“Can’t I just fake it? Can’t I pretend to care, even if I don’t.” So an anonymous physician is reported to have responded during a workshop on caring communication with […]
Columnists
Jim Murray: The EMA’s efforts to widen access to clinical trial results
The European Medicines Agency is trying to widen access to clinical trial results for medicines that have been authorised. Its efforts have been blocked, at least temporarily, by a legal […]
Richard Smith: Am I behind the times in expecting to die?
Until last weekend it never crossed my mind that I wouldn’t die. Now after conversations with my brilliant friend Alex Jadad I fear that I might be hopelessly out of […]
William Cayley: The patient’s story comes first
Once upon a time, there was a pain, a positive test, and “a possibly abnormal x-ray requiring clinical correlation.” As they travelled the world, no one could figure out where […]
Tiago Villanueva: Should medical students spend time in resource poor settings?
I believe firmly in the importance of medical students and doctors engaging in international experiences, and in the international mobility of doctors. So I decided to go along to a […]
Mary E Black: Save our national statistics
That old chestnut about “lies, damned lies and statistics” always raises a laugh. But something is about to happen that is not funny at all. The Office for National Statistics […]
Richard Smith on John Munro: odd shoes and charisma
How when you are a 20 year old medical student with almost no clinical experience and no experience at all of death do you talk to a dying patient? What […]
Richard Smith: The day I kissed 500 women
On Christmas Day 1976 I kissed 500 women. All of them were over 70 and institutionalised, and one was either dead or killed by my kiss. I was a houseman, […]
Billy Boland on joining the NHS leadership academy
Back in June, I was putting the finishing touches to my application for the NHS Leadership Academy. A new and ambitious venture, it aims to bring leadership and management development […]
Desmond O’Neill: Four helicopters and a string quartet
Unlike last year, there was not a formal cultural event at this year’s European geriatric medicine congress. The organising committee may rightly have considered this superfluous with the glories of […]