Last week I discussed the many different compounds that have a steroid skeleton at their core. However, in clinical parlance we use the term “steroids” to refer almost exclusively to […]
Year: 2018
Peter Brindley: Trust me with your death?
It’s a favorite quip of mine, but usually elicits little more than eye rolls. I ask medical trainees if they enjoy reading fiction, and if they reply “yes” then I […]
Holiday hunger requires radical long term solutions
The rise in food aid is the predictable result of policies that have taken away from those who had least to begin with […]
The long road to justice for Hadiza Bawa-Garba
Jenny Vaughan discusses the implications of this case and what we must learn from it […]
Matt Morgan: Time to stop serving the “shit sandwich”
If you have attended an Advanced Life Support course, you will be familiar with the so-called “shit sandwich.” Despite electrocuting yourself with the defibrillator, tripping over the ECG cables and […]
Richard Smith: Modern doctors should pay more attention to lovesickness
In this book The Incurable Romantic: and Other Unsettling Revelations Frank Tallis, a psychotherapist proposes that modern psychotherapists and doctors can learn from the ancients about the disabling conditions of […]
Jeffrey Aronson: When I use a word . . . A spectrum of steroids
Last week I discussed the origins of the words “sterol” and “steroid”. Today we use the term “steroids” to refer almost exclusively to endogenous compounds that are secreted in the […]
Richard Lehman: Shared decision making—essential but hard to measure
What might be needed to see shared decision making become a reality? […]
Clare Gerada: In memoriam—doctors who have died by suicide or accidental death
They came from across the country, ranging in age from 10 months (a baby nephew) to their mid-70s. Fathers, mothers, sisters, brothers, wives, and husbands—around 20 individuals in total. Their […]
Unreported clinical trial of the week: Liposomal Bupivacaine (Exparel) for postoperative pain control for open and laparoscopic abdominal hernia repair (NCT02128646)
Georgia Richards, Nick Devito, and Ben Goldacre describe another unreported trial that could be used to improve patient care […]