Many health services were paused due to covid-19. Emma Doble describes the impact that this has had on new parents […]
Year: 2020
Richard Smith: Relearning how to die
Kevin Toolis, author of the beautiful My Father’s Wake, would agree with the surgeon Atul Gawande that we have forgotten how to die. Toolis’s core argument is that his forebears […]
Mary Black: Covid-19 heroes—putting faces to the numbers
I count things for a living—trend lines go up, go down, and I check that the story of those lines makes sense. I look for patterns: what are we missing […]
Deferral of surgery for rectal cancer: the patients’ perspective on the recent NICE recommendations
Earlier this year the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence published new guidelines on the management of colorectal cancer which aims to improve quality of life and survival. [1] […]
Covid-19 research in Europe needs coordination, but we must not stop European research investments in poverty related diseases
There are more than 280 clinical trials for covid-19 registered so far in the EU clinical trial register and more than ten thousand articles have been published internationally since January […]
The taboo around the menopause in medicine leads to widespread human and economic loss
The menopause will affect half of the medical workforce. So why is the subject still cloaked in silence, asks Helena McKeown […]
Katharine Lawrence: Digital empathy in the age of coronavirus
The covid-19 pandemic has radically altered how we provide care to our patients, propelling us into the world of virtual healthcare delivery at a dizzying pace. Telehealth and its digital […]
Jeffrey Aronson: When I Use a Word . . . Laughter
Comprehensive though the list of phobias in the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) is, it omits some, notably gelotophobia. Nor does it include gelotophilia, katagelasticism, or gelasmus. The IndoEuropean root KLEG […]
Returning to clinical practice amid a pandemic
Returning to work can be a stressful time, but what is it like when the world is in the grip of a pandemic? […]
Paul Simpson: Why do authors keep breaking the fourth wall?
Writers should avoid unintentionally reminding readers that they are reading, says Paul Simpson […]