Obesity is a growing problem in affluent parts of the world—for example, North America and Europe—where more than a quarter of the population are obese (BMI >30) and 3-5% are […]
Guest writers
Penny Campling: Thoughts on healthcare culture
How many of us feel the culture in the NHS brings out the best in us? Judging from the majority of staff surveys, not many. I happen to think this […]
Alison Spurrier: who are chaperones really for—a nurse’s perspective
Fiona Pathiraja’s blog “Who are chaperones really for?” set me thinking about my own practice and how nurses react to similar circumstances. I am a general medical nurse with 35 […]
David Pencheon: Don’t always put patients first.
Patient health, patient experience, and health outcomes for individuals and populations should always be at the heart of the NHS. But the best way to actually achieve this most effectively […]
Chris Ham: Integrated care North and South of the border
Proponents of integrated care in England sometimes look to Scotland as an example to be emulated. Yet, while the Scottish NHS has a much simpler structure that ought to facilitate […]
Steve Yentis: Infamous names in anaesthesia—part one
Roger Maltby’s book Notable Names in Anaesthesia contains fascinating biographies of some of the great and the good whose names are familiar to anaesthetists everywhere, such as Magill and Macintosh. […]
Veena Rao: Should under-nutrition in India be addressed as a population issue?
The time is ripe in India to consider under-nutrition as a population issue, rather than a women and children’s issue, as it is viewed presently by government, governmental advisors and […]
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 […]
Anna Dixon: Evolution or revolution: the story behind the Health and Social Care Act 2012
It was often difficult to know who to believe during debate about the Health and Social Care Bill. The public were faced with baffling technocratic details from government with no […]
Fran Baum: The conclusion of the Third People’s Health Assembly
The last three plenary sessions of the Third People’s Health Assembly (PHA) were used to debate the People’s Health Movement’s (PHM) strategies and priorities for the future. These sessions enabled […]