Patients are increasingly using the Internet to rate their physicians. What do we know about current online rating systems? ... Read More »

Will reductions in primary care budgets make general practice an unattractive career choice for doctors? ... Read More »

Interns are just a level above medical students in the hospital food chain. The youngest most inexperienced doctor in the team. That poor soul and receiver of abuse from consultants, residents, nurses and patients. The go to person to fetch your coffee, retrieve that odd piece of paper from a random office in a random corner of the hospital, take all your referrals, get your laundry, have a sandwich surrendered from or park your car in the hospital’s abysmal “parking” lot. Interns have no life and are required to have no voices and this was, quite incredulously, what I was told to expect by senior hamsters when I became one. ... Read More »

In the US, where medical students choose their specialty and are "matched" to a particular residency program, we have far fewer students entering family medicine/primary care than we need. There are many reasons for this, but believing that this is a "simple" specialty for which smart students can be "too strong", should not be one of them. ... Read More »

Over the course of 2013-14, a new national vaccination programme for Rotavirus will be introduced for babies ... Read More »

Sickle cell disease (SCD) is the most common inherited blood disorder in England. SCD clinical guidelines recommend that patients see a general practitioner (GP) for routine examination every six months and more often if new problems arise or their treatment protocol changes.  ... Read More »

The practice of medicine is a time honored craft which takes years of honing. It can be a noble and honorable vocation. A doctor is a healer or shaman. There are religious connotations in this statement. The cliche is that we are like a priesthood! Some of you will be nodding your heads in agreement, some may have ... Read More »

Yup, I’ve finally climbed atop the massive ‘Q’. ‘Q’ for qualified and I’ve uncovered yet another of life’s great mysteries: it feels so awesome to be out that you wonder whether you truly were that miserable in the first place! ... Read More »

So I am more than halfway through the most incredibly muted yet cataclysmically brilliant rat race ever….a passage that is making light of my medschool world, which, in retrospect, was more of an allegorical lipoma than an evil melanoma. The writer in me has been vengefully cataloguing these ephemeral internship ... Read More »

Over years of rotating hospitals and departments, junior doctors, and indeed more senior ones too develop the useful skill of being able to within the course of a few days or sometimes less adapt to functioning in their new role. The keys example is the cardiac arrest team. The course format teaches us that we all have a ... Read More »