It’s been a bad week. I’ve flown 6000 miles to attend two meetings where not only did I not manage to say anything useful but I also came across as […]
Columnists
Tracey Koehlmoos: The ups and downs of the publishing process
Publishing is at times a joy and also a curse. The process can be taxing both emotionally and in terms of time commitment, but I know that it is the […]
Desmond O’Neill on the medical and ethical themes in Prometheus
Switching off can be hard in medicine. No matter where one turns, the observational reflex kicks in, prompted by the goitre of the newscaster or the Bell’s palsy of the […]
Sandra Lako: Clinical work
Monday marked my first full day of clinical work at the Ola During Children’s Hospital. I spent the day in the outpatient department talking to parents, examining children, making an […]
Tiago Villanueva: The aftermath of doctors’ industrial action in Portugal
Senior doctors, junior doctors, pregnant doctors, doctors on holiday, and doctors from all around the country protested against the Portuguese government’s healthcare policies last week. The march took part on […]
Julian Sheather: Anders Breivik and the social uses of psychiatry
I have been gripped by the trial of Anders Breivik and was intrigued to see the BMJ hosting a Maudsley debate this week about, loosely speaking, Breivik’s “sanity.” The debate […]
Richard Smith: Homesickness—my most serious “disease”
Last week I walked from Poole to Chapman’s Pool along the South West Coastal Path, and as I passed through Swanage memories flooded back, some of them very painful. This […]
James Raftery: NICE, obesity, and bariatric surgery
The trends on obesity are shocking. UK data on the prevalence of obesity in adults and children are provided by the National Obesity Observatory, which also shows the social gradient […]
Pritpal S Tamber: Brave IOM starts defining the knowledge to practice chasm
I survived. In a recent post I worried that the bigwigs at the Institute of Medicine (IOM) would be underwhelmed by my contention that one of the main—and perhaps the […]
Julian Sheather: Happy-ology
It is possibly the oldest of all philosophical questions. Although academic specialisation has tended to brush it to the wings—embarrassed perhaps by the sheer indeterminate unwieldiness of it—the question of […]