To the considerable surprise of very few people, on Saturday 31 October, the UK’s prime minister Boris Johnson announced a second national lockdown in England, to halt the increased spread […]
Year: 2020
The story of the PLACID Trial—a democratisation of research
It was early April and SARS-CoV-2 was just starting to spread across India. The country was under a lockdown. It was a time of collective uncertainty, as clinicians, researchers, policy […]
On the eve of the US election, physicians are considering their responsibility to support voting rights
The social, economic, and political fabric of the United States is undergoing profound stress, heightened by the covid-19 pandemic. This upheaval is causing many healthcare professionals and trainees to reassess […]
John Ashton: Covid-19—Getting a grip on the second wave
The UK has not performed well in its response to the covid-19 pandemic. As a nation we were slow to appreciate the urgency of the worst public health emergency in […]
“Need for Recovery”—an early indicator of impaired healthcare staff wellbeing?
As we enter the latter half of 2020, an uneasy feeling pervades the corridors of hospitals and clinics across the world. While many systems have emerged relatively intact from the […]
Jeffrey Aronson: When I Use a Word . . . Nobel prizes in pharmacology—John Vane
This week I have reached 1973 in my exploration of the biomedical words whose first known written instances have been listed in the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) in individual years […]
Pallavi Bradshaw: Abuse against doctors leaves a bitter taste
General Practitioners at a practice in Bristol went to work this week to find offensive graffiti on the wall of their surgery, in foot-high letters. The message from the graffiti […]
Rapid recruitment and deployment of a team of “Helpers” to manage the covid-19 pandemic
The initial phase of the covid-19 pandemic placed a huge burden on hospitals, which had insufficient time to prepare for the influx of severely ill patients. As cases rise again, […]
Can covid-19 help us deal with the pandemic of defensive medicine?
The threat of this terrible virus has made us take a step back and critically reflect on our priorities and our actions […]
Daniel Sokol on William Osler’s legacy and medical ethics
This is a version of a lecture given to the Osler Club of London and the British Society for the History of Medicine on 1st October 2020 as part of […]