According to the Canadian psychologist Ami Rokach who has long studied it, “acute loneliness is a terrorising pain, an agonising and frightening experience that leaves a person vulnerable, shaken, and […]
Month: January 2015
The BMJ Today: Learning new lessons from the young
In a week when the first successful organ donation from a newborn was carried out in the UK, The BMJ seems to also be learning new lessons from the youngest […]
Ferelith Gaze: Clarity and stability for the NHS in a time of political uncertainty
We are all prey to systemic amnesia, and in the final 100 days before the 2015 general election, we need to be mindful of the particular vulnerability of the NHS […]
The BMJ Today: Managing multimorbidity in a monomorbid world
The good news is that life expectancy is increasing around the world and we are all living longer. The less good news is that as we get older, we are […]
Richard Lehman’s journal review—26 January 2015
NEJM 22 Jan 2015 Vol 372 331 “Approximately one in four extremely premature infants born at 22 to 28 weeks of gestation does not survive the birth hospitalization; mortality rates […]
Larry Rees: Cancer is the best way to die? You couldn’t be more wrong
As an oesophageal cancer survivor of nine years—and now a terminal pancreatic cancer patient—I was deeply offended by Dr Richard Smith’s recent blog post in The BMJ, in which he stated that […]
The BMJ Today: Trust me, I’m a patient
Michel Foucault had much to say—mostly critical—about medicine. But the rarity of any mention of his name in medical journals tells me that medicine has had far less to say […]
Doug Altman: Author overboard—arbitrary limits at journals
Recently I was bounced off the authorship of a letter to the editor. I had been one of four authors of a research paper published in a leading medical journal. […]
The BMJ Today: Hinchingbrooke, Circle, and tabloid smears
The recent news that England’s first privately run NHS hospital was to be placed into “special measures” by healthcare regulator the Care Quality Commission has sparked a fierce and rather […]
Mihail Călin: Romania’s alcohol policy leaves public to fend for themselves
A woman holding a toddler in her arms falls in a ditch while trying to recover her beer bottle from the ground. She tries to get back up, only to […]