“You saved my life, doctor. I can’t thank you enough.” Letter from Tom 2011 “Our mother is dead … because of you.” Bereaved daughter. Poplar coroner’s court 2010 “What is […]
Guest writers
Ryan Irwin: What healthcare can learn from football—10 key lessons
Football, the world’s most played sport, provides an excellent laboratory for understanding the nature of organisations and has some useful lessons for members of the healthcare economy. Here, 10 lessons […]
Sarah Gregory: What can we learn from how other countries fund health and social care?
England is not alone in facing the implications of an ageing population with changing patterns of illness. To inform the work of the independent commission on the future of health […]
Sue Macdonald: A parent’s view of cerebral palsy—20 years on
The other day I came across a personal view that I wrote 20 years ago just after learning that my baby son, Dominic, had been diagnosed with cerebral palsy. The […]
Daniel Marchalik: Rethinking medical education—in defense of fiction
In the past decade, medicine has quickly entered a new era in which morning rounds take place in front of a computerized set of lab values and histories are taken […]
Seye Abimbola and Aku Kwamie: Posting and transfer in the health sector
The things we don’t talk about in global health escape our attention perhaps because they don’t have a name—the unnamed subject being, in effect, […]
Vijaya Nath: Medical revalidation: trauma, trivia, triumph
The United Kingdom is the first country in the world to introduce the mandatory revalidation of its medical workforce. How does this process feel for those engaged in it? The […]
Simon Chapman: Will vapers really “quit and (not) die?”
The public health appeal of vaping that emboldens its advocates to sanctimoniously taunt anyone unconvinced by their evangelism as callous “quit or die” moralists is that e-cigarettes are spectacularly promising […]
Simon Chapman on e-cigarettes: the best and the worst case scenarios for public health
Use of electronic cigarettes (e-cigs or Electronic Nicotine Delivery Systems—ENDS) is showing exponential increase in some nations. Their regular use remains marginal in Australia, where the sale of nicotine liquid […]
Phil Koczan: Time to regain trust in care.data
Over the past few weeks we have seen a lot of media interest around NHS England’s plan to bring health information together under the banner of care.data, which will allow […]