What have we done? We have over-intellectualised health. We—the youthful, affluent, busy, well educated elite—run the NHS as we would want for ourselves. We think of how we would choose […]
NHS
Verity Murricane: What if the NHS changed its approach to risk?
Last year the King’s Fund ran an essay competition for contributions to its series “the NHS if,” exploring hypothetical futures for the health service. Here, we publish the runner-up entry. […]
Amar Mashru: Charging overseas patients for NHS care risks blaming the outsider
England’s health secretary, Jeremy Hunt, has just announced that from April this year, overseas patients will be charged upfront for non-urgent NHS care. Whenever a new government NHS policy hits […]
Richard Smith: Dumfries and Galloway NHS 5—The new hospital of 2017 replaces the new one of 1975
Richard Smith visited and wrote about the NHS in Dumfries and Galloway in 1980, 1990, and 1999, and this series of blogs describes what he found in 2016. A feature […]
Stella Vig: The GMC’s support for doctors during the NHS crisis is welcomed
Doctors have to make difficult clinical judgements about their patients on a daily basis and are trained to do so. This decision making develops with experience and the profession balances risk versus […]
Chris Ham and Don Berwick: An insight into frontline clinical care in acute hospitals
During the past year we have become increasingly aware of the pressures facing frontline clinicians working in acute hospitals. Each of us spent time in 2016 shadowing a general physician […]
Martin McKee: The Brexit White Paper—making Britain great again?
The long awaited Brexit White Paper has finally appeared. Yet Martin McKee finds it fails to shed any light on how Brexit’s consequences for health (or much else) will be […]
Terence Stephenson: Medical licensing assessment will keep us ahead of the field
The GMC is consulting on plans to develop a medical licensing assessment (MLA) that will assure and showcase the quality of medical education and practice across the UK. The thinking […]
Richard Smith: Dumfries and Galloway NHS 4: Community hospitals—loved by locals but seen as expensive by the authorities
Richard Smith visited and wrote about the NHS in Dumfries and Galloway in 1980, 1990, and 1999, and this series of blogs describes what he found in 2016. A feature […]
Daniel Gibney: Does the four hour target really reflect quality of care in UK emergency departments?
Since 2004 NHS emergency departments in the UK have been set “the four hour target.” The time from arrival to discharge and transfer out of the department should be no […]