Last year was the 30th anniversary of Britain’s most infamous pollution event when 20 tonnes of aluminium sulphate were inadvertently added to the potable water supplying the town of Camelford, Cornwall. Over 20,000 people were exposed to highly toxic concentrations of aluminium in drinking water over an extended time. A number of inadequate investigations into […]
Read More… from Camelford: Britain’s Forgotten Aluminium Scandal
Britain has a higher rate of stillbirth and neonatal death than many other countries in Europe – in 2016 one in every 139 births ended in stillbirth or neonatal death. The grief and devastation that bereaved parents feel is often compounded by the fact that they never realised a baby could die in modern-day Britain. […]
This week, Irish author Mark O’Connell won the prestigious £30,000 Wellcome Book Prize 2018 for his critically acclaimed debut To Be a Machine. Edmund De Waal, Chair of Judges, 2018 Wellcome Book Prize, said his book was ‘a passionate, entertaining and cogent examination of those who would choose to live forever.” To Be a Machine: […]
I’m happy to be open about the fact that I have incurable lung cancer and I’m also the medical director of Public Health England. I can’t entirely separate the two but this blog is more about my personal take on living and dying and I’m not speaking on behalf of PHE. I’m 54 years old […]
In nursing there are many ways of saying goodbye when the therapeutic relationship ends. Some patients bid a cheery goodbye, cherishing their restored health, even prematurely self-discharging; for others, adieu is agony since it is a wrench to leave the ward routine and regain independence. Sometimes the farewell feels forced in the face of escalating […]
That cricketing and clinical concepts collide has become apparent to me as a nurse spectator enjoying numerous cricket matches. I’ve noticed many cricketing terms and ideas that wouldn’t be out of place in a ward environment when discussing diagnosis, disease and death. As I look at Father Time removing the bails from the wicket above […]
With the constant threat of terrorism, people may feel fearful about death when going about their business. Sudden death of a loved one is the worst sort of trauma for survivors to manage, and is the most common reason why people seek psychotherapy. So how can we deal with our current fears of terrorism and […]
In an age where medicine can do more than ever before to delay dying, is death sometimes now seen as failure in the medical profession? Failure to diagnose soon enough, failure to prescribe the correct treatment, failure to discover a radical new therapy? Or is death seen by some as a treatment choice? An ‘opt-out’ […]