My brother died in 1964 at Guy’s Hospital. He was 15, I was 12. He had a congenital heart problem which I believe was a ventricular septal defect. He was […]
Guest writers
Thushara Matthias: Caring for older patients
I’m a postgraduate trainee from a developing country and have completed my local training in internal and general medicine to be a consultant physician. The rest of my training involves […]
Juliet Cohen: Proving torture–home office mistreatment of expert medical evidence
The encounter that changed my medical career was in 1990, with an interpreter working in a Red Cross clinic overseas. We had become friends over the weeks that I worked […]
Neel Sharma: Sayre’s law—any hope for change in academia?
“In any dispute the intensity of feeling is inversely proportional to the value of the issues at stake . . . that is why academic politics are so bitter.” Wallace […]
Richard Lehman: Pre-diabetes: can prevention come too soon?
In the last fifty years, most people across the world have had more food to eat and less physical work to do. On the plus side, we are living longer—often […]
Indermeet Sawhney: Incapacitated patients and rights to liberty
Article 5 (4) of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) underpins everyone’s right to liberty. This fundamental principle dictates the rights of patients under the statute of the UK […]
Mary Higgins: Improving maternity care in partnership
When you start working in maternity care, whatever your job, people often think how happy it must be. Compared to other specialties, we are very privileged to have the joy […]
Why the RCPCH should stop taking funds from the Baby Food Industry
By Tony Waterston and Elizabeth Mason. A collective sigh of relief could be heard from many paediatric associations around the world, after the RCPCH made known its decision to accept […]
Mary-Ellen Lynall: Translating new advances in neuroscience into psychiatric care
The popular press and scientific journals are littered with exciting advances in basic and clinical neuroscience. But what does this mean for psychiatry, and for psychiatric training? Current trainees will one […]
Ahmed Rashid: Humanity as the bigger picture in medical education
Looking back at the kind of medical school environment that previous generations were exposed to, I often wonder what the clinical teaching must have looked like. Having graduated from medical […]