Medical Practice
Late diagnosis by GPs link to lung cancer mortality — UK report
February 5th, 2020 More than half of lung cancer patients in some parts of the UK are only diagnosed when they visit A&E, often because their GPs have missed signs of the disease, often despite repeated visits. The Guardian reports that this is according to a...
Close to a third of UK doctors may suffer from burnout
January 29th, 2020 Almost a third of UK doctors may be suffering from burnout, stress and “compassion fatigue”. The Guardian reports that according to a survey by researchers at Queen's University Belfast Centre for Public Health, that has raised concern about...
'How long have I got, doc?’ — online tool tackles the hardest question
January 22nd, 2020 Talking about cancer is hard. Talking about the chances of surviving cancer is even harder. Now, Stat News reports, one of the entrepreneurs behind the drug-pricing information site GoodRx wants to make conversations about cancer easier with a...
Female GPs in UK earn 35% less than male colleagues
January 15th, 2020 Female GPs in the UK earn an average of £40 000 ($52 000) a year less than their male colleagues, an analysis of official National Health Service (NHS) workforce data has found. A report by the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) said...
36% of UK doctors suffer from workplace burnout
November 27th, 2019 Research led by Imperial College London has found that 36% of UK doctors may suffer from workplace burnout, rising to 43% of trainee doctors, reports Medical Xpress. Burnout is a condition triggered by long-term stress and overload at work, and in...
'Weekend effect' linked to admission habits of junior doctors
November 13th, 2019 A UK study suggested that the "weekend effect" of increased hospital mortality was driven by junior doctors admitting a lower proportion of relatively healthy patients at the weekend compared with the weekday, thus diluting the risk pool of weekday...
Solutions to physician burnout — US National Academy of Medicine report
November 6th, 2019 In response to concerning rates of burnout among US clinicians and trainees, the National Academy of Medicine has published a report that aims to find solutionsby shifting focus away from the individual and by proposing systemic changes in...
AI 'at best' on a par with human experts when making image-based diagnoses - review
October 9th, 2019 Artificial intelligence (AI) is "at best" on a par with human experts when it comes to making medical diagnoses based on images, that a review has found. The potential for artificial intelligence in healthcare has caused excitement, with...Women dying from heart attacks because of failure to recognise symptoms
Women who suffer heart attacks are dying needlessly because they fail to recognise their symptoms and receive poorer care than men, BBC News reports a British Heart Foundation study says. Over 10 years, more than 8,000 women in England and Wales...
Registrar burnout at Wits far exceeds international norms
September 25th, 2019 More than that 80% registrars at the University of the Witwatersrand's School of Clinical Medicine suffer from burnout, a response to prolonged stress, with “extremely high” levels of depersonalisation, affecting professional response to...
Hearing aids linked to reduced risk of mental decline and falls but few get them
September 18th, 2019 Hearing aids are associated with significantly reduced risk of physical and mental decline, although only 12% of those formally diagnosed with hearing loss actually acquire the devices, a large a University of Michigan analysis shows. Older...
Should doctors should accept unvaccinated children as patients?
August 28th, 2019 Four in 10 parents say they are very or somewhat likely to move their child to a different provider if their doctor sees families who refuse all childhood vaccines, according to a US national poll. Most children in the US receive recommended...
More than one in 20 hospital patients affected by preventable harm
July 24th, 2019 More than one in 20 (6%) of patients are affected by preventable harm in medical care, of which around 12% causes permanent disability or death, finds a large UK study. Most preventable harm relates to drug incidents and invasive procedures and it...
Most UK patients now unable to see their preferred GP
July 17th, 2019 Most patients in the UK who want to see their own GP can no longer get an appointment with them. The Daily Telegraph reports that this is according to figures suggesting the days of the family doctor are over. The statistics show record numbers of...
Medical 'selfies' can improve the doctor-patient relationship
July 3rd, 2019 Patients taking medical “selfies” and sharing them with their doctor empowers and reassures healthcare consumers, and can improve doctor-patient relationships, a two-part study led by Queensland University of Technology (QUT) in Brisbane,...