The Rorschach inkblot test, used for psychological profiling and introduced in 1921, is well known, even if now little used. Few know of a similar test that was introduced in […]
Month: June 2015
Georg Röggla: The political culture on refugees has tilted
David Berger and Kamran Abbasi wrote an important editorial about refugees, saying that it is time for moral leadership from Western democracies. I cross the border between Italy and Austria […]
Jeffrey Aronson: When I Use a Word … Phonetic alphabets
So, there are phonemes and graphemes. A phoneme is a basic indivisible unit of sound, the linguistic atom. A grapheme is a symbol that represents a phoneme. Each grapheme in […]
The BMJ Today: Systems need to change to overcome healthcare problems
• Elder abuse, say Yuliya Mysyuk and colleagues, is a “far reaching public health problem that affects the quality of life of people worldwide,” and point to failures in health […]
Adam Smith: The life and legacy of oncology PROMs
Since the 1980s, patient reported outcomes measures (PROMs) have been incorporated in cancer clinical trials providing invaluable information about symptoms, functioning, and quality of life from the patients’ perspective. In […]
Arnar Astradsson and Tipu Z Aziz: Fetal cell or stem cell derived treatment for Parkinson’s disease
This blog is part of a series of blogs linked with BMJ Clinical Evidence, a database of systematic overviews of the best available evidence on the effectiveness of commonly used […]
James Raftery: Cancer drug prices and olaparib
NICE’s provisional rejection of Astra Zeneca’s olaparib (Lynparza) for a genetic subset (BRCA1/2 gene mutation) of ovarian cancers has several themes which have not been commented on. One is that […]
Vijayaprasad Gopichandran: How can we measure patients’s trust in doctors?
Jum Nunnally, the much acclaimed author of “Psychometric Theory” the standard textbook of psychometrics, which has run into several volumes, says “an accurate method was available for measuring the circumference […]
The BMJ Today: The earlier the better for mental health
The BMJ has this week published not one but two summaries of new NICE guidance: • The first is on bronchiolitis in children. Our summary will take you through diagnosis, […]
Aditya J Nanavati: Dealing with patients seeking “instant gratification”
I must admit I feel immense joy when I see an instant message pop-up on my phone screen. I do not think it makes a difference whether it is a […]