After 25 years as an editor, I’ve learnt in my eight years as an ex-editor that it’s mostly miserable being at the author end of a very unequal power relationship. […]
Latest articles
David Payne: Review of “The Doctor’s Dilemma”
Medicine’s big guns beat a path to Dr Colenso Ridgeon’s consulting room after news of his knighthood is announced. Downstairs, the wife of a consumptive painter pleads with his housekeeper […]
Anna Allan: An end to “Black Wednesday?”
Shadowing began over a week ago. As around 7000 of my newly qualified peers entered our new homes (read: hospital trusts) for the first time, I couldn’t help but feel […]
Richard Smith: You might have had a heart attack or you might not; we forgot to tell you
Complaints against doctors feature communication more than anything else, which is one reason why communication skills have become universal in medical education. Unfortunately we still have some way to go—as […]
Richard Lehman’s journal review – 30 July 2012
JAMA 25 July 2012 Vol 308 This was the week of the XIX International AIDS Conference held in Washington DC, where the catchphrase everywhere was “an AIDS-free generation.” That forms […]
Penny Campling: Thoughts on healthcare culture
How many of us feel the culture in the NHS brings out the best in us? Judging from the majority of staff surveys, not many. I happen to think this […]
Alison Spurrier: who are chaperones really for—a nurse’s perspective
Fiona Pathiraja’s blog “Who are chaperones really for?” set me thinking about my own practice and how nurses react to similar circumstances. I am a general medical nurse with 35 […]
David Pencheon: Don’t always put patients first.
Patient health, patient experience, and health outcomes for individuals and populations should always be at the heart of the NHS. But the best way to actually achieve this most effectively […]
Liz Wager: Deworming the literature
A recent Cochrane systematic review caught my eye, not so much for its conclusions but for what it shows about the state of the medical literature. According to Paul Garner, […]
Chris Ham: Integrated care North and South of the border
Proponents of integrated care in England sometimes look to Scotland as an example to be emulated. Yet, while the Scottish NHS has a much simpler structure that ought to facilitate […]