Last Saturday (23 January) I went to Sam Wanamaker’s Globe Theatre in Southwark (picture) for a meeting of the Oxford–Globe Forum for Medicine and Drama in Practice, as part of […]
Columnists
David Kerr: A bump on the road to mHealth utopia?
A recent clinical trial’s finding that digital health technology (also known as mHealth) failed to reduce healthcare costs is raising eyebrows on this side of the Atlantic. For naysayers the […]
Jeffrey Aronson: When I use a word . . . Fifty up
This is the fiftieth blog in my “When I Use a Word” series. You’ve been counting, of course. To appreciate fully the range of words that imply “five” and “fifth”, […]
Richard Smith: Calculating our debt to the old
My mother, who has had no short term memory for nine years, has lived in a nursing home for almost three years. I visit her most weeks, but I constantly […]
Billy Boland: The trouble with resolutions…
At this most reflective time of year, I found myself in a conversation last week about New Year’s resolutions. Thinking about my most and least successful attempts it occurred to […]
Neville Goodman’s Metaphor Watch: Rocks, horns, devils, and hard places
A dilemma is not just an irritating problem, like trying to decide whether to go to Costa or Starbucks, which anyway gives the option of not having coffee at all. […]
Jeffrey Aronson: When I use a word . . . Striking tactics
Jeremy Cunctator’s Fabian tactics in his dealings with the British Medical Association over the junior hospital doctors’ contract have precipitated the first doctors’ strike for 40 years. After declining to […]
Richard Smith: Gawping at death
Around 4000 people a day visit El Museo De Las Momias (The Mummy Museum) in Guanjuato, making it one of the most popular tourist sites in Mexico. Some queue for […]
Paul Glasziou and Iain Chalmers: Is 85% of health research really “wasted”?
Our estimate that 85% of all health research is being avoidably “wasted” [Chalmers & Glasziou, 2009] commonly elicits disbelief. Our own first reaction was similar: “that can’t be right?” Not […]
Richard Smith: Does the NHS meet the needs of junior doctors?
Bain, the global consultancy, produces what it calls “a pyramid of employee needs,” and on the day when junior doctors are striking it’s instructive to see how well the NHS […]