Last month a controversial proposal was made by Vale of York clinical commissioning group (CCG) to deny obese patients access to elective surgery for up to a year. The headlines […]
Latest articles
Richard Smith: Is flexible working good or bad for health?
Australia, like Britain, pushed hard for more flexible working in the labour market in the 80s, and all political parties and trade unions supported it because they assumed that it […]
Anna Miller: Asking all pregnant women for a passport before giving birth is simply wrong
St George’s University Hospitals Foundation trust is reportedly devising a pilot scheme to ask all pregnant women to show a passport to prove their right to NHS care before giving […]
Laurence Gerlis: Is private medical practice that bad?
During my 30 years as a private GP I have become used to being insulted by other doctors. Some see us as mercenary quacks, with little genuine interest in patients’ […]
Nicholas S Hopkinson reviews “The state of medicine”
“I am furious, sad, and scared for the NHS” —Margaret McCartney’s opening words in the introduction to her latest, timely book, The State of Medicine (Pinter and Martin 2016). Understandable sentiments, […]
Helen Macdonald: Fixing evidence based medicine
Love it or hate it—we must all consume evidence. Now is your chance to have your say on what its future should be like. Yesterday the Centre for Evidence Based Medicine at Oxford […]
Lara Fairall: Where there are nurses and community health workers
August marked the fourth anniversary of the shootings at the Marikana mine in North West Province of South Africa. It’s one of those events that so etches itself onto our […]
Desmond O’Neill: Mozart in the ballpark
A live telecast of The Marriage of Figaro to a baseball stadium from the Kennedy Centre provided a delightful and illuminating synergy with the 2016 conference of the National Centre […]
Avril Danczak: When is a disease not a disease?
Most GPs will recognise the dispiriting conversation that can happen when a patient discovers that they have Chronic Kidney Disease Stage 3 (CKD). “A disease? Where did I catch it […]
Richard Thorley: Exception reporting—let’s show Jeremy how hard we really work
The day we have all been dreading in obstetrics and gynaecology has arrived. Some trusts started to roll out the new contract for junior doctors last week. The cancellation of strike action […]