month: November 2011
Richard Smith: Outlook bleak for mental health
Mental health disorders—particularly depression, schizophrenia, and Alzheimer’s disease—account for a huge proportion of the global burden of disease, but the outlook for better treatments looks bleak. I don’t think that […]
Julian Sheather: The fifth horseman of the apocalypse?
During the years when the Book of Revelations was being laid down, some time apparently in the first century AD, human populations were likely, with some exceptions, to be small, […]
Richard Lehman’s journal review – 7 November 2011
JAMA 2 Nov 2011 Vol 306 1874 The older you get, the more likely you are to have a haematological malignancy, and the less likely you are to be able […]
Domhnall MacAuley: Ghosts in the consulting room
My consulting room is full of ghosts. Shadowy figures whose tears or trauma hover over the patient’s chair. The room has a memory and sometimes shares its thoughts. A word […]
Martin McShane: A day at the Mid Staffordshire foundation trust enquiry
I was privileged to be invited to the patient experience seminar being held as part of the Mid Staffordshire enquiry. I felt as though I was participating in one of […]
Research highlights – 4 November 2011
“Research highlights” is a weekly round-up of research papers appearing in the print BMJ. We start off with this week’s research questions, before providing more detail on some individual research […]
Grania Brigden: Paediatric tuberculosis: out of the dark
Children with tuberculosis have been neglected for too long. Children tend to have paucibacillary disease and therefore are less infectious than adults, meaning they have not been prioritised by the WHO […]
Desmond O’Neill: Quantitative easing – the academic version
The economic downturn has given us all a crash course in the arcane language of economics. A fine example is “quantitative easing,” a sober and serious sounding euphemism for the […]
Anna Dixon: Innovations in the healthcare workforce needed to deliver productivity improvements
The NHS in England faces a huge challenge over the next decade. The tighter public spending settlement for the NHS means the NHS will have to increase productivity in the […]