I have already been invited twice this year to give a talk about emigration of doctors out of Portugal. I find this a sign of the difficult times we’re going […]
Columnists
David Kerr: Signals from the crowd—making a diagnosis
For very many years making a medical diagnosis was based loosely on the application of the principle of Occam’s Razor otherwise known as diagnostic parsimony—look for the fewest possible causes […]
Richard Smith: The irrationality of the REF
The Saturday before last I was rung up by a fellow of the Royal Society who was having trouble with the New England Journal of Medicine, and our conversation soon […]
David Lock on integrated care experiments: at last some sensible thinking from the government for the NHS
The HSJ reports that the government is about to signal a series of large scale integrated care “experiments,” which could result in a movement away from the straightjacket of payment […]
Richard Smith: Stop jumping from “is” to “ought”
Last week for the first time I examined a PhD, and one of my co-examiners, a moral philosopher, told us of “Hume’s guillotine” and taught us a lesson that all […]
Desmond O’Neill: Gerontolysis
In an era when didactic teaching in medical education is frowned upon and where workshops and problem based learning rule supreme, it is refreshing to be reminded of the powerful […]
Julian Sheather: Francis—the ethical challenge
Medical ethics has positioned itself as a decision making tool, a philosophical spanner if you like in the clinician’s toolbox. For understandable reasons it has concentrated on practical dilemmas: even […]
David Lock: Spot the legal howlers—picking over the assurances given by Lord Howe to the House of Lords
Healthcare lawyers have a new game—it’s called “spot the errors.” A number of us have been through the speech made by Lord Howe in winding up the debate in the […]
Richard Smith: A French recipe for happiness
Émilie du Châtelet, the French aristocrat, philosopher, lover of Voltaire, and interpreter of Newton, had highly original (and possibly even correct) ideas on the route to happiness. Those who are […]
Julian Sheather: Is psychiatry a form of torture?
I doubt few areas of medical practice are more ethically charged than the forced treatment of people with mental disorders. Recently a colleague forwarded me some comments made in March […]