“What is the topic we need to discuss when it comes to medical students’ wellbeing?” I asked my classmates. “Approaching exams, at what point do we say our knowledge is […]
Month: May 2019
We need a global plan to tackle low vaccine uptake and vaccine hesitancy
A cornerstone of disease prevention could crumble if we don’t tackle vaccine hesitancy […]
Murthy Adhiyaman: Mandatory training—the elephant in the room
The phrase “mandatory training” hits a raw nerve in almost all health professionals. What used to be a fire lecture and training in cardiopulmonary resuscitation has now proliferated into a […]
Improving patient safety: We need to reduce hierarchy and empower junior doctors to speak up
Empowering doctors and others to speak up when they have concerns is essential to making our NHS safer, say Peter Brennan and Mike Davidson […]
David Shaw: The hidden harms of “genomic volunteering”
NHS England is to offer free genomic sequencing for patients with serious genetic conditions, including cancer. Healthy citizens will also be able to have their genomes sequenced under a new […]
Jeffrey Aronson: When I use a word . . . Desirable benefits and acceptable harms
Reading about the idea of a minimal clinically important difference (MCID), I came across another term, less widely used: the patient acceptable symptom state or PASS. The earliest reference to […]
Kate Bernard: Why medical students are joining the rebellion on climate change
On 12 April 2019 Alex Armitage wrote a powerful piece for BMJ Opinion on “Extinction Rebellion”, the environmental activist group which has been hitting our headlines for the past few weeks. […]
Matt Morgan: Why you should #SqueezeTheSponge
As I come to the end of a busy run of shifts in the intensive care unit, I manage to get home in time to bath my children. My special […]
Martin Marshall: De-diagnosing disease
New diagnostic labels should be more cautiously applied and established diagnoses should be regularly reviewed, says Martin Marshall […]
Preventing violent extremism: time for a public health approach?
Recent tragic events in New Zealand and Sri Lanka provide a devastating reminder of the global threat of terrorism from all extremes. For over a decade, the UK government has […]