As the Kony 2012 campaign continues to sear the image of Joseph Kony—head of the Ugandan guerilla group, the Lord’s Resistance Army— into the world’s consciousness, it’s worth remembering that […]
Latest articles
Domhnall MacAuley: Patient safety and sports performance
Eighty thousand spectators hold their breath as they watch the penalty. Hushed anticipation. Fearful will he hold his nerve, handle the pressure, cope with the stress. But, is it that […]
Tiago Villanueva: Austerity eroding Portuguese healthcare
In 1960, Portugal’s infant mortality rate was 77.5 deaths per 1000 live births, which is comparable to that of many Sub Saharan African countries today. In 2010, Portugal’s infant mortality […]
Martin McShane: 80:20
We are working through trying to understand exactly how commissioning support (CSS) will work with Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs). At a recent time out the lead manager for the CSS […]
Domhnall MacAuley: Docs in the box—at International Forum on Quality & Safety in Healthcare
We live in our own little boxes. Maureen Bisognano from the Institute of Healthcare Improvement , in her keynote address, told us we need to get out of our own […]
Desmond O’Neill: The ethics of advocacy
The infant’s eyes are huge, the profile of its tiny cheek bisected by a naso-gastric tube and its ugly adhesive patch. Peering from the corner of the billboard, the image […]
Justine Bharamato: Sudden cardiac death in athletes
Fabrice Muamba was discharged from hospital yesterday, after he collapsed during a football match due to a cardiac arrest on 17 March. His collapse reminds us of the sensational nature […]
Vinice Thomas: The push for improvement in maternity care
Substandard care within maternity services remains a high profile issue. It seems that every month there is news coverage about failing hospitals, avoidable maternal deaths, and below optimum care provided […]
Richard Smith: Managing infertility in Kenya
Ivan Illich, the great critic of modern medicine, argued that it had displaced well the traditional cultural mechanisms for managing pain, sickness, and death with a false promise of eliminating […]
Vasiliy Vlassov: Tolerance
It took time to think about what happened which is why I am writing about this event a while after it occurred. The shock was hard, and I felt I […]