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Opinion - Page 3

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The three-body problem

The physics of Cixin Liu’s alien world make it a hazardous place to live, and the consultation can sometimes also feel like a minefield of hidden agendas, competing interests, and impossible choices.
5 January 2026
5 mins read
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The absurdity of GP funding in Wales

"The premise of this formula (Carr-Hill) is very reasonable and fair. Sadly, it doesn’t always work, partly due to at least two anomalies in the formula. To understand this, we’ve had to employ a fair degree of nerdery as the formula is
28 July 2025
3 mins read
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Eating animals, by Jonathan Safran Foer

This life-changing book is not a polemic in the strident sense. It aims to answer the questions of where the meat that is consumed by humans comes from, how it is produced and what economic and environmental effects this has.
25 July 2025
2 mins read
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Your brain on ChatGPT – one for the journal club!

The researchers coined the term "cognitive debt" to describe how LLMs spare the user mental effort in the short term but generate long-term costs including diminished critical thinking, reduced creativity and independent thought, increased vulnerability to bias and manipulation, and shallow information
23 July 2025
3 mins read
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Samples (poem)

Our patients leave the room yet now some of them left behind. To be taken elsewhere, a fraction of body now extracted from mind.
22 July 2025
1 min read
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On not being paternalistic

...maybe thinking of ourselves as being maternalistic acknowledges existing authority, and allows us to aim for our patients to thrive, to be in control of their destinies, guided by caring, wise professionals.
21 July 2025
2 mins read
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A poem: Heart failure.

Using a narrative based approach can also enrich our own perspective and give us boldness to hold back from encasing patients in the tight algorithms that chronic disease management is often associated with. Becca Quinn offers a reframing poem.
16 July 2025
1 min read
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Is it time to retire the digital rectal exam?

"The British Association of Urological Surgeons (BAUS) has called for the exam to be omitted from primary care’s assessment of prostate cancer. Asking, ‘Is it time to retire the DRE?’ allows for reconsideration of patient assessment with a view to improving patient
30 June 2025
5 mins read
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I knew her smile…

A knock on the door. First patient of the day. “Hello… come in,” I say. I didn’t recognise the name, But I knew her smile. A poem by Rahhiel Riasat
26 June 2025
2 mins read
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Ethical Erosion

As a profession, our inability—or perhaps reluctance—to step back and reflect on practices that may need to change has no doubt contributed to our ethical erosion. But we are capable of change and reform both individually and collectively...
23 June 2025
5 mins read
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Madness of Sense and the Sense of Madness

A reflection on the madness of sense and the sense of madness. Anuj Sean Chathley captures the demoralising and costly effects of healthcare funding cuts in poetry. "...these changes do not save. They spend — time, money, morale, and sense."
18 June 2025
2 mins read
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Artificial Intelligence… or not?

You might be thinking, why is this important anyway? Who cares whether it is a human doctor or a computer algorithm that is writing the article? Well, I suppose that is one of the defining questions of our time currently in the
16 June 2025
2 mins read
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Delete after reading

All advice under Emergency Health Regulations is in line with current evidence and best practice and is therefore in your best interests. Acting against your own best interests is ... therefore prohibited. A Hoban dystopia.
6 June 2025
2 mins read
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The Clock Ticks Differently Now

We competed not for praise, but for endurance. For the longest call. The bloodiest shift. The boldest procedure. A hundred hours a week? A badge of honour. In those halls, medicine was not a career. It was a covenant. Poem by Anuj
5 June 2025
1 min read
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Stay in your lane?

If the goal of medicine is the promotion of health and treatment of disability, illness, and disease (let’s think of this as our lane?), then things are going to get complicated.
30 May 2025
4 mins read

The shame of patient complaints

For some reason, which of course you later regret, you check your work emails. There is an email ...with the subject title “Patient complaint.”
29 May 2025
4 mins read
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