When the General Medical Council (GMC) commissioned me to carry out a review—Taking Revalidation Forward—I considered revalidation’s primary function was to assure patients about the quality and safety of doctors. I […]
Latest articles
Martin McKee: A Shared Society? Interpreting Theresa May’s revolutionary vision
Theresa May is an unlikely revolutionary. Yet, on the day she entered 10 Downing Street, this was how she defined herself. She spoke of the need to tackle shorter life […]
Andrew S Al-Rais: How to avoid handover hostility
Arriving in resus the tension was palpable. A familiar interplay was evolving in the Paediatric bay. The “Handover Standoff.” On one side stood a fatigued transfer team accompanying an intubated […]
Lindsay-Ann Coyle and Sarah Atkinson: Living with multimorbidity
“I sometimes refer to myself as having OCD and sometimes refer to myself as having an eating disorder.” Living with multimorbidity may constitute one of the biggest challenges to how […]
Paul Buchanan: How not to annoy your doctor
What do we, patients, really want when we phone up to book that appointment? What do we really need? Why do we feel like the only answer is to take […]
Daoxin Yin: Will the universal two-child policy in China exacerbate gender discrimination in the medical job market?
Winter is the new doctor recruiting season for Chinese hospitals. Between the end of November and February, government-owned hospitals, who are major employers, interview job candidates. Most of these candidates […]
Helen Tuckwood: Living with vitiligo
I first noticed two patches of white skin about 10 years ago, when I was 47 years old. The patches were on the inside top of my thighs, symmetrical to […]
David Lock: Have NHS leaders failed to “speak truth unto power”?
This is blog is not a rant—well not too much of a rant. It is an expression of serious frustration about the way the NHS is run and about the […]
BMJ Christmas charity appeal: Orbis’s Flying Eye Hospital—going places where other charities often can’t
I think if I wasn’t an anaesthetist, I would have liked to have been a pilot. There are a lot of similarities between the two: in terms of responsibility, and […]
Arnie Purushotham: Multidisciplinary team meetings in cancer care need to change
Multidisciplinary team (MDT) working is one of the cornerstones of our cancer services. MDT meetings are vital for exemplary patient care but it is becoming increasingly clear that they need […]