We, former colleagues, now retired and living 12,000 miles apart, have both recently undergone investigation of blood biochemistry entailing repeated venepuncture by phlebotomists with varying levels of experience. On each […]
Guest writers
Patricia Cantley: We must remember how scary hospitals can be for our patients
We need to do everything we can to redress the imbalance between patients in hospital and healthcare professionals […]
Nazrul Islam: The international medical community must act to help Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh
The forced displacement of the Rohingya population has a historical root since the late 1970s. Approximately 200,000 Rohingya were displaced to neighbouring Bangladesh in 1978, and about 260,000 in 1991-92. […]
Diana Anderson: There remains a fundamental gap between the aims of hospital design and the final user experience
Matt Morgan wrote previously about the impact that poor hospital design has on staff, patients, and healthcare. It is a timely debate and hit home for me as I am […]
Katherine Sleeman: Assisted dying—how safe is safe enough?
We must separate the question of whether assisted dying is morally acceptable from the question of whether it should be legalised […]
Lieven Annemans: We need to reach a common understanding about real world data
Although real world data can complement data from trials, overly optimistic expectations about its use may lead to a situation of “surreal world data” […]
Samar Betmouni: Time for a new digital pathology strategy and re-imagined diagnostic service in the UK
An evaluation of the UK’s pathology capacity by Cancer Research UK (CRUK) has identified that over the next 5-10 years “there is likely to be a severe crisis.” The report […]
Rediscovering humanitarianism in the wake of the aid agencies scandal
As the reverberations of the recent scandal regarding sexual exploitation in the aid sector continue to ricochet around the world, hogging headlines, and eliciting the inevitable (belated) response of “never […]
Derek Summerfield: NHS antidepressant prescribing—what do we get for £266 million per year?
The Royal College of Psychiatrists and the media routinely state that there is an “epidemic” of mental disorder—1 in 4 people in the UK, with 3 in 4 said not […]
Tom Jefferson and Peter Doshi: RIP PubMed commons
Four years ago, the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) launched a pilot project to “leverage the social power of the internet to encourage constructive criticism and high quality discussions.” The service […]