On 4 October 2016, England’s health secretary, Jeremy Hunt announced government funding for 1500 additional undergraduate medical school places starting in September 2018. Although medical schools were anticipating the need […]
Guest writers
John Appleby: What did the 2017 Spring Budget ever do for health and social care?
John Appleby unpicks the good news and the bad news for the NHS and social care from the 2017 spring budget […]
Jonathan Sleath: Why revalidation for older doctors needs to change
In January 2017, Keith Pearson, chair of the GMC’s own Revalidation Advisory Board, delivered a review into the future of revalidation. For many of us, anxious for some crumbs of […]
Pandora Pound: How should mandatory sex education be taught?
Pandora Pound discusses how mandatory sex education should be delivered so that it is effective. […]
Martin Elliott: We need to raise awareness of sudden death in the young
Seven years ago, my apparently well 26 year old son, Toby, died in his sleep of SUDEP—sudden unexplained death in epilepsy. Undiagnosed, he had bitten his tongue, quite severely, in […]
Chris Moulton: NHS urgent and emergency care is in the midst of a crisis
Today’s report from NHS Providers on NHS winter pressures bears out what the Royal College of Emergency Medicine (RCEM) has been saying for some time—urgent and emergency care is in the […]
Clare Nicholson: Misalignment between the DSM-5 and the Mental Capacity Act
Clare Nicholson issues a call for clarity in defining severe intellectual disability […]
Elizabeth Burns: Pass me an anti-boredom pill doctor
Could boredom in patients be a problem that impacts on health outcomes and performance of hospitals, asks Elizabeth Burns. […]
Mary Higgins: The echoes of adverse events
I’ve written before about the domino effect, which describes the multiple groups that are affected when an adverse outcome occurs. Traditionally, the first victims are the patient and their family […]
Eng-Tat Ang and Kapil Sugand: How can anatomy teaching be improved?
By their own admission, medical students tend to forget their anatomical knowledge when entering into clinical practice. It is common for surgical supervisors to question whether anatomy had ever been […]