In the latest Tom Hanks movie, Pilot Sully was a hero as he landed the aircraft on the Hudson River, saving all on board. Crash investigators, however, questioned whether he had made an error of judgement, and whether he could in fact have landed safely at a nearby airport. As nurses, we often have to […]
Whatever hours you keep, and how many times you cross time zones, you can’t change your physiology. You are always going to be a 24-hour person, running on a precisely calibrated body clock which dictates when you feel sleepy, aroused, hungry, cooler and warmer. Although the sleep-wake cycle is the most obvious circadian rhythm, endocrine […]
The Youth Health Parliament is a group of young professionals who have been selected to debate and formulate new ideas within 5 health related categories. The mental health subgroup is known as the Mental Wealth Initiative. We are a group of 7 individuals from a variety of professional backgrounds who first met in March 2016. […]
The little things make a big difference. Your hammer and anvil are as valuable as your hand and your arm, your pineal gland as essential as your patella. To quote St Paul, “If the whole body were an eye, where would the sense of hearing be? If the whole body were an ear, where would […]
Adrift and deserted, the disappearance of the crew from the Mary Celeste remains a mystery. Walking onto a hospital ward today, you might also notice a distinct lack of trained staff, especially nurses. Buzzers unanswered, monitors beeping, patients calling out in pain; I have observed doctors being asked for blankets and bedpans. The Institute for […]
A medical education in the UK is a very specific affair. There are some facts that of course are global, fundamentals of anatomy for example, that are the same from Karachi to California. Some things you need to learn to be a doctor anywhere in the world. But here there is one element that is […]
As someone who has watched a close relative go through the experience of receiving chemotherapy, it is not something that I would ever wish upon any human being. The hypothesis for chemotherapy is simple. Cancer cells grow faster than normal somatic cells and thus if we inject poison into the body that damages cells, the […]
The wasteland created by the political class post-Brexit is the ultimate expression of a deluded mantra which has gradually been eroding the NHS and now the country. Time and time again over the last 10 years, I have been confronted with NHS managers, medical leaders and policy makers who cite the holy cause of ‘destructive innovation’ as the means to […]
Imagine a room full of passionate, talented young professionals with a desire to help build a fair, sustainable and highly innovative NHS in the UK. This is what the Youth Health Parliament was designed to achieve. Doctors and nurses, industry professionals, entrepreneurs, medical students and academics all responded to a call for 50 young people, […]
A Father’s Day curry at home in muggy Derbyshire afforded me yet again the opportunity to attempt to field answers to a medic’s least favourite question of all: have you thought about a speciality, yet? As always, I churned out the same old answer about it being early days, that I am interested in many […]