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Opinion - Page 11

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The Kobayashi Maru test

A number of storylines within the Star Trek franchise refer to a combat simulation in which a stranded starship, the Kobayashi Maru, must be rescued, but in which any attempt to do so inevitably results in failure. Ben Hoban can relate...
15 September 2023
3 mins read
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Martha’s rule

Merope Mills’ description of the death of Martha, her 13 year old daughter, is a raw and harrowing account of the mistakes doctors made that led to Martha’s deterioration and ultimately her death. Nada Khan evaluates the concept of a Martha’s rule,
14 September 2023
4 mins read
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Expediency

So the NHS is in crisis. Again. Saul Miller argues that there is a thread that runs through all of these. It is the thread that is labelled expediency or short-termism.
11 September 2023
3 mins read
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What is the right response to COVID?

Some of us will welcome this opportunity to shine a light onto the events that took place in the early stages of the pandemic.  But what is the right way to look at our response to COVID, and what’s happening in other
30 August 2023
6 mins read

How to make a decision

It seems unlikely that these things can be reduced to a few simple bullet points, and yet, it’s hard to resist the allure of the headlines, with their subtext that the universe obeys a hidden code, and that if we only pay
27 August 2023
3 mins read
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‘We want them infected’ by Jonathan Howard

But being on one pole of a restrictions-versus-protections continuum is a long way from swallowing undiluted anti-vax Kool-Aid, isn’t it? ... Surely, being lukewarm on masking doesn’t mean you’re going to deny the evidence on vaccines?
23 August 2023
5 mins read
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Rewiggling General Practice

Tim Sanders views the “rewiggling” of the Swindale Beck in the Lake District as a metaphor for a need to nurture and cherish core aspects of generalism, continuity and relationship-based care within the role of the GP
18 August 2023
2 mins read
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Facing both ways

General Practice, then, shares the values of both the dinner date and the mobile phone, and this is reflected in the way patients consult differently depending on context, preferring ease of access for simple acute problems and continuity of care for complex
16 August 2023
3 mins read
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The white screen of death is back again?

Nigel Masters has a déjà vu experience as he looked onto the ‘White screen’ of a newly registered patient and finds empty allergy fields, problem lists, consultations and immunisation screens.
14 August 2023
1 min read

Codes

Clinical codes are of course created by the machines’ human lackeys, but sometimes betray a way of thinking that is hard to relate to.  Ben Hoban muses on how we record clinical consultation data.
2 August 2023
3 mins read

So what is a pathway anyway?

The term 'pathway' is commonly used within the NHS to describe the sequence of steps and services involved in a patient's care. While ‘pathway’ may be familiar and well-understood among healthcare professionals, this is far from the case with the public.
31 July 2023
3 mins read

The Aboriginal definition of health

The service I work in was set up by the local Aboriginal community, because they were being poorly served by the health services that existed at the time. Part of this was that the options offered seemed to operate on a narrow,
21 July 2023
2 mins read
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Shall we all move to Denmark?

In a podcast recorded by the Medical Republic, Jens Sondergaard outlined six main reasons it’s great to work in Danish general practice. Nada Khan weighs up the evidence for moving to Denmark.
17 July 2023
5 mins read
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Caring for carers

'Caring for carers is everyone’s business, though general practitioners (and we use our words wisely) are perhaps best placed to identify and support carers -more so than other health professionals.' argue Helen Walker and Clare Gerada
14 July 2023
4 mins read
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Seeing the tiger

If we want to avoid missing significant diagnoses, and tigers, we cannot examine every symptom or blade of grass exhaustively, but we can cultivate an openness to the sort of cognitive dissonance that points to unrecognised danger. Ben Hoban explains
13 July 2023
3 mins read

Mould and its human toll

In both primary and secondary care, we see firsthand the concerning, growing impact of mould on the health and wellbeing of our patients. These cases are a stark reminder of how significantly more needs to be done to combat the devastating impact
6 July 2023
3 mins read
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