As a GP who uses homeopathy in clinical practice I’m often asked when and for what do I prescribe homeopathic treatment? Homeopathy can be helpful for pretty much any condition, whether as the main treatment, as a complement to a conventional treatment to speed up the healing process, or to lessen the side-effects of a […]
New research led by George Lewith, Professor of Health Research at the University of Southampton suggests doctors’ burnout should be treated as organisation-wide problem There can be little doubt that winter pressures are beginning to mount up in hospitals and GP’s practices around the country testing the strength of even the most resilient medical staff. […]
Empathy in clinical practice is an essential component of the doctor-patient relationship. This is the understanding of how another human being is feeling without going through the emotional rollercoaster yourself. Unfortunately, however, it is often lacking. Indeed, studies of medical undergraduate education reveal some evidence that there is a decline in empathy as students move […]
The challenge of making data and personal medical information available to individual patients and clinicians in a secure timely way is one that has been around for a long time. Failure to respond to this means that GPs are always asking, ‘what have you done to my patients?’, long after people have been discharged from […]
Lung cancer has very few symptoms at early stage and many people dismiss it as a possibility. We know that 37 per cent of lung cancer patients are only diagnosed when they make an emergency trip to A&E which is far too late. Only around 30 per cent of people with lung cancer survive one […]
Around three million people in the UK are affected by malnutrition and one in three adults who are admitted to hospital are malnourished. Health professionals are in a privileged position to tackle malnutrition because they are more likely to recognise the signs of malnutrition and muscle loss. In my opinion, the first line of defence […]
Despite having observed at first hand the effects of patient complaint procedures against doctors for several years now, I have been surprised by the extent of doctors’ unhappiness and despair at what they see as a vindictive and unfair process. The number of patient complaints against doctors has risen significantly in recent years – with […]
Pancreatic cancer is one of the most deadly forms of cancer and a diagnosis of this disease usually means a short life expectancy of a few months. The 5-year survival rate even for people with operable disease, treated with surgery and chemotherapy is only 20 per cent and only one percent of those diagnosed at late stage 4 […]
Asthma patients from surgeries who have good access to primary care, such as in their GP surgery, are less likely to be admitted to hospital because of their condition. This is the conclusion of our study at the University of East Anglia which looked at access scores for GP surgeries and compared them to the […]
‘I retired from medicine at the age of 73. I would have liked to work for longer as a locum but it really became quite untenable. Not because I wasn’t willing and able, but the system has changed so much it contrives against older GPs staying on to work. There are now really disincentives to […]