“Mouths full of gold.” Private practice in Britain’s National Health System
By SAURABH JHA, MD
When Aneurin Bevan was asked how he convinced doctors to come on board the National Health Service (NHS) he allegedly replied, “I stuffed their mouths full of gold.” Bevan recognized that to conscript doctors to the largest socialist experiment in healthcare in the world he had to appeal not so much to their morals, but pockets.
There is much piety about the NHS. It is the envy of the world, though oddly Saudi oil barons still favor Cleveland Clinic and Texas Heart Institute over quaint little hospitals in rural Scotland. The NHS featured in Britain’s 2012 Olympic parade along with Mr. Bean and the...
Source: The Health Care Blog - October 29, 2017 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: at RogueRad Tags: Uncategorized Source Type: blogs
Good enough? : breast cancer in the UK
Breast Cancer Now -According to this report, progress on breast cancer in the UK is “stalling” as a lack of leadership continues to prevent research breakthroughs from reaching patients and sees the NHS miss clear opportunities to save lives. It assesses the most up-to-date UK data to investigate the current state of play for the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of the disea se on the NHS in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.ReportBreast Cancer Now - news (Source: Health Management Specialist Library)
Source: Health Management Specialist Library - October 5, 2017 Category: UK Health Authors: The King ' s Fund Information & Knowledge Service Tags: Local authorities, public health and health inequalities NHS finances and productivity NHS measurement and performance Source Type: blogs
Biomolecule Imaging Pioneers Share Nobel Prize
Today, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has decided to award the Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2017 to Jacques Dubochet(University of Lausanne, Switzerland) andJoachim Frank (Columbia University, New York, USA), andRichard Henderson (MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Cambridge, UK). The award is given "for developingcryo-electron microscopy for the high-resolution structure determination of biomolecules in solution"Cool microscope technology revolutionises biochemistryWe may soon have detailed images of life ’s complex machineries in atomic resolution. The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2017 is awarded to Jacques Dubochet, ...
Source: The A and P Professor - October 4, 2017 Category: Physiology Authors: Kevin Patton Source Type: blogs
Nobel Prize for Biological Clock Mechanisms
The Nobel Assembly at Karolinska Institutet has today decided to award the 2017 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine jointly toJeffrey C. Hall,Michael Rosbash, and Michael W. Young for their discoveries ofmolecular mechanisms controlling the circadian rhythm.SummaryLife on Earth is adapted to the rotation of our planet. For many years we have known that living organisms, including humans, have an internal, biological clock that helps them anticipate and adapt to the regular rhythm of the day. But how does this clock actually work? Jeffrey C. Hall, Michael Rosbash and Michael W. Young were able to peek inside our biologica...
Source: The A and P Professor - October 2, 2017 Category: Physiology Authors: Kevin Patton Source Type: blogs
Funtabulously Frivolous Friday Five 207
LITFL • Life in the Fast Lane Medical Blog
LITFL • Life in the Fast Lane Medical Blog - Emergency medicine and critical care medical education blog
Just when you thought your brain could unwind on a Friday, you realise that it would rather be challenged with some good old fashioned medical trivia FFFF…introducing Funtabulously Frivolous Friday Five 207.
Question 1
Which animal has saved the most human lives?
+ Reveal the Funtabulous Answer
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Horseshoe Crab
If you’ve ever had an injection you probably owe ...
Source: Life in the Fast Lane - September 29, 2017 Category: Emergency Medicine Authors: Neil Long Tags: Frivolous Friday Five Anatomy Boerhaave Burke and Hare horseshoe crab LAL limulus amebocyte lysate murder ophthalmophantome plane crash Source Type: blogs
Dubrovnik, Kor čula, Pucišca, Omiš, Bol, Brač, Hvar, Mljet
Mr and Mrs Sciencebase have been celebrating their Silver Wedding Anniversary in Croatia, hence the recent radio silence, we were also laid low on our return by an incubating aviation-acquired viral infection. Anyway, a quick snap of one of the beautiful cities we visited along Croatia’s Dalmatian coast, Pucišca on the island of Brač with its locally excavated limestone buildings and many “snowy” (as well as the more familiar Croatian terracotta) rooves.
Early morning, I hopped off our little, 16-berth boat to get some golden hour shots of the town (day before it had poured with rain), and almost didn...
Source: David Bradley Sciencebase - Songs, Snaps, Science - September 22, 2017 Category: Science Authors: David Bradley Tags: Science Source Type: blogs
Quantifying the Benefits of Statins over the Long Term
Statins work to reduce cardiovascular disease risk by reducing blood lipid levels. In the research here, the authors quantify the benefits that have been obtained through the use of this class of drug over the past few decades. This class of drug is broadly considered to be one of the more important contributions to the reduced rate of cardiovascular mortality over that span of time. The data here suggests that statins should be even more widely used than they are at present: there are incrementally greater gains that might be obtained.
The mechanism of cardiovascular damage influenced by statins is one in which lip...
Source: Fight Aging! - September 7, 2017 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Daily News Source Type: blogs
Camera Sees Endoscope Tip Through Body by Eliminating Scattered Light
Safely tracking the location of the tip of an endoscope while it’s inside the body has posed a serious challenge for biomedical engineers. The benefit of tracking can help to guide an endoscope to its target quickly and accurately. X-rays can be used, but unnecessary radiation is not advised.
Now researchers from University of Edinburgh and Heriot-Watt University in Scotland have devised a method of seeing the endoscope tip through the body by detecting the light emitted at its tip. The technology relies on a camera able to detect individual photons and to elucidate how long they took to travel from the light source....
Source: Medgadget - September 6, 2017 Category: Medical Devices Authors: Editors Tags: News Source Type: blogs
Information technology-naive defense lawyers vs. " strident critic of electronic health records "
A tale from the trenches.In recent years, as a result of the 2010 IT-related injury and 2011 death of my mother, I have engaged myself as an independent EHR forensic expert regarding evidentiary and patient harm issues in medical malpractice litigation. Interestingly and disappointingly, I still often find that hospital attitudes towards health IT safety and information transparency have changed little since 2010 or, for that matter, the 1990s when I did my postdoc in medical informatics. Hospitals and defense attorneys often (ab)use the lack of technology experience of judges to delay or prevent evidentiary tra...
Source: Health Care Renewal - September 1, 2017 Category: Health Management Tags: bad health IT Heathkit H8 Jay Hancock Kaiser Health News medical malpractice PICIS Pulsecheck Source Type: blogs
Study the Ideas and History of Liberalism with the Encyclopedia of Libertarianism
In these days when liberalism is again under attackfrom some of its old enemies in new guises, one way to counter authoritarian threats is to educate ourselves on the fundamental ideas of liberalism. The Encyclopedia of Libertarianism, now available online, offers a wealth of information on the ideas, people, and history of liberalism and libertarianism. Historian David M. Hart, director of the Online Library of Liberty,says that the Encyclopedia “provides an excellent survey of the key movements, individuals, and events in the evolution of the classical liberal movement.” And on his own website he outlinesa course of ...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - August 29, 2017 Category: American Health Authors: David Boaz Source Type: blogs
Learn the History of Liberty with the Encyclopedia of Libertarianism
The Encyclopedia of Libertarianism, published in 2008 in hard copy, is nowavailable free online at Libertarianism.org. TheEncyclopedia includes more than 300 succinct, original articles on libertarian ideas, institutions, and thinkers. Contributors include James Buchanan, Richard Epstein, Tyler Cowen, Randy Barnett, Ellen Frankel Paul, Deirdre McCloskey, and more than 100 other scholars.A couple of years ago, in an interesting discussion of social change and especially the best ways to spread classical liberal ideas at Liberty Fund’s Online Library of Liberty, historian David M. Hart had high praise for theEncyclop...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - August 17, 2017 Category: American Health Authors: David Boaz Source Type: blogs
Doctors Should Play Board Games to Get Better At Teamwork
The objective of the game is to remove jargon from explaining conditions, diseases, treatments. For example, you pick a card for example with the word migraine on it, while on the back of the card you also get 5 words to avoid. A brilliant way to force out jargon from the language of medicine!
4) Healing Blade: the (board) Game of Thrones for learning antibiotics
As a medical student, you have to memorize plenty of information, which takes a lot of time and energy. And most of the times, there is no rational or logical explanation behind the labels, titles or a huge bulk of the material in general. Nerdcore Medical’s b...
Source: The Medical Futurist - August 15, 2017 Category: Information Technology Authors: nora Tags: Healthcare Design Medical Education board games future gamification gc4 Health 2.0 Hospital Innovation Medicine Source Type: blogs
A Monetary Policy Primer, Part 11: Last-Resort Lending
So far, throughout this primer, I ’ve claimed that central banks have one overarching task to perform: their job, I said, is to “regulate the overall availability of liquid assets, and through it the general course of spending, prices, and employment, in the economies they oversee.” I’ve also shown how, prior to the recent crisis, the Fed pursued this task, sometimes competently, and sometimes ineptly, by means of “open-market operations,” meaning routine purchases (and occasional sales) of short-term Treasury securities.But this picture isn ’t complete, because it says nothing about central banks’ role a...
Source: Cato-at-liberty - August 8, 2017 Category: American Health Authors: George Selgin Source Type: blogs
The hemp-eating linen weaver – Linaria cannabina
Don’t often see avian couples together…or more to the point, I don’t often catch them “on film” together. Here are Mr and Mrs Linnet (Linaria cannabina) at their residence in Rampton Pocket Park a few miles north of Cambridge. The bird’s English name comes from the species’ fondness for flax seed from which we make linen, the second part of its scientific name from its liking for hemp seed (Cannabis sativa). The bird is found across Europe into western and central Siberia and is non-breeding in north Africa and southwest Asia.
As you can hopefully see from my, not particularly shar...
Source: David Bradley Sciencebase - Songs, Snaps, Science - August 4, 2017 Category: Science Authors: David Bradley Tags: Science Source Type: blogs
What ’s It Like to Have a Radiologist at the Zoo?
Animals at the Brookfield Zoo can now get medical imaging evaluations thanks to Marina Ivan čić, MD, the Chicago Zoological Society’s full-time, board-certified veterinary radiologist. Like human radiologists, Ivan čić starts her day by doing rounds with the rest of the veterinary practitioners, and then focuses on examining images and writing diagnoses. The Brookfield Zoo is one of three zoos in the country that operates its own CT scanner. They also have fluoroscopy and ultrasonography equipment and a set protocol for bringing animals to other facilities for MRIs. Ivan čić ' s passion for veterinary radiology ...
Source: radRounds - July 29, 2017 Category: Radiology Authors: Julie Morse Source Type: blogs
