Health news

• As a GP, having my heart surgery cancelled gave me a new perspective on NHS underfunding

  14-01-2018 22:34
  Dave Triff, who has worked in the NHS for decades, recently had his operation postponed at the last minute, one of many cancelled to stave off a winter crisisI am a GP partner in Oxford. I have worked in the NHS in Oxford for 20 years, barring two years in a post in rural Canada. In July 2017, we returned to the UK and a friend of mine, who’s a cardiothoracic anaesthetist, commented on my bounding neck pulses as we were chatting over a beer. A little later that day, I had a listen to my he
  
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• Medical students urged to volunteer as NHS winter crisis worsens

  14-01-2018 22:30
  Exclusive: Emails seen by the Guardian reveal inexperienced undergraduates are being asked to help in A&E units and wardsMedical students are being urged to help relieve the NHS winter crisis because hospitals are so short-staffed they are struggling to cope with the surge in patients, the Guardian can reveal. Despite their lack of experience, undergraduates are being asked to volunteer in A&E units and on wards reeling under the weight of extra demand caused by the cold weather, an outb
  
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• Parents lose third teenage child to rare heart condition

  14-01-2018 19:53 via dailymail.co.uk
  
  Carrick Prentice-Underwood, 19, died in Thursday morning, four years after the Worcestershire family lost his brother Craig, 17, and seven years after the death of Charlotte, 16.
  
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• 'Black Death' virus causes panic in Uganda as girl dies

  14-01-2018 19:29 via dailymail.co.uk
  
  A nine-year-old girl died in central Uganda with the symptoms of an eye-bleeding disease which it is thought could kill up to 40 per cent of those infected by it.
  
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• Surgeon who signed livers is punished but managers let off | Letters

  14-01-2018 18:46
  John Carlisle compares Simon Bramhall’s act to a footballer taking off his shirt after scoring a goal, and Dr RC Horton says an individual surgeon has been punished whereas an institution would have got off scot-freeI am an altruistic kidney donor and am appalled at the treatment of Simon Bramhall, the surgeon who initialled two livers in transplant operations (Surgeon fined £10,000 for signing his initials on livers of two transplant patients, 12 January).I am particularly ince
  
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• Why does America still have so few female doctors? | Elisabeth Poorman

  14-01-2018 15:43
  As a culture and a profession, medicine continues to systematically disadvantage women physicians at every stage of their careersWhen my friend was in her fourth year of medical school, she and her boyfriend sat down with their dean to discuss their residency applications. They were entering a “couples’ match” where partners rank programs together in order to end up in the same city.The match is a nerve-racking and opaque process. Both have since gone on to have successful acad
  
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• New IVF technique is 'most exciting advance in 40 years'

  14-01-2018 13:39 via dailymail.co.uk
  
  A new IVF method that takes thousands of pictures of embryos to select the best eggs has increased the likelihood of a baby being born by 25 per cent.
  
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• Doctors and nurses: ‘When May and Hunt tell the public the NHS is not in crisis, that is a lie’

  14-01-2018 10:00
  Ambulances queuing up outside A&E, operations cancelled for lack of beds… Could this winter prove the last straw for our struggling National Health Service? Those on the frontline speak out…An 81-year-old woman with chest pains dies while waiting three hours and 45 minutes for an ambulance. Patients are photographed lying on the floor of an A&E unit that has run out of beds, trolleys and chairs. Memos from inside another hospital reveal that its doctors “have been on
  
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• How rhythms become a vital part of us | A neuroscientist explains

  14-01-2018 07:00
  Whether it’s the physiological monthly cycle of a woman or a plant’s seasonal cycle, the external world influences biologyThis column has run weekly for more than two years but, from a biological perspective, that is a bizarre rhythm. Cells and systems in the brain and body have built-in mechanisms to enforce a 24-hour sleep-wake cycle. And light-sensitive cells in the eye and elsewhere keep that synched to the earth’s rotation.Animals and plants regulate their activities on an
  
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• DR ELLIE: Beware of Kim Kardashian's low-calorie shakes

  14-01-2018 01:09 via dailymail.co.uk
  
  Kim Kardashian hit headlines again last week after her shoe-less selfie as part of a promotion for meal-replacement ‘shakes’ landed her in hot water, writes Dr Ellie.
  
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• Surgeons don’t have to sign their names… in us | Barbara Ellen

  14-01-2018 01:05
  Simon Bramhall did his profession’s reputation for arrogance no goodSurgeon Simon Bramhall, who burned his initials on to the livers of two transplant patients while working at the Queen Elizabeth hospital, in Birmingham, has been fined £10,000 and given a 12-month community order.Bramhall (now working for the NHS in Herefordshire) was fortunate not to have been struck off. It’s disturbing enough to think of your body being opened up for surgery, but to have somebody leave thei
  
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• Sexual health services must be protected to prevent a crisis | The big issue

  14-01-2018 01:05
  A petition is the first step in the battle to stop the loss of ringfencing of fundsWe were pleased that Nick Cohen highlighted the impact of the systematic reduction in public health funding on vital prevention and clinical services (“You don’t have to be poor to be an addict. But it helps”, Comment). Like the drug and alcohol services he referred to, there is a growing deficit between need and the availability of sexual health services. In London, a number of sexual health cli
  
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