“The Patient” is everywhere. He is in consult notes, she is in hospital admission notes, he is in letters, and she is even in my daily dictations and procedure notes. […]
US healthcare
Neel Sharma: Does the cost of using technology in medical education unfairly disadvantage developing countries?
Medical education reform has seen significant changes since the days of the Flexner report. What remains true are the rigorous entrance requirements, the scientific method of thinking, learning by doing, […]
William Cayley: About what are we being precise?
I’ve been too swamped with the day to day realities of teaching, patient care, and just plain real life lately to be very reflective, but Zackary Berger and Dave deBronkart finally […]
Zackary Berger and Dave deBronkart: “Precision medicine” needs patient partnership
US President Obama recently presented the outlines of a US$215 million plan for “precision medicine” through support of research funded by the National Institutes of Health and National Cancer Institute. […]
James McCormack and Mike Allan: Simply making evidence simple
This blog is part of a series of blogs linked with BMJ Clinical Evidence, a database of systematic overviews of the best available evidence on the effectiveness of commonly used […]
Elizabeth Loder: Has the American Board of Internal Medicine lost its way?
Elizabeth Loder examines the emergence of organized US physician opposition to revalidation requirements. Something remarkable is happening right now in American medicine. A unified physician movement has emerged that cuts […]
Carolyn Thomas: Yet another cardiac risk calculator?
To see for myself how reliable the new NHS heart disease risk calculator is, I completed all required fields exactly as I would have answered seven years ago. That was […]
Alvin Chan: Chances are, you’re not sensitive to gluten
In the medical community, there are certain conditions that fall under the fuzzy category of medically unexplained syndromes (MUS). These syndromes, like fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue syndrome, and somatoform disorder, present with odd […]
Tessa Richards: Big data—jam tomorrow
Rest easy in your beds overworked doctors and ailing patients, for tomorrow, all will be well. Big data will revolutionise healthcare. Processes in creaky health systems will be streamlined, patients […]
Saurabh Jha: War on Death
Thomas Hobbes described life as pitifully “nasty, brutish, and short.” Thanks to the free market and the state, life is no longer a Hobbesian nightmare. But death has become nasty, […]