5 December 2006
Moaning doctors and lack of compassion, UK experts take aim at the inconvenient truths of medicine and healthcare
Governments should keep the threat and funding of global terrorism in perspective, given the number of preventable deaths that occur daily from HIV, malaria and TB.
This ‘inconvenient truth’ and others form part of a series published in this month’s Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine. The editorials by leading scientists and clinicians focus on medicine and healthcare issues in the UK.
From compassion in healthcare to abandoning the NHS for private practice, the articles are informal and encourage debate about topical, yet unspoken, issues.
Dr John Main argues doctors in the UK should stop moaning and get some perspective, while a leading Professor of General Practice urges doctors to spend more time with their patients.
Academics from Keele University urge doctors to learn to write more legibly and one extra act of kindness a day by medical staff would make hospital stays better and smoother for patients and more rewarding for employees, says Dr Phil Hadridge.
But, is there any humanity in the NHS left, questions writer and journalist Dr Sophie Petit-Zeman.
JRSM Editor, Kamran Abbasi asks readers to reconsider their faith this season.
"Al Gore has made this the year of inconvenient truths," said Dr Abbasi, " and there are many in medicine and healthcare. Why can’t healthcare staff show more compassion? Why can’t doctors stop moaning? Why can’t people have longer consultations? Are these issues impossible to resolve or have they become so inconvenient that we have stopped talking about them? We need to restart the conversation about what really matters to patients."
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Inconvenient Truths [PDF k]
The 'Inconvenient Truths' series is published in the December 2006 issue (Vol. 99) of the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine.
JRSM is the flagship journal of the Royal Society of Medicine. It has been published continuously since 1809. Its Editor is Dr Kamran Abbasi.
