Quality in Health Care

Lord Darzi announced his proposals for changes in the NHS in England today. One of the points particularly grabbed my attention – the emphasis on the quality of health care. About time I reckon. We’re still in the midst of a target driven quantities focused health service. Too much emphasis on markers set by managers [...]

Read Full Post »

“Perception” and “facts”

There’s a certain professor in England who is conducting a major campaign (with the help of a few friends) against the whole of complementary and alternative medicine in general and homeopathy in particular. His name is Edzard Ernst and it seems the thrust of his campaign is to tell us that he is an expert [...]

Read Full Post »

The sun’s rays

I looked out the window tonight and saw the sun spreading its rays across the sky and the Earth from behind some clouds. It often looks like this here. It’s beautiful. Every time.

Along to the north west a bit, where the rays were not so bright, there were such lovely colours and shades. A real [...]

Read Full Post »

This will make you smile. A BIG smile!

Oh sometimes somebody just does something simple but original with the internet.
I LOVE this video.
This is one of those videos to watch when you want to smile. It’s heart-warming and just plain JOYOUS

Read Full Post »

Scaling changes everything

I don’t think you can understand anything unless you see it in its’ context. The tricky thing about that is that everything exists in multiple contexts, so depending on the context which you choose to consider (the perspective you take), whatever it is you are considering can be understood in different ways. I like that. [...]

Read Full Post »

Station poem

My post about the blackbird spotted from the delayed train prompted my friend, the poet, Larry Butler, to send me a poem he had written some time back. You can see why it came to his mind on reading that post. I’ve asked him for his permission to publish it here and I’m delighted to [...]

Read Full Post »

Getting what you focus on……how does that relate to disease?

In “Citadelle” (“Wisdom of the Sands” in English translation), Saint-Exupery (in the chapter I’ve just read), talks about how life, as he says, doesn’t cheat. We get what we focus on. He makes the point that if we focus on discipline to create freedom, what we get is discipline, and if we wage war to [...]

Read Full Post »

Stress and asthma

Why do some people get asthma? (In the last 25 years, the number of new asthma cases in the UK has increased six fold among children and three to four fold in adults) Well, as is the case with pretty much every single disease we know about, nobody knows. We are meaning-seeking creatures. We want [...]

Read Full Post »

While the train was waiting…..

The other day as I was on the way home from work, the train stopped in the middle of the countryside. You never quite know why a train stops somewhere between stations but you can be sure it means the train is delayed. A long time ago I realised that wearing a watch increased my [...]

Read Full Post »

The life force

The concept of a “life force” fascinates me. What is it that enlivens a creature? What changes in that moment between life and death? I vividly remember the first time I had to certify that someone had died. That person was an old man who had died peacefully in a geriatric ward in the middle [...]

Read Full Post »