In these troubled times, we all like to hear good news and health care is one area that seems to abound with uplifting language. Daily posts about “cures” and “new treatments” raise our spirits and are antidotes to the bleak predictions about shrinking health services and budgets. Even “groundbreaking”, which usually refers to some treatment […]
Health & Medicine
A neoteric’s view
Page 8 of 11
Healthy eating can keep us healthy but what is the health of the foods we eat? Unfortunately, we know very little about the quality of what we ingest. Many of the foods we believe are healthy are not what they say they are. Food fraud, where high value products are replaced by those of lower […]
Proportionate to the numbers, few women manage break to through the glass ceiling in health care and end up having to both lead and manage from below. In the US, whilst almost half of medical school graduates are women, less one in five of these women have positions as full professors and permanent department chairs. […]
Hospitals are full of sick people and not all of them are patients. More and more staff in our hospitals are turning up for work that they are unable to do. They are present, but not working at their best, either due to health problems or other events that are distracting them or both. It […]
One in three adults use daily medicines that don’t require prescriptions. Most of these over the counter (OTC) medications are our first treatment for common problems such as pains, aches, sprains, colds and rashes. Non-prescribed use of pain killers comes in fourth in the list of most frequently used drugs: behind alcohol, tobacco and cannabis, […]
The consequences of the challenge to the Affordable Care Act will extend beyond the US. Whilst woefully inadequate, the Act at least tried to address some of the inequities in health care in the US. On the side lines, countries such as the UK which have national health schemes, have remained silent and self-righteous, resting […]
Originally posted on Michael Kidd:
“Nobody knew that healthcare could be so complicated.” So said President Donald Trump on February 27, 2017, in an address to the National Governors Association meeting at the White House in Washington DC. The next day, President Trump tweeted, “I am calling on Congress to REPEAL & REPLACE OBAMACARE with…
Most of the biologic waste generated in our homes has the potential to be toxic. The cooked food scraps, fruit and vegetable peels may be organic but that doesn’t mean they are free from harbouring dangerous bacteria. Clostridium perfringes, enterococci and fecal coliforms, Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Staphylococcus aureus are all strains of bacteria which have […]
Health care can‘t keep surviving on unlimited credit cards, even though the role of health funders, both public and private, has shifted from providers to financiers. There needs to be an alternative method for funding our health microenvironment and microservices. The only way for funders to balance their books these days is to restrict services […]
Patients know how to take holidays from their illnesses. In one study of patients on blood pressure medications, half of them stopped treatment within a year of starting and the other half had at least one drug holiday every year. Drug holidays can also extend life It seems you can miss a few doses and […]
For the fitness industry, January is an important month. Our over indulgence in food and drink combined with a decrease in physical activity provides a fertile ground for gym marketeers. The recommended space behind treadmills is 11 times the length of a credit card. Commercial fitness centers can be dangerous places. Currently, there are no […]
Once you tip the overweight scales you are unlikely to ever get off again. Chronic weight losers are the big time losers. They end up stuck in the middle of cycles of weight gain and loss. Part of the problem has been the focus on energy input and output through dieting and physical activity. A […]
Support medicine based on individuals; not paper. Encourage responsive practice; based on divergent thinking with the ability to converge when necessary. Commit to genuine funding for health, that is, ten percent GDP for ten years from government and private sector. Ensure that hospitals remain places for treating sick people, not making those who treat them […]
Examining bodies is a basic skill for doctors. It is still the first stage in a diagnostic pathway. Nearly every photo we see of doctors has that platinum necklace of physical examination, the stethoscope, swinging from one neck or another. Whilst effective physical diagnosis is universally recognized as essential for good medical practice, there is […]
Health care has a love affair with teams. Everybody wants to be a good team player. Not me. I’m still struggling with the distinction between groups and teams in health care. And I think I want to be a groupie. A lot of health care requires divergent thinking with the ability to converge when we […]
I’ve just participated in a public debate: “This house believes that Brexit will not affect health innovation”. I was on the opposing site. Have you ever been in a debate where if you win you lose? That’s where I found myself. Because if we won, the future is bleak. And if we lost, the future […]
Big health data should be on sale in supermarkets. It offers great promise to inform our future health. To be able to assess the benefits of different treatments for each of us as individuals – both in the short and long term would be good shopping – if only we could access and read the […]
Medicine is a multinational industry no longer defined by country boundaries. Its main product is a workforce. Like the other major product, pharmaceuticals, clinicians are highly regulated and competitively priced. Unlike pharma however, the “product” has not evolved nor are there a succession of new and better models on the market. Postgraduate medical training is […]
As medicine becomes more complex and the dictionaries of disease become libraries, it’s time for us to change our clinical language. We have a duty to explain the complexities of our treatments to payers, patients and communities in the simplest, most understandable and up-to-date way possible. Some diseases have the audacity to remit and then […]
Wherever I go my body always comes with me and as a doctor I am fortunate to know a little about what goes on. Anatomy showed me what I might look like inside. Microscopy led me further inside and let me understand the pathology. I learned about diseases. Unfortunately, the disease-friendly approach is now letting […]
The Thinker 