JAMA 1 May 2013 Vol 309 This week’s JAMA is devoted to child health. This was a mistake, because although children are generally interesting, health generally is not. A study […]
Month: May 2013
Richard Smith: The irrationality of the REF
The Saturday before last I was rung up by a fellow of the Royal Society who was having trouble with the New England Journal of Medicine, and our conversation soon […]
Sarah Venis: MSF Scientific Day 2013
Does blogging help patients cope with the lengthy and toxic treatment for multidrug resistant tuberculosis? Do humanitarian responses to crises fail to take sufficient account of the plight of elderly […]
Nigel Edwards: Can we keep up with the demand for urgent and emergency care?
The urgent and emergency care system is under severe pressure. Performance on a number of important indicators, including the four hour wait and ambulance handover targets, is heading in the […]
Soumyadeep Bhaumik’s review of Indian medical papers—2 May 2013
People say India is the land of frugal medicine, and a decade ago I would have agreed. But the advent of technology coincided with the rapid growth of private hospital […]
David Lock on integrated care experiments: at last some sensible thinking from the government for the NHS
The HSJ reports that the government is about to signal a series of large scale integrated care “experiments,” which could result in a movement away from the straightjacket of payment […]
Domhnall MacAuley: Celebrating clinical teaching in Wales
We don’t celebrate success enough in medicine. We sometimes mutter, grumble, and gripe, but we seldom congratulate our friends and colleagues on their success. What a pleasure therefore to attend […]
Chris Ham: Medical leadership must move from the margins to the mainstream
A new report from the health services management centre at the University of Birmingham and The King’s Fund, funded by the National Institute for Health Research, provides a comprehensive and […]
Richard Smith: Stop jumping from “is” to “ought”
Last week for the first time I examined a PhD, and one of my co-examiners, a moral philosopher, told us of “Hume’s guillotine” and taught us a lesson that all […]
Desmond O’Neill: Gerontolysis
In an era when didactic teaching in medical education is frowned upon and where workshops and problem based learning rule supreme, it is refreshing to be reminded of the powerful […]