Recently added articles from Clinical Medicine:
From the Editor
Feb 01, 2009; ... Teams without Walls Change has been such an integral part of the NHS for so long that identifying elements that have remained unaffected over time is rare. One such event might be the early separation of medical training for general practice and hospital medicine. This has led to two ...
Coordinating academic training for physicians
Feb 01, 2009; ... Preservation of the traditionally high level of academic achievement by UK consultant staff working within the NHS is in the public and national interest. A commitment to teaching and research (either directly, or through facilitation of both) is regarded by many as a duty for doctors, and the ...
Career opportunities in the smaller medical specialties
Feb 01, 2009; ... Choosing a specialty in which to build a career has always been difficult. In the past the ability to rotate through a variety of senior house officer posts permitted variable delay until an appropriate specialty was identified and successful application made. In medicine the achievement of ...
Have you taken all your tablets this week?
Feb 01, 2009; ... The prescription of medicines is central to medical care and drug costs amount to around 10% of NHS expenditure. Between 2006 and 2007, the NHS in England spent £10.6 billion on drugs, around three quarters of which was in primary care. Studies of different disease states have found that 30-50% ...
The biotic effects of climate change
Feb 01, 2009; ... ABSTRACT - Humans are part of the biosphere and dependent upon it. The impact of climate change on 'ecosystem services' is therefore of extreme concern. Many studies demonstrate unequivocally that global warming is shifting the distribution of animal and plant species, affecting the composition ...
Resuscitation decisions among hospital physicians and intensivists
Feb 01, 2009; ... ABSTRACT - The decision to perform cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) remains one of the most important and difficult decisions a physician must make. This study examined differences in CPR decision making among senior hospital clinicians. A questionnaire was sent out to consultants and ...
Is medical research within the UK in decline? A study of publication rates from the British Society of Gastroenterology from 1994 to 2002
Feb 01, 2009; ... ABSTRACT - A number of reports have suggested that academic medicine within the UK may be in decline. This article assesses the number and outcome of abstracts presented at consecutive British Society of Gastroenterology (BSG) meetings. All abstracts presented at the BSG between 1994 and 2002 ...
Services for liver disease in district general hospitals in the UK: a national questionnaire-based survey
Feb 01, 2009; ... ABSTRACT - The burden of liver disease in the UK is increasing and much of this is managed in district general hospitals (DGHs). Previous studies of liver services have focused on specialist units. This study assessed the provision of liver services in non-specialist units. A questionnaire-based ...
Evaluation of a modified early warning system for acute medical admissions and comparison with C-reactive protein/albumin ratio as a predictor of patient outcome
Feb 01, 2009; ... ABSTRACT - The modified early warning score (MEWS) was developed as a track and trigger tool for the prompt identification of seriously ill patients on an acute medical ward. This paper examines its value in the setting of an acute medical admissions unit (MAU) and compares it to biochemical ...
Chronic fatigue: is it endocrinology?
Feb 01, 2009; ... ABSTRACT - Fatigue and stress-related illnesses often become diagnoses of exclusion after extensive investigation. 'Tired all the time' is a frequent reason for referral to the endocrine clinic, the implicit question being - is there a subtle endocrine pathology contributing to the patient's ...
Is this the end of an era for conventional diagnostic endoscopy?
Feb 01, 2009; ... Introduction Since the inception of flexible fibre-optic instruments 50 years ago, endoscopy has become a mainstay of gastrointestinal (GI) investigation and method of delivering therapeutic intervention.1 It remains, however, an intrusive and uncomfortable test. It is difficult to ...
Career choices made for the hospital medical specialties by graduates from UK medical schools, 1974-2005
Feb 01, 2009; ... ABSTRACT - This article summarises findings from studies of career choices made for the hospital medical specialties by medical graduates one, three and five years after qualifying from UK medical schools in selected years from 1974 to 2005. The percentage of doctors who, early in their careers, ...
The development of core learning outcomes relevant to clinical practice: identifying priority areas for genetics education for non-genetics specialist registrars
Feb 01, 2009; ... ABSTRACT - Advances in medical genetics are increasingly impacting on clinical practice outside specialist genetic services. It is widely acknowledged that physicians will need to use genetics knowledge and skills in order to incorporate these advances into patient care. In order to determine ...
'In need of further tuning': using a US patient satisfaction with chaplaincy instrument in a UK multi-faith setting, including the bereaved
Feb 01, 2009; ... ABSTRACT - Healthcare chaplaincy research seems further advanced in the USA. Here a US patient satisfaction with chaplaincy instrument (PSI-C-R) was used in a London NHS foundation hospital with a multi-faith chaplaincy team and population. A version of the instrument was also generated for the ...
Public health changes over my career
Feb 01, 2009; ... In 1968 the world changed: students occupied Paris, Prague, and my university; I had my appendix removed; and Martin Luther King Jr and Robert Kennedy were killed. By the end of the year the tanks were in Prague and Nixon was elected president. My appendicitis meant that I was convalescing when ...
Public health issues with counterfeit medicines
Feb 01, 2009; ... Clinicians who prescribe medicines in the UK at primary care and at hospital level are facing the possibly disastrous consequences of a global crime wave - the supply and distribution of counterfeit medicines and healthcare products. Indeed such counterfeiting could result in a threat to public ...
Most significant developments as a journal editor
Feb 01, 2009; ... I cannot profess to having had a lifetime ambition to edit a health journal but some of life's most pleasant experiences come on you unexpectedly. I have, however, always enjoyed writing and publishing the findings of my own research as well as various texts in support of the new public health ...
A career in public health: an Eastern European perspective
Feb 01, 2009; ... As I read Rod Griffiths' fascinating account of a career in public health, I was immediately struck by the parallels with my own. Like him, I had been pursuing a clinical career before moving to public health. In my case the conversion came when, in my outpatient clinic in Belfast in the 1980s, ...
Testing challenges: evaluation of novel diagnostics and molecular biomarkers
Feb 01, 2009; ... ABSTRACT - Through the lens of public health genomics, this article probes certain issues that concern the evaluation of diagnostic tests and molecular biomarkers, and the accompanying policy and regulatory implications. It begins with some conceptual remarks followed by a discussion of ...
Teams without Walls: enabling partnerships between generalists and specialists
Feb 01, 2009; ... This one-day conference for senior clinicians and NHS managers was a partnership between the King's Fund, Royal College of Physicians (RCP) and Royal College of General Practitioners (RCGP). It explored clinical partnerships and integrated care by examining how to develop constructive and ...