It is not often that an issue about how the European Commission is organised in relation to a specific part of its work on health comes to the top of […]
Month: October 2014
David Zigmond: NHS stewardship—the missing personal factor
In healthcare our systems of governance are increasingly developed and vaunted. Yet these are very different from our capacities for stewardship. Inevitably and predictably, the recent party political conferences each […]
Philip van der Wees: Patient preferences to distinguish between good and bad practice variation
“Keeping good practice variation and reducing bad practice variation is a main driver for quality improvement in healthcare.” With this key message, Albert Mulley, professor at the Dartmouth Center for […]
Julie Browne: Why do some clinical supervisors become bullies?
The literature on bullying in the medical workplace makes disturbing reading. In the General Medical Council’s 2013 national training survey, 13.2% of respondents said that they had been victims of […]
Richard Smith: Leapfrogging to universal health coverage
Low and middle income countries have the chance to create health systems that will perform much better than those in high income countries. Copying health systems that look increasingly unsustainable […]
Tara Lamont: On biography, cancer, and Richard Doll
I’m a sucker for the lives of great men (and, occasionally, women) in medicine. This is particularly the case when it comes to those who lived in the 20th century, whose lives are […]
Richard Lehman’s journal review—27 October 2014
NEJM 22 October 2014 Vol 371 1577 The whole point about tuberculosis is that it is slow. The discoverer of its causative organism, Robert Koch, called it the fungus-germ, or […]
The BMJ Today: The joys and snags of being a GP
As a GP who didn’t train in the UK and who has never worked in the country as a GP, I follow the situation of general practice in the UK […]
Margaret Cooter: Colour me unusual—a MRSA quilt and a TB dress
On learning about the source of the colour of Anna Dumitriu’s quilt, some people feel distinctly uncomfortable, and a few have even said, “But that’s irresponsible! That’s dangerous!” The blue […]
Samir Dawlatly: A GP on why I still go to work
Recently Lord Howe warned GPs to stop complaining about their work conditions, so that they did not cause a workforce crisis. Similar noises were heard from NHS England at the recent […]